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UNESCO’s Memory of the World (MOW) Regional Register inscribes 20 new items in recognition of human innovation and imagination in Asia-Pacific
Asia-Pacific Member States newly inscribed 20 items during the 2024 cycle of the Memory of the World Regional Register at the 10th General Meeting of the Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific (MOWCAP), which was convened from 7 to 8 May, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The 10th General Meeting was hosted by the Ministry of Culture of Mongolia, the Mongolian National Commission for UNESCO, and the UNESCO Regional Office in Bangkok.
This year, the MOWCAP Regional Register celebrates human research, innovation and imagination.
Genealogical records were especially notable among 2024 inscriptions, with Mongolia’s Family Chart of Hereditary Lords of the Khalkha Mongols, the House of Genghis Khan; as well as the communities of Huizhou in China, and Kedah State in Malaysia, as testaments to the importance of collating regional family histories.
The 2024 cycle also celebrated science and literature, recognizing Bangladesh’s sci-fi feminist author, Rokeya S. Hossain, who imagined both helicopters and solar panels before they had been invented in her 1905 utopian narrative, Sultana’s Dream; also inscribed in 2024 was Australia and Tuvalu’s joint documentation on the findings of scientific expeditions investigating the formation of coral reefs.
Documents recording significant innovations in business and industrial technology were also recognized, such as tea-drinking business entrepreneurship in China, as well as globally applied sugar research and regional cement production in Indonesia.
Regional literary traditions were celebrated through the recognition of Philippines’ Indigenous Hinilawod chants, the East Asian legend of the Nine Tripods found on the bronze bas-reliefs in Viet Nam’s Nine Dynastic Urns and the globally re-adapted Pañcatantra Fables of India.
The 20 successfully inscribed items to the MOWCAP Regional Register for Asia-Pacific
- Australia and Tuvalu – Funafuti: The Edgeworth David 1897 Expedition Documents
- Bangladesh – “Sultana’s Dream” by Rokeya S. Hossain
- China – Archives Relating to the Chengdu Traditional Teahouses
- China – Huizhou Genealogy Archives
- China – Printing Blocks Housed at the Derge Printing House
- India – The Illustrated Manuscripts of Rāmacaritamānasa of Tulasīdāsa
- India – The Manuscript of the Sahṛdayāloka-Locana: Seminal Text of Indian Poetics
- India – The 15th Century Manuscript of the Pañcatantra Fables
- Indonesia – Indarung I, The First Cement Plant in Southeast Asia (1910-1972)
- Indonesia – Indonesian Sugar Research Institute’s Archives 1887-1986: The Role of ISRI’s Research Activities to the World Sugar Industry
- Indonesia – The Tambo Tuanku Imam Bonjol Manuscript
- Malaysia – Al-Tarikh Salasilah Negeri Kedah: Genealogical History of Kedah State
- Malaysia – The Royal Correspondence of Baginda Omar (Surat Persendirian Baginda Omar)
- Mongolia – Family Chart of Hereditary Lords of the Khalkha Mongols, the House of Genghis Khan
- Mongolia – Mongolia’s First Postage Stamps ‘Eldev Ochir’
- Philippines – Doctrina Christiana en Lengua Española y Tagala (Christian Doctrine in Spanish and Tagalog), Manila, 1593
- Philippines – Hinilawod Epic Chant Recordings
- Uzbekistan – Images of Khorezm Oasis by Khudaibergan Devanov (1879-1937)
- Uzbekistan – “Turkestan Album” 1871-1872
- Viet Nam – Bas-reliefs on the Nine Bronze Urns in Huế Imperial Palace
For more information about UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme
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