DUSHANBE, March 15, 2013, Asia-Plus — A Tajik delegation comprising more than 20 artistes and 15 representatives of Tojikmatloubot (Tajik consumers’ cooperatives) will participate in the International Navrouz Celebrations that will take place this year in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
The celebrations will start on March 21 and Tajik singers and dancers will give a concert in Ashgabat on March 22.
It is expected that Tajik President Emomali Rahmon will participate in the International Navrouz Celebrations in Turkmenistan. High ranking state officials from Azerbaijan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia’s Tatarstan republic have also been invited to attend the International Navrouz Celebrations in Turkmenistan.
We will recall that Tajikistan hosted the Third International Navrouz Celebrations last year.
The United Nations General Assembly recognized the International Day of Nowruz (In Tajik Navrouz), a spring festival of Persian origin, on March 23, 2010.
According to the preamble of the resolution on the International Day, Nowruz, which means new day, is celebrated on 21 March, the day of the vernal equinox, by more than 300 million people worldwide as the beginning of the new year. It has been celebrated for over 3,000 years in the Balkans, the Black Sea Basin, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and other regions.
The Assembly called on Member States that celebrate the festival to study its history and traditions with a view to disseminating that knowledge among the international community and organizing annual commemoration events.
Welcoming the inclusion of Navrouz into the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on September 30, 2009, the text notes the festival’s “affirmation of life in harmony with nature, the awareness of the inseparable link between constructive labor and natural cycles of renewal and the solicitous and respectful attitude towards natural sources of life.”
