Paris, September 19, 2025 – The international conference titled ‘Chingiz Aitmatov and UNESCO: Joint Heritage that Unites the World’ was held at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

On behalf of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Permanent Delegate of Kazakhstan to UNESCO Askar Abdrakhmanov addressed the participants of the event with a welcoming speech.

In his statement, the Ambassador stressed that, thanks to translations into 172 languages of the world, the writer’s creations and ideas have become familiar and close to people on all continents. Being the most prominent son and pride of the Kyrgyz people, Aitmatov and his legacy have certainly become part of the intellectual heritage of the entire humanity, but especially of their closest neighbours – the Kazakhs and other Turkic and Central Asian peoples.

The Ambassador emphasized the close spiritual connection of the writer and a number of his works with the Kazakh people and its outstanding writers. In this regard, he highlighted the recent opening in Bishkek of an unusual joint monument to Chingiz Aitmatov and Mukhtar Auezov by the Presidents of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Kyrgyzstan Sadyr Japarov. Indeed, the great Kazakh writer was one of the first to publicly support his younger Kyrgyz colleague, and also, through his relation with Louis Aragon, he may have contributed to the first edition of his famous novel Jamila in France.

At the conference organized by the Permanent Delegation of Kyrgyzstan with the support of UNESCO, TURKSOY and the Turkic Culture and Heritage Foundation, diplomats, scientists and public figures of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, France, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkiye, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and other countries shared their vision of the most remarkable features of Aitmatov’s prose and the significance of his humanistic ideas for the new generations of readers.

The conference participants expressed their common support for the need for the joint early and most meaningful preparations for the upcoming global celebration of the great Kyrgyz writer’s 100^th anniversary in 2028, including through UNESCO and intergovernmental institutions of the Turkic world.

Source : https://www.gov.kz/memleket/entities/mfa-unesco/press/news/details/1072891?lang=kk