Shiraz selected as Islamic Youth Capital in 2017

The historic city of Shiraz in southern Iran has officially been dubbed as the Youth Capital of the Islamic world in 2017.

A flag was scheduled to be raised near the mausoleum of the world known Iranian poet Hafez to commemorate the designation during a ceremony on January 9.

However the ceremony is postponed following the passing of Iran’s Chairman of the Expediency Council Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani.

Shiraz was selected as next Youth Capital of Muslim countries at final session of the third ministerial meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2016.

A delegation from of Islamic Conference Youth Forum for Dialogue and Cooperation (ICYF-DC) visited Shiraz in August 2016.

OIC considers certain elements to be present in a city for selecting it as the Youth Capital.

The elements include good climate, trained staff for hosting international events, frequent suitable educational infra-structures, rich cultural, religious background as well as number of great names in areas such as science, arts, culture and religion.

Along with Shiraz, OIC had three other candidate cities to host the Youth Capital 2017, including Putrajaya in Malaysia, Bandung in Indonesia and Fez in Morocco.

The city will host seven international events in 2017 to introduce Shiraz capacities to the nations of 56 OIC member states, a local official said.

The 2nd General Assembly of ICYF-DC held in October, 2014 initiated the OIC Youth Capital program.

Taking large significance for a large portion of Muslim population, youth have an exclusive organization to unite them by reinforcing brotherly ties in a certain city of OIC member states every year.

The states in OIC region have a population of about 1.5 billion Muslims, one third of them being the youth.

MG/FGF