In the week that saw the 60th Anniversary of UNESCO, Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber and Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General , held a ceremony at UNESCO headquarters to mark the tenth anniversary of the Kitâb fi Jarîda Project in the presence of the Ministers of Culture of Palestine and Yemen, Messrs M. Yahyya Yakhlef and Khaled Al Rouaychan,The President of the Arab Group at UNESCO, the President of the Consultative Committee of the Arabia Plan, the Vice-Minister of Culture of Iraq and the Special Adviser, representing HRH the King of Bahrain also attended this ceremony.

Over the past seven years, Kitâb fî Jarîda has published 66 authors with an average print run of three million copies per author, distributed free of charge in all the Arab countries. In this way, more than 200 million copies of Arab literary masterpieces have been distributed.

This cultural outcome must be seen as a first in the Arab region in terms of importance, the number of books distributed and the active participation it has stimulated. In this regard, the Director-General expressed his congratulations to the Committees on their selection of authors and titles, "all of which are highly representative of the masterpieces of Arab literature."