Your Excellency Mr. Ban Ki-moon,
Secretary-General of the United Nations,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for being here for this special event.
In particular, I would like to offer special thanks to His Excellency the Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, for taking time off his busy schedule during this busy time of year, to be personally present here today.
On behalf of the government of the State of Qatar, I would like to express our pleasure for being given the opportunity to contribute to the digitization project.
The State of Qatar welcomes the efforts undertaken by the Department of Public Information (DPI) and Department for General Assembly and Conference Management (DGACM) for digitizing important United Nations documents.
The State of Qatar believes that it is crucial to preserve older United Nations documents and maps since the early years of establishing the organization, and to upload them to the Official Document System. Thus, the State of Qatar came to the conclusion that this project will be an excellent idea to save the United Nation’s heritage, which is useful for the United Nations, its member states, institutions and humanity at large, and has such vital historical value.
Since the inception of the digitization project in 2014, the State of Qatar pledged $5 million to support it. Thus far, three payments of one million dollars each have been paid and the fourth payment is underway.
I thank the Secretary-General, Under-Secretary-General Ms. Catherine Pollard, Under- Secretary- General for General Assembly and Conference Management, and Ms. Cristina Gallach, Under- Secretary- General for Communications and Public Information, as well as Library team and scanning team, for their help and important support of this endeavor.
Again I thank you for coming to share with us this exciting event, and I wish you all the best.