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Announced at the Memory in Heritage Conference in Doha, Qatar, on 22 January 2025, the initiative marks a major milestone in strengthening regional cooperation to preserve, enable access to, and generate awareness of its documentary heritage.

The Arab Region is home to valuable manuscripts, archival material, and audiovisual heritage documenting centuries of knowledge, innovation and cultural exchange. However, the region’s documentary heritage remains underrepresented on UNESCO’s Memory of the World (MoW) International Register, accounting for only 3% of total inscriptions, the lowest of any geographical group. 

A  revealed that half of the region’s memory institutions are in high-risk zones, yet three-quarters do not have emergency preparedness plans in place. Additionally, 80% of institutions housing audiovisual heritage lack functioning equipment, preventing access to valuable historical records, while only 16% received funding or technical assistance during the previous decade. These findings highlighted the urgent need for regional cooperation and investment.

Regional Committees are autonomous entities of the MoW Programme, serving as cooperative structures for addressing regional challenges, as well as for establishing Regional MoW Registers, championing the promotion of a region’s documentary heritage, and enhancing capacities of key stakeholders through training, publications and other activities.

MOWCAR will, therefore, serve as a vehicle for fostering long-term institutional resilience by harmonizing preservation practices and enabling memory institutions to exchange expertise and to promote awareness of Arab documentary heritage at the global level.

Its establishment is also a major step building upon the Declaration to Support the Preservation of Documentary Heritage in the Arab Region  and Member States’ implementation of the 2015 UNESCO Recommendation Concerning the Preservation of and Access to Documentary Heritage, Including in Digital Form.

The launch of MOWCAR demonstrates the region’s growing commitment to ensuring that its rich historical narratives are preserved, recognized and valued. Aimed at fostering collaboration, awareness and resource mobilization, this initiative lays the groundwork for long-term impact at the national, regional and international levels. 

As the region embraces greater collaboration through MOWCAR, UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme is set to benefit from this renewed engagement of Member States to collectively preserve the documentary heritage attesting to the past in order to shape the future.