Azernews.Az

By Sabina Idayatova

A Russian-Azerbaijani international humanitarian forum will be held in Baku on October, 4-5.

The aim of the forum is to promote and contribute to innovations in education, culture and other fields in Azerbaijan, and stimulate their development.

Over 600 representatives from 100 countries, including over 10 Nobel prize winners, 15 ex-presidents, heads of numerous countries' governments, ministers, well-known educators, men of science and culture will attend at the international forum. The forum organisers are Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Baku International Humanitarian Forum is an authoritative science and political global platform aimed at searching for answers to global challenges which were faced by humanity in the 21st Century, the holding of a wide range of dialogues and exchanges of opinions and discussion on the most important issues of humanitarian cooperation.

Foreign experts have cited the great importance of the Baku humanitarian forum.

Turkish MP Sinan Ogan noted that Azerbaijan is an important country in the world which is evidenced by holding such a conference as the International Humanitarian Forum in the country. According to the MP, in recent times Azerbaijan frequently holds international summits and conferences and all of them differ from events held by other countries.

The forthcoming humanitarian forum viewed as a great event by Ariel Cohen, leading expert of the Heritage Foundation for Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Policy.

According to Cohen, Baku has many events that really put the city on the map. "You had Eurovision. It was amazing that Azerbaijan, such a young country won Eurovision. But it is also understandable, because Azerbaijan's music tradition and singing tradition is very strong and it gave its results with Eurovision. You have women's soccer now," he said.

Speaking of the forum, Cohen noted that this would be the second year of holding such forum in Azerbaijan, which brings a lot of people from all parts of the world.

Cohen also added that there is a need in a little bit more focus on specific problems.
"My panel is going to cover media. I am going to talk about state media competing in the international environment, especially television. I think this is a part of our media mix today. So that is very interesting," Cohen said.

Mikhail Gusman, first deputy director general of Russia's state news agency ITAR-TASS, said that the upcoming International Forum is becoming an even more authoritative platform for important, humanitarian issues. According to him, Baku has presented this initiative two years ago under the slogan 'XXI century: hopes and challenges' took place in October of 2011, which was very timely and actual.

"There are many forums in the world, where economic, energy, political problems are discussed, however, there were no platforms where humanitarian, spiritual problems, the problem of philosophical perception of modern world and problems, appearing in the beginning of complicated XXI century could be discussed," Gusman noted.

In Gusman's opinion, the importance of forum will only grow, which is already to be seen from the themes of plenary meetings and disputes. All the forum guests have great expectations. "The humanity is expecting answers to many humanitarian issues of modern existence, and if at least part of these questions will be answered, the goal of the forum will be accomplished," Gusman stated.

Ali Hasanov, the Presidential Administration's head of social and political affairs, told journalists that Baku declaration will be adopted following discussions on various issues both at the plenary and departmentmental meetings to be held as part of the forum.

Participants will join events organized in Azerbaijani regions by executive authorities as well as meetings at a number of institutions to discuss issues of Azerbaijan's social and economic development.