Albania is honoured to take the floor at this 43rd session of the General Conference in Samarkand.
We express our sincere appreciation to the Government and people of Uzbekistan for their generous hospitality and excellent organization.
We warmly congratulate Dr. Khaled El-Enany, the Director-General-designate, and pay tribute to Ms. Audrey Azoulay for her remarkable leadership and dedication to UNESCO’s ideals and to multilateral cooperation.
We meet at a moment of uncertainty — a time marked by rising tensions, technological disruption, and environmental fragility.
Yet UNESCO’s mission — to build peace through education, science, culture, and communication — remains our compass and our shared responsibility.
UNESCO is not only a platform for dialogue; it is a laboratory for trust.
Albania believes that our Organization’s credibility depends on its capacity to face today’s challenges with unity, pragmatism, and renewed purpose.
Education remains the foundation of peace and sustainable progress.
Albania shares UNESCO’s conviction that education must adapt to new realities while remaining rooted in human values.
Our national reforms integrate digital and AI-based learning tools, guided by UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence.
We are developing new pathways for teachers and learners — blending digital skills with civic and cultural awareness.
Albania’s experience in AI literacy in schools and open educational resources shows that technology can widen inclusion and creativity when it serves human development.
A symbolic milestone is “Diella,” Albania’s AI-generated Digital Minister, created to strengthen transparency and integrity in public services.
Guided by human oversight and ethical safeguards, Diella embodies our commitment to responsible, citizen-centred innovation.
Culture is the memory and conscience of humanity.
For Albania, heritage protection is not a policy — it is a living commitment.
The Vjosa Valley, now a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, stands as a symbol of coexistence between people and nature.
We also look forward to the evaluation of “The Art of Playing, Singing and Making the Lahuta” for the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding.
In the same spirit, Albania is advancing the nomination of Lake Shkodra as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve— extending our biosphere network from Prespa-Ohrid in the east to Vjosa in the south, and now to the north.
This reflects our enduring commitment to biodiversity, community livelihoods, and sustainable development.
UNESCO’s work in culture remains indispensable — not only for safeguarding the past but for giving meaning to the future.
It is through culture that communities rediscover unity and nations rebuild confidence.
UNESCO’s future belongs to its youth.
Albania calls for stronger investment in programmes connecting young innovators, artists, and educators through culture and technology.
Their creativity and sense of responsibility are the most sustainable resources our societies possess.
We equally reaffirm our strong commitment to gender equality as a cross-cutting UNESCO priority.
Albania continues to promote women’s leadership in education, science, and cultural governance, and supports the integration of Gender Equality Markers (GEM) into all programmes and budgets.
Gender equality is not a stand-alone goal — it is a driver of innovation, resilience, and peace.
Every UNESCO initiative must empower women and girls to participate fully in shaping sustainable and digital futures.
Albania attaches great importance to UNESCO’s work in environmental sciences.
These frameworks turn knowledge into action for sustainability and peace.
Facing climate change, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity, we must strengthen cooperation.
UNESCO’s networks of biosphere reserves and geoparks are living laboratories linking science, policy, and communities.
Albania will continue contributing data, expertise, and experience from its protected areas to these global networks.
Free, pluralistic, and responsible media are essential pillars of democracy.
Albania reaffirms its support for UNESCO’s leadership in defending freedom of expression, protecting journalists’ safety, and promoting media and information literacy.
These are foundations of transparent governance and social trust — values that must endure as our digital world evolves.
Excellencies, colleagues,
Here in Samarkand — a historic meeting point of cultures and ideas — we are reminded that dialogue and diversity are UNESCO’s greatest strengths.
UNESCO’s work matters deeply to our societies.
Let us protect it, strengthen it, and ensure that it continues to inspire peace in the minds of all people.
Thank you.
