Cultural Understanding
Objective: Promote cultural exchange among parties engaged with the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™, with a focus on enhancing understanding of the culture of Qatar and the region.
The cultural understanding material topic aligns with the following UN SDGs:
Context
As the flagship tournament of the most popular sport in the world, no event has such an extraordinary global reach as the FIFA World Cup™. With the participation of 32 national football teams, thousands of fans from all around the world, and an international event management and volunteer workforce, Qatar was host to more than one million visitors during the tournament. For Qatar and the Middle East, the region’s first FIFA World Cup™ was a tremendous platform for exchange between locals and people from all over the world, helping to enhance cultural understanding and showcasing what the region has to offer.
In the years leading up to the tournament, Qatar implemented several projects to position itself as a regional cultural hub and attract visitors. This included opening museums and cultural sites that focus on Islamic and Arab art, history and traditions. Qatar also supported organisations and initiatives that encouraged intercultural exchange and relaxed visa requirements for many nationalities ahead of the tournament.
Under the Qatar Second National Development Strategy 2018-2022, Qatar aimed to further create and implement mechanisms to protect and develop its cultural heritage; to put into effect and enable cultural programmes that promote national pride and Qatari values and support cultural dialogue; and to establish and actualise a plan to reinforce knowledge of migrant cultures and means of interaction. Hosting the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ was a major driver and catalyst for implementing these various initiatives and projects by the Qatari government.
Initiatives
The cultural understanding objective was addressed through the following initiatives: