Hargeysa International Book Fair 2019

The 12th instalment of the annual Hargeysa International Book Fair will be held in July, from 20th to 25th, in Hargeysa, Somaliland, with the theme of coexistence and the guest country of Egypt.

COEXISTENCE: The Theme of the Year (2019)
On its 12th anniversary, the Hargeysa International Book Fair (HIBF) has adopted the theme of 'Coexistence' to be central to the events of this year’s Book Fair programme. Throughout the annals of history, all the conflicts for which humanity has paid in millions of human lives and immeasurable destruction of properties have been based on suspicion and hostility engendered by differences in creed and culture. Sadly enough, no continent in our planet today seems to be totally free from the scourge of political and ideological conflict. Albeit in varying degrees, the plight of war still remains a major concern of all countries in our boastful era of unimagined advancement in science and technology. That is why we zealously hold the principle of Peaceful Coexistence as the most cherished and practical idea for bringing together peoples and nations at variance in their political ideologies and national traditions to live in lasting peace and harmony. The same applies within intrastate and interstate social conflicts.

Even in the current international quest for overcoming the challenges of global warming, it is rightly conjured that the realisation of peaceful coexistence is essentially seen as a requisite condition towards that objective.

So far the themes explored at Hargeysa International Book Fair have included Freedom, Censorship, Citizenship, Collective memory, Visualization of the future, Journey, Imagination, Spaces, Leadership & Creativity, Connectivity and Wisdom. We will focus this year on the principle of peaceful coexistence of nations and people, in contrast to the antagonistic contradiction principal that nations with competing interest and ideologies could never coexist.

The choice of peaceful coexistence as our theme of the year has not come about casually at all. It has always been our firm belief, in the Redsea Cultural Foundation, that the advocacy and upholding of this cardinal principle is the real test of our claim to genuine human civilisation. So, let us pool our efforts together in order to make this claim come true.