Buenos Aires chosen by UN cultural agency as World Book Capital for 2011

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has chosen Buenos Aires as the 2011 World Book Capital as part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to promote literature and reading.

The Argentinean capital was picked “for the quality and variety of its proposed programme as well as for the consolidated strategy on which it is based,” the selection committee said after meeting on Friday at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

Every year, the committee designates a city for the title for the 12 months between World Book and Copyright Days on 23 April.

Buenos Aires becomes the eleventh city honoured over the years for the World Book Capital by a selection committee, composed of the three main professional associations in the book industry – the International Publishers Association, the International Booksellers Federation and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions – along with representatives from UNESCO.

For 2009 Beirut has the honour, followed by Ljubljana in 2010. Madrid was the first city to receive the tribute, and was succeeded by Alexandria, New Delhi, Antwerp, Montreal, Turin, Bogotá and Amsterdam.

UNESCO said that the jury welcomed the candidacies of two Sub-Saharan cities – Lagos in Nigeria and Porto Novo in Benin – among the seven applicants and “looks forward to finding ways of strengthening literature and book culture in this region.”