Following a four-day meeting at UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, from 24-27 October, the International Advisory Committee (IAC) of UNESCO's Memory of the World (MoW) Programme recommended to inscribe 78 new nominations for the Memory of the World International Register. In addition, the IAC proposed three additions to existing inscriptions and recommended provisional inscription for two items pending confirmation of minor points.

Under the Chairmanship of Dr. Abdulla Alraisi, Director-General of the National Archives of the United Arab Emirates, and composed of 14 eminent experts, the IAC examined and evaluated new items of documentary heritage proposed by countries from across the world, following a two-year process as part of the 2016-2017 nomination cycle.

The people of a green delta were with their utmost dedication to be named as an independent nation in the world. All that remained in their heart was soon to issue at lips. It was the afternoon of 7 March 1971 – the time a nation was to declare what it had to. And it was Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, undisputed leader of the Bangalee nation, chief of the Awami League and majority leader in the newly elected Pakistan national assembly, to speak up these words as he stepped up to the dais at the Race Course (today’s Suhrawardy Udyan).

The 7th March Speech of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was a speech given by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a Bengali nationalist leader, on March 7, 1971 at the Ramna Race Course Maidan in Dhaka to a gathering of over two million people.