site.btaUPDATED LIK Magazine Issue Presents Face of Bulgaria's Contribution to UNESCO

For 60 years, the LIK magazine has been bringing cultural achievements nearer to its readers, which is also an object of UNESCO's work, Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) Director General Kiril Valchev said here on Monday during a launch of the July issue of the monthly magazine at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. This event is taking place on the day of the official opening of the 47th Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, as part of the session’s accompanying programme, which this year is held in the French capital under Bulgarian Presidency, from July 6 to July 16.

The magazine, published by the national news agency of Bulgaria, was released simultaneously in three language versions: Bulgarian, English, and French.

Members of all delegations to the forum will receive a copy of the magazine as a gift. Guests at BTA's MaxiM Multimedia Centre in Sofia and at the agency's 40 national press clubs in Bulgaria and abroad are sharing in this magazine launch via online video link.

"To promote peace and sustainable development, UNESCO's mission goes beyond international cooperation in education, science and culture, branching out in communications, too. Because it matters not only how we trace, explore and preserve cultural heritage but also how we present it and disseminate knowledge about it. It is precisely the media that convey the knowledge of the present day, which every human being is entitled to access, because that is what distinguishes humans from all other earthly creatures," Valchev said.

"For 60 years, LIK has been providing access to literature, art, and culture - the magazine's name is in fact an acronym of these words in Bulgarian. In this regard, LIK is as significant to Bulgaria as the most well-known and widely read French culture magazine, Telerama, which, like BTA's magazine, hit the newsstands in the mid-20th century," he pointed out.

The Director General recalled that since January 2024, this access has been free, as all issues since its revival in 2022 until the present can be downloaded in pdf format at no charge from the BTA website. Additionally, BTA circulates more than 300 physical copies free of charge to libraries, other cultural institutions, and universities. LIK thus serves both to make modern communications available to older generations through digital literacy and to introduce younger people to the world’s cultural heritage - both core missions for UNESCO.

"But through media like LIK, an even greater mission is accomplished than the momentary presentation of today's culture: keeping the memory of this culture for tomorrow. Regarding his works, like the wrapped Pont Neuf in Paris or the Reichstag in Berlin, Christo said that it takes much greater courage to create things that will be gone than to create things that will remain. Yet thanks to the media, memory is preserved for the future - not only for ephemeral art like that of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's, but also for the intangible heritage of humanity - just as BTA has preserved such memory in its archives, containing millions of pages of news and photos amassed over the 127 years since its inception in 1898. Incidentally, Bulgaria hosts one of the eight UNESCO Regional Centres for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage - the only one in Europe," Valchev pointed out.

"Besides being an acronym of the words Literature, Art, and Culture, LIK is also a word in its own right in Bulgarian, meaning 'face', he explained. "That is why other issues of the magazine, too, have been published in foreign languages: one in English, marking the 45th anniversary of the flight of first Bulgarian cosmonaut Georgi Ivanov, thanks to which Bulgaria became the world's sixth nation to put a person in outer space; another one, in English, about the historic first voyage to Antarctica and back by the Bulgarian naval research and survey vessel Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii; a third, in English and Spanish, about Bulgarian science in Antarctica; and English versions of issues about the 155th anniversary of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the 60th anniversary of the LIK magazine itself. An issue that was presented on the Day of Bulgaria at EXPO 2025 in Osaka, Japan, covered Bulgaria’s participation at the world expos and was released in English and Japanese. "And the July issue, available in English and French, indeed presents the 'face' of Bulgaria’s contribution to UNESCO - an organization founded in 1945, which my country joined in 1956," Valchev said.

He pointed out that the contributors to the magazine include Bulgarian Irina Bokova - the first woman and the first Southeastern European to serve as UNESCO Director-General, from 2009 to 2017. Archive materials cover UNESCO events in Bulgaria, such as the sessions of the General Conference in 1985 and the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2008. This issue also features an interview with the President of the current 47th Session of the World Heritage Committee, Prof. Nikolay Nenov.

The BTA Director General explained that the magazine presents the ten Bulgarian sites inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List: seven cultural and three natural sites, as well as the eight Bulgarian entries on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage lists. Several other sites that deserve to be listed are included at the end of that section.

"It so happened that before I was 50 I had managed to visit all 193 UN member states. In each of them, I had a rigorous must-see criterion: the UNESCO sites. The more sites a country had, the longer I tried to stay there," he went on to say.

He recalled that currently, among the 168 countries with properties on the UNESCO World Heritage List (the organization has 196 members), Bulgaria ranks 33rd with 10 sites, as many as two other countries.

"This is a significant recognition for a country that ranks 105th in the world in terms of territory and 107th in population, but whose culture and nature are so valuable that UNESCO’s universal criteria place it more than three times ahead of its size and population ranking," Valchev commented.

"And the ten sites on the UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage List, along with nearly as many festivals and traditions on the intangible heritage lists, furthermore give foreigners a worthwhile reason to come and spend more time in Bulgaria after reading about its UNESCO sites in English and French in the LIK issue," he said.

The 47th Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, runs until July 16 at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris under the presidency of Bulgaria. As part of the session, Bulgaria will present elements of its cultural and natural heritage. Later Monday, the July issue of LIK magazine – dedicated to Bulgaria and UNESCO – will also be officially presented at UNESCO.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded on November 16, 1945. Bulgaria became a member on May 17, 1956, the same year its National Commission for UNESCO was established. The Commission coordinates activities between Bulgarian institutions and UNESCO.

UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee is one of the two governing bodies responsible for implementing the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. It is composed of representatives from 21 countries elected from among the 196 States Parties to the Convention.