TEHRAN -- Pakistan’s award-winning poet, academic and littérateur, Iftikhar Hussain Arif, has been appointed the president of the ECO Cultural Institute (ECI).
ECI is the cultural wing of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), which is an intergovernmental regional organization established in 1985 by Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey with the aim of promoting economic, technical, and cultural cooperation among member states.
The organization was expanded in 1992, with seven new members, namely Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, joining.
ECO Cultural Institute aims at fostering understanding and the preservation of the rich cultural heritage of its members through common projects in the field of the media, literature, art, philosophy, sport and education.
Arif took charge of the ECO Cultural Institute from Dr. Hojatollah Ayoubi, who completed his three-year term on April 17, 2013.
The 70-year-old has been awarded with Hilal-e-Imtiaz, Sitara-e-Imtiaz and Presidential Pride of Performance, which are the highest literary awards given by the Government of Pakistan.
Arif was born in Lucknow, India, in 1943 and lived there until he migrated to Pakistan in 1965.
He is a poet of Urdu. Three of his collections, Mehr-i-Doneem, Harf-i-Baryab and Jahan-e-Maloom have been published in many editions.
The Oxford University Press has published an anthology of Arif’s translated poetry under the title, Written in the Season of Fear. The introduction was written by Harris Khalique, a poet in English, Urdu and Punjabi.
Arif's poetry has been translated into a number of languages, including English, Russian, German, Persian, Hindi and Braj Bhasha.