A key innovation in IFLA’s Governance Reform was the creation of our new Regional Division Committees and Council, supporting outreach and advocacy, and ensuring a strong voice for the regions in the Federation as a whole. Find out more about the work they are undertaking, and how you can follow their work.

Having taken up their roles following IFLA’s General Assembly in August, each of the six Regional Division Committees – for Asia-Oceania, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, North America, and Sub-Saharan Africa – have started work developing action plans.

These plans have a strong emphasis on building stronger advocacy, in particular around the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Individual Committees will also work to engage with wider global advocacy priorities, such as copyright reform and internet governance.

They will also look at key regional advocacy priorities, such as promoting resilience, library laws, digital inclusion and access to digital information, as well as building the knowledge, skills and confidence needed to act effectively to secure the funding and laws needed by libraries.

Finally, they have a mission to support engagement with the library field across the world, enabling more and more colleagues to benefit from belonging to a global field, as well as to support greater engagement in IFLA’s Library Map of the World.

We are looking forward to sharing more about the work of the Division Committees and the Regional Council that brings them together, under the leadership of Nthabiseng Kotsokoane. You can find out who is representing your region by clicking on the link for your region earlier in this article, and then on ‘Division Committee Members’. These pages will also soon contain news from each region.

If you are interested in finding out more, don’t hesitate to sign up to our regional mailing lists: for Asia-Oceania, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, North America, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

We’re looking forward to sharing more soon!