In the UAE, Emiratis are celebrating International day of happiness after Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, established the UAE's first World Happiness Council on Sunday.
The World Happiness Council, which aims to improve the state of happiness throughout the UAE and across the world, focuses on six sectors.
Sheikh Mohammed, who used twitter to officially announce the establishment of this new council, explained through a tweet that the World Happiness council will focus on health, education, environment, personal happiness, happy cities and community standards for happiness.
Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University professor who will be heading this new council has quite an impressive resume. He is a world-renowned professor of economics, a leader in sustainable development, a senior UN adviser, a bestselling author, and a syndicated columnist whose monthly newspaper columns appear in more than a 100 countries.
Sachs will also receive administrative support from the UN Sustainable Development Solutions network, which is a UN body that aims to promote joint learning and helps to overcome the compartmentalization of technical and policy work.
Apart from Sachs the council will include 12 members such as UNESCO director-general Irina Bukova, former Finnish PM Alexander Stubb and Professor John Heliwell of the University of British Columbia to name a few.
The World Happiness council, which came about as a result of the dialogue revolving around happiness at the 5th edition of the World Government Summit, will convene twice a year. The first council meeting will be held at the World Government Summit and the second at the UN General Assembly in New York.
Along with the World Happiness council the UAE also established its first ministry of State of Happiness that was announced a year ago in February 2016. The Ministry of Happiness, which is led by minister Ohood bint Khalfan Al Roumi, is concerned with promoting and sustaining happiness throughout the UAE.