Abu Dhabi: Protecting cultural heritage during armed conflicts is inseparable from saving human lives, according to a senior UN official.
“I refuse to accept the opinion that protecting cultural heritage during armed conflicts is a luxury,” said Irina Bokova, director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco). She was addressing the opening session of the Safeguarding Endangered Cultural Heritage conference in Abu Dhabi on Friday. The conference is an initiative of His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, and François Hollande, President of France.
“Today, with our important partners - France and the UAE - we are gathering to create an international fund to ensure the protection of culture, to re-build, protect, and unite for heritage,” she said.
Bokova suggested the human beings should initiate a ‘war of ideas’ [instead of armed conflicts] to understand the importance of cultural heritage that helps eradicate hatred. These sites represent history and values of tolerance. “The heritage brings us together. That’s why many people have died while defending the heritage sites,” she said.
The official thanked the UAE and France for supporting the Unesco’s struggle to protect cultural heritage across the world. Recent destruction of heritage sites in several countries [especially in Syria, Iraq and Mali] were deliberate acts. “They are war crimes.
“The cultural cleansing we have seen in the Middle East has affected people everywhere, and Unesco is fully mobilised, catalysing a global movement for heritage. Together, we are building a new cultural landscape, a new approach to protect culture for peace and security,” Bokova said.
Many rare documents representing history have also been destroyed. “We have to work together [to stop such atrocities],” she said.
The Unesco has taken initiatives to put in place stringent international legal instruments to protect cultural heritage, Bokova said, referring to several international conventions that have come into effect since 1954.
“We have intervened in conflict and post-conflict environment in Mali, Afghanistan and Bosnia Herzegovina. We have worked with International Red Cross and International Criminal Court to ensure that deliberate destruction of heritage is considered a war crime and perpetrators are punished.”
Unesco was instrumental in the UN Security Council unanimously adopting Resolution 2199 (in 2015), which underlined the obligations of member states to take steps to prevent terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria from benefiting from trade in oil, antiquities and hostages, and from receiving donations. This has banned trafficking of heritage goods from Syria and Iraq, she said.
“We would like to strengthen information sharing to protect heritage and cultural pluralism and we need more political will to formulate a global strategy,” she said.
Bokova said the initiative of the UAE and France to organise this conference was very important as it could create an international coalition to streamline the global efforts to rehabilitate the destroyed heritage sites.
