The 39th Session of the World Heritage Committee is under way in Bonn. Lots of news to follow, hopefully...Yesterday saw the launch of UNESCO's Unite for Heritage Global Coalition and the Bonn Declaration. The former is the start of a global campaign to raise awareness of, and counter, deliberate destruction of cultural heritage. The latter reiterates states' obligations to protect their own heritage as well as working as an international community to protect World Heritage Sites that are under threat, in particular from war.
One line also reiterates the criminal nature of the destruction perpetrated by ISIS and other groups:
"intentional attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes and historic monuments may amount to war crimes..."
Tuesday 30 June 2015
Monday 29 June 2015
Syria - Violence and Heritage
The terrorist attack on the Tunisian city of Sousse has received understandably widespread coverage. Thirty nine people were killed, including thirty Britons. By contrast, the massacre of 164 civilians in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani received hardly any attention. Here's an excellent article by Patrick Cockburn exploring the reasons:
Cockburn writes:
"The lack of international attention is explained by the fact that people worldwide have become inured to horrible things happening in the wars in Iraq and Syria. They are desensitised by seeing so many pictures of children killed or maimed by Isis suicide bombers or government barrel bombs. They no longer respond to such news and regard it rather as a permanent if regrettable part of the region’s political landscape. This [is] “atrocity fatigue”..."
One aspect to the atrocities that receives even less coverage is the destruction of cultural heritage in both Syria and Iraq. Imagine the [British] outrage if terrorists demolished Stonehenge or St Paul's Cathedral. Yet ISIS routinely destroys sites of cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq, as the United Nations detailed in its 2014 report: click here for details of sites destroyed in Syria, including Palmyra. The United Nations Security Council did adopt a Resolution (2199) in February 2015, which condemns the destruction of cultural heritage and adopts legally-binding measures to counter illicit trafficking of antiquities and cultural objects from Iraq and Syria.
One wonders what impact such a Resolution can have given the fanaticism of ISIS: as the UN Security Council's report says, their brutal extremism and terrorism poses a clear threat to international peace and security. Heritage receives less attention, but is yet another casualty of ISIS's clerical fascism.
Cockburn writes:
"The lack of international attention is explained by the fact that people worldwide have become inured to horrible things happening in the wars in Iraq and Syria. They are desensitised by seeing so many pictures of children killed or maimed by Isis suicide bombers or government barrel bombs. They no longer respond to such news and regard it rather as a permanent if regrettable part of the region’s political landscape. This [is] “atrocity fatigue”..."
One aspect to the atrocities that receives even less coverage is the destruction of cultural heritage in both Syria and Iraq. Imagine the [British] outrage if terrorists demolished Stonehenge or St Paul's Cathedral. Yet ISIS routinely destroys sites of cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq, as the United Nations detailed in its 2014 report: click here for details of sites destroyed in Syria, including Palmyra. The United Nations Security Council did adopt a Resolution (2199) in February 2015, which condemns the destruction of cultural heritage and adopts legally-binding measures to counter illicit trafficking of antiquities and cultural objects from Iraq and Syria.
One wonders what impact such a Resolution can have given the fanaticism of ISIS: as the UN Security Council's report says, their brutal extremism and terrorism poses a clear threat to international peace and security. Heritage receives less attention, but is yet another casualty of ISIS's clerical fascism.
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