Press
Release No.2002-18
UNITED NATIONS YEAR FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE:
PRIORITY ON RECONCILIATION AND DEVELOPMENT
Paris, April 3 - From Bamyan to Jerusalem or Sarajevo, in the
past few years cultural heritage has often been a military target
or the flashpoint of political, ethnic and religious conflicts.
But when peace returns, the rehabilitation and enhancement of
these highly symbolic sites, as well as that of cultural spaces
or forms of cultural expression belonging to the intangible heritage,
can sometimes help to strengthen the process of national reconciliation
and revive economic activity. Aware of these realities, UNESCO
is pursuing its activities to protect cultural heritage and calls
upon Member States to ratify the international conventions covering
this area.
For 2002, proclaimed United Nations
Year for Cultural Heritage, UNESCO has chosen the themes of reconciliation
and development as the focus of its activities, which will be
presented at UN headquarters in New York today by UNESCO's Assistant
Director-General for Culture, Mounir Bouchenaki. In his message
for the Year, UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura said,
"The biggest challenge facing UNESCO, designated lead agency
for the year by the United Nations, is to make the public authorities,
the private sector and civil society as a whole realize that the
cultural heritage is not only an instrument for peace and reconciliation
but also a factor of development."
A little over a year ago, the destruction
of two giant, 1,500-year-old Buddhas in Afghanistan by the Taleban
shocked world opinion so deeply that it became the symbol of "crimes
against culture". But cultural vandalism has happened in
other parts of the world as well in recent years. In Kosovo, Islamic
heritage was seriously damaged by "ethnic cleansing"
operations carried out in 1998-1999. Likewise, during the wars
that ravaged the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1999, cultural
emblems were deliberately targeted.
But once the fighting stops, rebuilding
certain landmarks can help people learn how to live together in
peace again. Bosnia's cultural heritage was systematically destroyed
to wipe out all traces of a past shared by the different communities.
Today, UNESCO and the World Bank are coordinating the work of
multicultural teams rebuilding the Mostar Bridge. This $15-million
project is funded by various international financial institutions,
the municipality of Mostar and Croatia. In a country where religious
and ethnic animosity is still fresh in everyone's minds, Croat
and Bosnian workers are working side-by-side in a relatively relaxed
atmosphere, and becoming reacquainted with each other.
In Cambodia, Angkor has always
symbolized the dream of unity. The site's inclusion on UNESCO's
World Heritage List in 1992 accompanied the start of the national
reconciliation process. Today, the number of tourists visiting
the temple complex is growing exponentially, rising from 7,638
in 1993 to 239,091 in 2001. Ticket sales alone generated over
$5 million in 2000 and the area is becoming an attractive, bustling
centre of economic activity. Tens of thousands of jobs have been
created in tourism, hospitality services and site maintenance.
Strong international mobilisation coordinated by UNESCO has led
to approximately one hundred development projects with funding
of $5 million a year.
UNESCO is aware of the obstacles
preventing cultural heritage from playing the unifying and economic
role that it should, and has been working to safeguard it for
the past 50 years. The Organization's activities have led to creation
of several international instruments. In 1954, it adopted the
Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event
of Armed Conflict (known as The Hague Convention). Ratified by
101 States, this text has been strengthened by two protocols:
the first (1954), which concerns movable cultural property, has
been ratified by 83 States. The second (1999) provides for enhanced
protection of "cultural heritage of the greatest importance
for humanity", but has so far been ratified by only 10 States.
Ten more countries must ratify for the Protocol to enter into
force.
In 1970, the Convention on the
Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export
and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property was adopted to
combat plundering and trafficking of such property. Today, 92
States are parties to the Convention. UNESCO's aims to raise that
to 100 by the end of the year. Several states with key art markets,
such as Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Japan and Belgium, are
preparing to ratify it. Furthermore, UNESCO was a driving force
behind the 1995 adoption of the UNIDROIT Convention on stolen
or illicitly exported cultural property, which aims at harmonizing
private law in the 15 States party to the Convention today.
The 1972 Convention for the Protection
of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, the third fundamental
pillar, is the most popular and famous in the body of legal texts
on heritage. This document provides the framework of action in
favour of the world's most outstanding cultural and natural sites,
and has 167 States Parties. The World Heritage List, which was
created under this convention, today includes 721 sites - 544
cultural, 144 natural and 23 mixed - in 124 countries (*). It
is completed by a list of endangered world cultural heritage,
which includes 31 threatened sites (**). The 1972 Convention's
30th anniversary will be celebrated at an international congress
that will take place in Venice from November 14 to 16, 2002.
To further shore up protection,
in November 2001 UNESCO adopted the Convention on the Protection
of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. The main purpose of this
text is to protect shipwrecks, which are key to understanding
our history, especially the development of trade routes. It will
enter into force three months after being ratified by 20 States.
UNESCO is working on a convention
to protect the oral and intangible heritage, which includes languages,
the performing arts, music, social and religious rituals, oral
traditions and the processes of creating knowledge and know-how.
This future convention intends to deal with the risk of the impoverishment
of cultural diversity and standardization that will result from
the gradual loss of the oral and intangible heritage in several
parts of the world. In the past three centuries, for example,
languages have become extinct or vanished at an increasingly alarming
rate, especially in America and Australia. Today, at least 3,000
of the planet's 6,000 languages are threatened, according to the
Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing, recently
published by UNESCO (****).
As a prelude to this future convention,
which will mark an additional step towards defining the notion
of heritage, a first Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral
and Intangible Heritage of Humanity (***) was made on May 18,
2001. The impact on some of these first 19 masterpieces has been
remarkable, in terms of both protecting and promoting these manifestations
of living culture.
For example, in the Dominican Republic,
following the proclamation of the Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit
of the Congos of Villa Mella, which organises socio-religious
ceremonies stemming from African-American culture, threats have
disappeared: the plan to build a road that would have cut in half
the village of Mata Los Indios, the community's core, has been
abandoned, and the confraternity's activities have become more
famous than ever (via CD-Rom, participation in events, etc.).
In Benin, where UNESCO has honoured the oral traditions of the
Gèlèdé, a budget has been earmarked and the
International Gèlèdé Centre is going to be
created to protect and promote them. Regional and national recognition
of oral traditions on a continent where they play a vital role
is a perfect example of how culture can defend the collective
memory and contribute to dialogue and development.
As UNESCO's Director-General stated
in his message, "The cultural heritage of a people is the
memory of its living culture. It is expressed in many different
forms, both tangible and intangible. The origins of this heritage
are multifarious, too. In retracing its own cultural lineage,
in recognizing the many different influences that have marked
its history and shaped its identity, a people is better able to
build peaceful relations with other peoples, to pursue what is
often an age-old dialogue and to forge its future." The unknown
hands that posted a sign above the door of the Kabul Museum that
reads, "A nation is alive when its culture is alive"
must surely have wanted to say the same thing.
