Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict endorses monitoring measures

Opening the meeting, Mr Ernesto Ottone R., Assistant Director-General for Culture of UNESCO, stressed that the 1954 Hague Convention and its two Protocols remain more relevant than ever in the face of ongoing armed conflicts, and underscored the importance for all States Parties to implement the principles of these treaties.

At the outset of the meeting, the Committee unanimously elected H.E. Ambassador Hajo Sani, Permanent Delegate of Nigeria to UNESCO, as Chairperson of the Committee. She became the first official from an African country to hold this position.

The Committee endorsed monitoring and supervision mechanisms under the 1999 Second Protocol to strengthen the ability of the Committee to monitor potential damages to cultural property, including through the use of remote sensing technologies. These monitoring mechanisms, with funding to support them, will enable the Committee to undertake ad hoc monitoring of cultural property that has been damaged or destroyed, or which is threatened with destruction. This proposal will be submitted to the Meeting of Parties for their approval in December 2023.

The Secretariat presented its activities in Ukraine, and notably its damage assessment of cultural sites, conducted also through satellite imagery analysis. Through the Heritage Emergency Fund, UNESCO provided technical and financial assistance inter alia to the city of Odesa to restore the damaged historic roof and windows of the Odesa Fine Arts Museum, mark 54 cultural sites in the city centre with the distinctive blue shield emblem of the Convention, and to digitize over 1000 objects in the Odesa Fine Arts Museum and Museum of Modern Art of Odesa. 

The Committee decided to grant international financial assistance to Gabon and Paraguay to assist them in the adoption of preparatory safeguarding measures for the protection of cultural property. The international assistance granted to Gabon will be the first activity implemented under this Fund with a regional scope, comprising 10 countries from Central Africa.

In a historic decision, the Committee inscribed the National Museum of Anthropology of Mexico on the UNESCO International List of Cultural Property under Enhanced Protection. It is the first property from Latin America to be granted this highest level of protection. In its deliberations, the Committee encouraged all States Parties to nominate their cultural properties for possible inscription.