U.N. cultural agency moves to protect Ukraine's heritage sites

By Juliette Portala

– The United Nations’ cultural company (UNESCO) mentioned on Tuesday it had bolstered protecting measures to protect Ukraine’s endangered cultural heritage in gentle of Russia’s invasion of its neighbour.

“The primary problem is to mark cultural heritage websites and monuments and recall their particular standing as protected areas beneath worldwide regulation,” UNESCO Director-Common Audrey Azoulay mentioned in a press release.

To keep away from deliberate or unintentional damages, the company is marking cultural websites and monuments in Ukraine with the distinctive “Blue Protect” emblem of the 1954 Hague Conference for the Safety of Cultural Property within the Occasion of Armed Battle.

“The marking with the logo of the Conference additionally comes from the truth that Russia and Ukraine are two nations to have ratified this vital conference”, Lazare Eloundou Assomo, the director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, informed Reuters. 

“Worldwide conventions, after we ratify them, we decide to respect them,” he mentioned, including that UNESCO was monitoring all websites in Ukraine the place cultural heritage could possibly be in danger.

Partnering with the United Nations Institute for Coaching and Analysis (UNITAR), the company assesses injury by analysing satellite tv for pc imagery for precedence websites that are endangered or already impacted.

A dozen such websites are already coated by the monitoring system, in line with the UNESCO assertion.

Of the properties included on the World Heritage Listing, UNESCO mentioned it considers the Saint Sophia Cathedral within the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and associated monastic buildings a precedence.

UNESCO can be monitoring Odessa, a metropolis in southern Ukraine, Eloundou Assomo mentioned.

“We're not ready for the media to behave,” he mentioned, stressing the urgency of marking the websites.

UNESCO plans to fulfill on Wednesday and Thursday with Ukrainian cultural professionals, together with World Heritage Web site managers and museum administrators, to be able to decide whether or not they would possibly want technical or monetary help.

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