What's the best bit of the UN? No 6: Unesco

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/09/best-bit-un-unesco

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In the same week Unesco has been urged to focus on two world heritage sites under very different threats, campaigners in Liverpool are outraged that the council has voted for the demolition of a range of charming but very battered buildings, including the 1912 Futurist cinema in the name of regeneration.

Meanwhile, a black Islamic State flag has been flying from the pediment of a dazzling Roman ruin at Palmyra in Syria – and news has come of the decapitation of the site’s guardian and destruction of temple structures.

At a time when such problems face much of the world’s most precious common heritage, Unesco’s noble motto, “building peace in the minds of men and women”, is enough to provoke a despairing laugh.

The origins of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation date back to the League of Nations and the yearning to rebuild the world after the horrors of the first world war. It came into formal existence immediately after the second world war, funded mainly by contributions from the now 195 members.

Although Unesco has many goals across many disciplines, and links with hundreds of organisations, it is probably best known for the World Heritage List, intended to flag up the places that should be most precious to mankind.

The concept was born in crisis – the threat to drown the magnificent ancient Egyptian temples of Abu Simbel in the waters of the Aswan dam – and has grappled with crises ever since. Governments nominate sites, including ruined temples, old factories, mountains and forests, but the title is a badge of honour, and carries no special funding or statutory protection. Terrorism is in the headlines, but rising sea levels and spreading deserts, urban sprawl and marine pollution are all taking their toll in the long term.

The international committee meets once a year – most recently in Germany in July – to decide on new nominations, and whether any already selected need to go on to a less coveted Unesco list, World Heritage in Danger.

Liverpool, listed for the buildings, piers and wharves surviving from the glory days when it was one of the busiest ports in the world, is the only UK site on the danger list, along with Palmyra – on the list four years before the current horrors – and other sites in Syria: Damascus, Aleppo and the fabulous Crusader castle of Crac des Chevaliers.

Others include the war-ravaged 1,000-year-old mud brick buildings of San’aa in Yemen, added only this summer; and the ancient city of Hatra in Iraq, which stands witness to the complex multicultural history of the country, and is therefore exactly the kind of site in Isis’s crosshairs.

The ruined giant Buddhas at Bamiyan in Afghanistan, destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 – presaging many attempts to scour history out of the landscape – have been on the danger list since 2003, and there is still no agreement how or even whether to restore them.

“When extremists seek to destroy culture and persecute individuals on cultural and religious grounds, we must also respond with more culture, with more knowledge, with more protection measures,” said Unesco’s director general, Irina Bokova. She is right, of course – but there are days when the news is so dire, her gallant words seem mere whistling in the wind.