Roundup: World heritage session seeks to eliminate risk factors threatening heritage

The World Heritage Committee, at its 40th session in Istanbul, on Thursday recommended strong measures seeking to eliminate or mitigate the risk factors that have been threatening the heritage sites around the world.

"We must stop the destruction," said Manuel Rodriquez Cuadros, the ambassador of Peru to the UN cultural agency UNESCO.

"For this, we have given specific and very important recommendations to the state parties for the preservation of the world heritage in accordance with their outstanding universal values," he told Xinhua.

He said one of the key recommendations by the committee is eliminating totally or mitigating the risk factors that have been producing the damages.

The envoy cited as an example the unplanned urbanization and construction of high-rise buildings in the historical center of Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine, moves that had damaged "the outstanding universal value of the site."

But things started to turn better when the authorities in Ukraine and the Kiev municipality, in line with the World Heritage Convention, decided to demolish and suspend the construction of buildings that were damaging the tissue of the site, said a report released at the meeting.

"We have also recommended the state parties to stick to the authenticity of the sites," said Cuadros.

In his view, all the reconstruction and repair works on the damaged sites should be conducted by using the original elements in order to preserve their authenticity.

According to a report, strong earthquakes in 2015 badly affected the "attributes, authenticity, integrity and management" of the heritage sites in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, placing their outstanding universal value at risk.

"Now it is vital that the damaged monuments or structures in the valley be replaced by new elements, which would be identical to the original ones, in line with their authenticity," said Cuadros.

The World Heritage Committee, during its two-day meeting on Wednesday and Thursday, completed the examination of the state of conservation of 108 sites inscribed on the prestigious World Heritage List.

As of now, the list has 1,031 sites in more than 160 countries.

The advisory bodies urged the committee to adopt protective measures for the sites, stressing that many threats have resulted from both natural causes and human interventions.

The committee has called for the state parties to "systematically" utilize the assessment tools in the review of state of conservation of properties in line with the World Heritage Convention.

"The committee has done quite a good job and discussed the details of the threats posed to world heritage sites," said Susanna Lindeman, the world heritage coordinator of Finland.

"We heard very encouraging speeches from delegations of different countries about how they would aid world heritage sites that are in trouble," she noted.

Meanwhile, the World Heritage Committee has added five sites in Libya, Mali's Old Towns of Djenne and Uzbekistan's Historic Centre of Shakhrisyabz to the List of World Heritage in Danger.

The sites in Libya -- the archaeological sites of Sabratha, Cyrene and Leptis Magna, Rock-Art Sites of Tadrart Acacus and the Old Town of Ghadames -- were included on the list because of damages already done and the threat of more to come in the conflict roiling the North African country, a press release said.

Mali's Old Towns of Djenne, an ancient center of the trans-Saharan gold trade, was put on the list due to security issues and violence that has dominated the country since fighting erupted between insurgent groups and Malian government forces in 2012.

Uzbekistan's Historic Centre of Shakhrisyabz was placed on the list in danger due to the overgrowth of tourism infrastructure in the site, according to a report.

Starting on Friday, the heritage committee, which kicked off its 40th session on Sunday, will begin a three-day review of the nominations of 27 new sites to the World Heritage List.

"We have to consider each site within the context of their own specific cultural or natural values," Ambassador Cuadros said. "I think we will have technical evaluation of each nominee rather than have a political one."

Some 2,500 people from around the world are participating in the 11-day annual session of the heritage committee, which was formed in 1977 to enforce the World Heritage Convention and manage the heritage list created based on the convention. Endit