Destruction and Reconstruction of Cultural Heritage in Eastern Mediterranean: From Cultural Genocide to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

Abstract

Since Arab Spring, Islamic terror organisations have spread violence of cataclysmic proportions against civilian lives, infrastructure and cultural heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean. Out of the 82 UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Arab region, 17 are on the List of World Heritage in Danger due to armed conflict. Prior to 2011, Syria displayed some of the most important cultural heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean with twelve sites inscribed on the World Heritage Tentative List and six sites included in the UNESCO World Heritage list: the Ancient City of Damascus (1979), the Ancient City of Bosra (1980), the Site of Palmyra (1980), the Ancient City of Aleppo (1986), Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Din (2006), and the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria or Dead Cities (2011). As of 2013 these six sites have been moved to the list of World Heritage in Danger. As the conflict has progressed since 2011, the six UNESCO World Heritage sites are now either destroyed or severely damaged. At the same time, it has not been only the UNESCO World Heritage sites that have been affected by the ongoing hostilities but other national and local Syrian heritage sites that are essential to the cultural identity of the Syrian people too (Cunliffe et al. 2014).