Keywords

At this particular time in history, as the fabric of civilized human society seems increasingly under attack by forces that deny the very existence of a shared heritage, forces that strike at the very of our sense of community, I am convinced that the World Heritage holds out a contrary and positive vision of human society and human future. (Train, 2002, 3)

Saying this in the year after the blowing up of the Buddha statues in the Bamiyan Valley on 11 March 2001 and the terrorist attack on September 2001, Russel E. Train, founder of the WWF and one of the pathfinders of the Convention (Cameron & Rössler, 2013, 289), implored the reconciling power of World Heritage. At the conference celebrating its 30th anniversary in Venice on 16 November 2002, Train (2002, 3) underlined that the purpose of the World Heritage concept is more than simply helping to assure the protection and conservation of unique natural and cultural sites; just from the beginning, it aims to “instil in the world’s peoples a new sense of our kinship with one another as part of a single, global community”.

The World Heritage Programme thus contributes to the constitutional mandate of UNESCO and its central mission

that a peace based exclusively upon the political and economic arrangements of governments would not be a peace which could secure the unanimous, lasting and sincere support of the peoples of the world, and that the peace must therefore be founded, if it is not to fail, upon the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind. (UNESCO, 1945, preamble)

This task remained the key challenge in the first two decades of the twenty-first century demanding “UNESCO’s response to the rise of violent extremism” (Bokova, 2021).

Despite the destruction of the giant Buddha statues by the Taliban, the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley were inscribed as a serial site on the World Heritage List with reference to all criteria relevant for cultural heritage in 2003; the justification of criteria (vi) refers to the intangible attributes highlighting that “… due to their symbolic values, the monuments have suffered at different times of their existence, including the deliberate destruction in 2001, which shook the whole world” (UNESCO, 2003a). In the decision document (UNESCO, 2003b), a reconstruction of the Buddha statues in the colossal niches in the Bamiyan Cliff is not envisaged, though an anastylosis, as indicated in Article 15 of the Venice Charter, is at least considered a reasonable way to protect the remaining fragments in the evaluation report (ICOMOS, 2003). In the following years, extensive safeguard measures were implemented with international support, keeping open both options (Petzet, 2009; Emmerling & Petzet, 2016).

Two years later, the World Heritage Committee had to decide upon the inscription of the Old Bridge in Mostar, which was completely destroyed on command of the Croatian defence council during the conflicts in the Balkans on 9 November 1993. Criteria (iv) and criteria (vi) were listed as relevant in the evaluation report, but the committee only recognised the latter stating that:

With the “renaissance” of the Old Bridge and its surroundings, the symbolic power and meaning of the City of Mostar – as an exceptional and universal symbol of coexistence of communities from diverse cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds – has been reinforced and strengthened, underlining the unlimited efforts of human solidarity for peace and powerful cooperation in the face of overwhelming catastrophes. (UNESCO, 2005a)

Accordingly, the statement of authenticity is based on the attribute that “…the reconstruction of the fabric of the bridge should be seen as the background to the restoration of the intangible dimensions of this property” (UNESCO, 2005a). The Operational Guidelines revised in the same year were supplemented by the provision that “In relation to authenticity, the reconstruction of archaeological remains or historic buildings or districts is justifiable only in exceptional circumstances. Reconstruction is acceptable only on the basis of complete and detailed documentation and to no extent on conjecture” (UNESCO, 2005b).

Thus, the committee followed up on the justification of the inscription of the Historic Centre of Warsaw. This early inscription documents that from the beginning reconstruction was not only a question of the “…verification of conservation doctrines and practices” but also about “…the inner strength and determination of the nation, which brought about the reconstruction of the heritage on a unique scale in the history of the world” (UNESCO, n.d.-a). The evaluation report of ICOMOS expressly points out that “… the criterion of authenticity may not be applied in its strict sense”; however, the conditions are met because the Historic Centre of Warsaw represents “…a finished concept of post-war reconstruction” realized from 1945 to 1965 (ICOMOS, 1980). Thus, even in the first phase of the implementation of the World Heritage Convention, post-war recovery was recognised as a value conveying the outstanding universal value of a site.

In 2012, the 40th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention was celebrated on the occasion of the 36th session of the committee held in Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation, from 24 June to 6 July 2012. The meeting was overshadowed by shocking news from Mali. In May and June 2012, members of the Islamic militant organization Ansar Dine had destroyed the Sidi Mahmud Ben Amar mausoleum in Timbuktu and announced further attacks on other mausoleums. Therefore, the committee included the site in the List of World Heritage in Danger on 28 June 2012. Ansar Dine reacted immediately by destroying the mausoleums of Sidi Mahmud, Sidi Moctar and Alpha Moya in mockery of UNESCO in the days that followed.

The World Heritage Committee condemned the destruction of World Heritage sites in Mali and decided on measures to help the country protect its heritage (UNESCO, 2012). However, this time, it was not just a stirring appeal, the international community reacted. Heritage protection became an integrated part of the peacekeeping mandate of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA, n.d.). Three years after their destruction by extremists, the Timbuktu mausoleums were nearly restored through the extraordinary work carried out by local craftsmen and with international support. On the sidelines of the 39th session of the World Heritage Committee meeting in Bonn (Germany 2015), on behalf of UNESCO’s Director-General, Irina Bokova, a UNESCO medal was presented to Alassane Hasseye, head of the Timbuktu masons, in recognition of work carried out by his guild (UNESCO, 2015). One year later, the International Criminal Court (ICC) recognised the destruction in Timbuktu as a war crime and sentenced the rebel leader Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi to nine years in prison. Al Mahdi pleaded guilty.

Other World Heritage sites have not been able to recover as fast from destruction resulting from armed conflicts in the last decade. Due to political reasons and the security situation, international assistance on site under the UNESCO umbrella could not be organized so far for the six Syrian World Heritage sites or the Old City of Sana’a and the Old City of Shibam in Yemen, which were inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2013 and 2015, respectively. Moreover, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Daesh) extremists who publicly beheaded the Syrian archaeologist and guardian of Palmyra, Dr. Khaled al-Asaad, have not yet been brought to justice.

In the face of all this deliberate damage to cultural heritage, particularly in the Middle East, the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, launched the Global Coalition, Unite for Heritage, during the 39th World Heritage Committee meeting in Germany. Well received by the international community, the #Unite4Heritage campaign has since become a widely expanding global movement devoted to culture’s unifying force and the mobilization of the global audience, with young people as its core demographic (https://www.unite4heritage.org/). It expands on UNESCO’s efforts to coordinate technical work among the different specialized agencies and institutions by facilitating experts meetings, for example, on the safeguarding of Syria’s heritage in Berlin 2016 (UNESCO, 2016) and flagship initiatives like “Revive the Spirit of Mosul” for the recovery of one of Iraq’s iconic cities (UNESCO, n.d.-b). In addition, the campaign is designed to support endeavours of Member States, e.g. the resolution 69/281 of 28 May 2015 “Saving the cultural heritage of Iraq” jointly presented by Germany and Iraq to the Plenary Meeting of the UN General Assembly and cosponsored by a total of 91 Member States. The unanimously adopted resolution condemns the barbaric acts of destruction and looting of the cultural heritage of Iraq carried out by ISIL, deplores the rising incidence of intentional attacks against the cultural heritage of countries affected by armed conflicts and emphasizes that heritage has an important role to play in the efforts of national reconciliation and reconstruction.

The United Nations Security Council Resolutions 2199 (2015) and 2347(2017) condemning the destruction of cultural heritage and the United Nations General Assembly resolution 69/281 on Saving the Cultural Heritage of Iraq mark the mobilization of the international community. The protection of cultural heritage has become one of the priorities at the highest political level, confirmed again by the first meeting devoted to culture in the history of the G20 on July 29 and 30, 2021 (https://www.g20.org).

In their Rome Declaration, the G20 Ministers of Culture state the following:

Convinced that cooperation and dialogue are vital in the fight against violent extremism we express our strongest condemnation of the deliberate destruction of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, wherever it takes place, as it irreversibly affects the identities of the communities, damages human rights and community identity, erasing legacies of the past and damaging social cohesion. We support initiatives taken to protect endangered cultural heritage and restore destroyed or damaged cultural heritage. (G20 Research Group, 2021)

Moreover, they express their conviction “…that multilateral efforts, with UNESCO at the core, are crucial…” (G20 Research Group, 2021).

Without the World Heritage Convention, which is primarily recognised through the World Heritage List, the protection and preservation of cultural heritage would not have achieved such international recognition. In the last 50 years, standards have been developed and set the course of the implementation of the Convention, which have shaped the doctrines and practice of monument preservation far beyond the preservation of World Heritage sites. The initially very Western approaches and concepts for the preservation of cultural properties have been revised. One reason for this is certainly that interdisciplinary discourses in the World Heritage community are never purely technical but always also political. In an exemplary way, the attitude to and evaluation of reconstructions demonstrates the shift from the Charter of Venice (1964), which actually only allows reconstruction if there are enough parts that can be reassembled, over the Nara Document on Authenticity (1994) underlining the significance of intangible values, to the Warsaw Recommendation on Recovery and Reconstruction of Cultural Heritage (2018) addressing post-trauma challenges.

The reconstruction of cultural properties after conflicts and crises is more than the rebuilding and restoration of material and substance; ideally, it is a recovery process regaining social cohesion and cultural identity, which leads to reconciliation in post-trauma societies. If this succeeds, reconstruction is a value and an attribute for authenticity, as recently confirmed by the decision of the World Heritage Committee to recognise the ShUM Sites of Speyer, Worms and Mainz. The property was listed as a “pioneering ensemble of Jewish diasporic community centres … from the High Middle Ages” bearing witness to “… profound developments in the formation phase of the continuing cultural tradition …” and “… cultural achievements of Ashkenazic Jews…” (UNESCO, 2021) in Central Europe north of the Alps in 2021. The history of the communities also includes that they have been repeatedly jeopardised by pogroms over the centuries. During the period of National Socialism between 1933 and 1945, Jewish life was almost exterminated in Germany. In November 1938, when all synagogues in the “Deutsche Reich” went up in flames, the one in Worms was also destroyed. The “post-trauma reconstructions” as noted with regard to authenticity in the site’s statement of outstanding value have not just “… been carried out respectfully and …retained the heritage significance of the monuments” between 1957 and 1961; they mark the beginning of the long journey for peace and reconciliation after the Shoah.