Introduction

Abstract

This volume offers contributions for reflection on cooperation actions in fragile contexts, starting from the discussions that took place during the international conference “Cultural Heritage in Fragile Contexts—Development Cooperation in Afghanistan and Neighboring Countries”, held in Florence from the 10th to the 11th of November 2022. The event offered an opportunity for international discussion between researchers and international operators, as well as a chance to reflect on key relationships between the protection of cultural heritage and the generation of sustainable development. More specifically, focus was placed on the ways in which cultural protection actions can help mitigate social and economic fragilities in intervention areas, contributing to their sustainable development. The geographical focus of the conference, and of this volume, are the Middle and Central Asian areas, as these are areas where situations of fragility are recurrent, both in the socio-cultural sense—just think of the religious tensions between the Shiite and Sunni populations—as well as in political-military terms—the cases of Afghanistan and Syria are exemplary in this regard.

The authors have contributed to the present essay as follows: Mirella Loda, Sections 2 and 3; Paola Abenante, Section 1; Section 4 has been written by both authors.

1 Fragility

Fragility is indeed a complex and much debated concept in development approaches.¹ For the purposes of this volume, OECD's definition of fragility comes in handy to set the conceptual background for our reflections. OECD determines fragility through a multidimensional conceptual framework that takes into account not only the political and security dimensions of a context, but also the economic, societal, environmental dimensions and, more recently, the human dimension. At the same time, OECD understands fragility as a dynamic condition that varies in intensity and nature, according to the ability of states, systems and local communities to absorb and cope with the different types of risks to which they are exposed. A context is all the more fragile the less the preparedness, response and coping capacity of states, systems and communities (OECD 2022).

Such a framework marks a turning point with regard to previous ways of understanding fragility, for a number of reasons, in the perspective of developing a long-term and comprehensive approach to fragile contexts in line with the triple humanitarian-development-peace nexus (OECD 2022).² Suffice it here to highlight one relevant change introduced by the framework that is the overcoming of a state-centered understanding of fragility and the recognition of civil society institutions—system and community—beyond the state, as essential in preventing, absorbing and withstanding recurrent shocks and protracted crises. Indeed, in contexts of fragility, where state governance is weak, it is all the more necessary to promote a people-centered development approach that supports the coping capacities not only of formal institutions but also of society at large, by recognizing and reinforcing informal social institutions and community level forms of organization. Accordingly, the task of development cooperation is to support fragile contexts also by identifying and leveraging endogenous socio-cultural resources that are at the root of community life, such as locally established social practices, shared meanings and values, hence empowering local forms of civil society. Indeed, through such resources, communities and societies nurture cohesion and resilience, that is to say, the capacity to get together and to respond to difficulties.

The OECD Fragility Framework does not specify the role of culture in the development of societies’ coping capacities. Yet UNESCO and other expert bodies have consistently advocated the positive social and economic impacts that actions supporting culture and cultural heritage protection have on post-conflict recovery, crisis-response and in peacebuilding interventions. It seems useful for the purposes of this volume to bring forth an underlying understanding of how culture counts in confronting fragility and in laying the foundations of a people-centered development approach.

Building on the definition of culture in the UNESCO 2001 Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, one can conceive culture as both a social process of making meaning and a product of human expression: “a set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs” (UNESCO 2001). Culture can be understood as the lens through which individuals and communities come to know, interpret and express reality. Heritage, cultural imaginaries and memories are the matrix of communities’ shared meanings and ways of life, the bond that keeps communities together and grounds common aspirations for the future. Therefore, there is a need to recognize culture as a resource inherently belonging to people, which helps strengthen livelihoods and social cohesion, increasing communities’ capacity to absorb and to cope with difficulties and risks.

During the latest Mondiacult conference, which was held in Mexico in September 2022 and aimed at the promotion of culture within public policy as well as its integration as a stand-alone goal in the 2030 Agenda, UNESCO drafted a declaration defining culture as a global public good. Borrowing the words of Ottone Ramirez, UNESCO’s Assistant Director General for Culture, “Culture is what defines us. It is the common thread between our past, present and future. It is an inexhaustible and renewable resource, which adapts to changing contexts and which drives our capacity to imagine, create, innovate” (UNESCO 2022).³

The need to protect and leverage culture as a global public good is all the more important in fragile contexts, where resources are scarce and difficult to mobilize. Indeed, as a process of making meaning, culture is a resource that inherently belongs to people, communities and societies, and that may not be alienated. Moreover, as a product of human expression, culture is a universally available resource, never scarce. Finally, as a set of shared imaginaries and memories, linking the past to the present and the future, it is the tool through which communities build and continuously re-adapt their identity.

At the same time, as the contributions to this volume show, culture or, rather, cultures are complex, diverse and continuously changing. Indeed, processes of making meaning are context-specific, ever evolving and readapting when faced with change, never coherent but rather dependent on power relations and different interests among groups and individuals within the society. An analytical approach to contexts of cooperation interventions that is able to recognize and address such complexity is necessary in order to properly leverage the power of culture in sustainable development.

It is by bearing this in mind that we should read through the volume: conceptual tools such as memory, landscape, identity, diversity, livelihoods and living traditions are placed at the forefront, attesting to an understanding of culture—or rather cultures—and cultural heritage, in terms of continuously evolving, diverse and contextual expressions of human society, rather than in terms of unalterable artifacts. These concepts all highlight three dimensions of cultural heritage that are dealt with: heritage as contextual; heritage as relational and heritage as dynamic. Heritage is the contextual expression of a diversity of cultures and territories. Heritage is relational in as much as it exists when recognized as such by one or more parties, be it UNESCO or the local stakeholders, and it carries different nuances and values depending on who it is that is recognizing it. Heritage is dynamic because it carries the specific history of the community it belongs to and, at the same time, because it continuously renews itself in relation to contemporary understandings and future aspirations.The analytical approaches to such complex understanding of cultural heritage that emerge in the following chapters aim to contribute to the effort of translating policy recommendations on the role of culture into concrete development practices where cultural heritage is not just about monuments in need of protection but is, rather, a multifaceted resource belonging to the people.

2 Authenticity

What has led to such an understanding of cultural heritage as belonging to humankind and at the same time as highly intricate in the range of its manifestations, goes all the way back to the 1972 UNESCO Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (UNESCO 1972). Since then, the idea that there are forms of cultural and natural heritage not ascribable to a limited cultural sphere but of universal interest and value as a product of human expression, has taken shape. At the same time a complex system of actions, carried out by public and private bodies, aimed at the identification and protection of this heritage, has begun to unfold at an international scale.

As is well understood, the path that opened up following the 1972 Convention was not linear. The initial notion of universal, cultural or natural property has been subjected to much criticism over the years. In particular, its notable conformity to conceptual schemes specific to Western culture, and its inadequacy when it comes to representing heritages that are the expression of other cultural contexts, has been emphasized.

Indeed, the documents that initially laid out the guiding criteria for the protection of cultural heritage stressed the urgency in preserving cultural sites in their material authenticity and integrity. Material authenticity, however, is hard to hold onto in cultures whose architecture is built with mud bricks, as is the case in Central Asian areas; or where temples are traditionally built using wood and ritually burnt down at regular intervals to be reconstructed identically, as is the case in East Asian areas; or, where heritage consists largely of gardens, like in East Asian or Persian countries.

Therefore, from the 1990s onwards, UNESCO endeavored to correct the original approach to Cultural Heritage and to re-introduce discussions on that most crucial concept, authenticity. The most important forerunner of these revisions is the Nara Document on Authenticity issued in 1994 by ICOMOS/Japan. Its §11 reads: “All judgements about values attributed to cultural properties as well as the credibility of related information sources may differ from culture to culture, and even within the same culture. It is thus not possible to base judgements of values and authenticity on fixed criteria. On the contrary, the respect due to all cultures requires that heritage properties must be considered and judged within the cultural contexts to which they belong” (ICOMOS/Japan 1994).

ICOMOS’ Nara + 20 Conference On Heritage Practices, Cultural Values and the Concept of Authenticity, 2014, defined this revised concept of authenticity at greater length: It is “a culturally contingent quality associated with a heritage place that is perceived to communicate credibly cultural value, that is recognized as a meaningful expression of an evolving cultural expression, and/or evokes among individuals the social and emotional resonance of group identity” (UNESCO 2023).

The official documents issued by UNESCO itself continue along this line of thought. UNESCO’s latest Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (2023) phrase the problem of authenticity quite cautiously (§82): “Properties may be understood to meet the conditions of authenticity if their cultural values … are truthfully and credibly expressed” (ICOMOS 2014). Authenticity of cultural sites (and also integrity of natural sites) here becomes a problem of “expression”, which must at least be “credible”, if not “truthful”; in the final analysis, it becomes an issue of rhetorical self-representation.

A further attempt to address the initial Eurocentric nature of UNESCO’s approach consisted in the introduction of “Intangible Heritage”, achieved in 2003 under the directorate of Koïchiro Matsuura (UNESCO 2003). The concept of intangible heritage was aimed at overcoming the monument-oriented character of the World Heritage List and to integrate social communities, with their traditions, customs and crafts, into the realm of items deserving of not only protection but also recognition of their outstanding universal value. However, the distinction between tangible and intangible, as well as material and immaterial heritage has been criticized too, especially by the School of Critical Heritage Studies (Smith 2006) on the basis that heritage is not a thing but a usage, embedded in a specific historical and social context, and therefore necessarily intangible.

Finally, a “bottom-up” approach to the recognition of cultural heritage has gained ground, especially with the 2001 UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (UNESCO 2001) and the Faro Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society held by the European Council in 2005 (European Council 2005). Said approach aims at recognizing cultural diversity as humanity’s common cultural patrimony and cultural heritage as a product of societies/communities’ expression and aspirations. This understanding of heritage has widened the fragmentation and diversification of the concept itself, bringing it to encompass highly heterogeneous categories of assets.

Taken together, however, these critical reflections and relevant adjustments to official documents have allowed for the notion of heritage to adapt to different cultural contexts, shifting emphasis from the idea of an asset as a concrete product, to that of an asset as a product and a process of continuous (re)-signification in relation to the cultural context of origin. Today, UNESCO World Heritage counts as many as 1199 sites spread over 168 countries, and around 500 items are included on the intangible heritage list, while a highly articulated protocol defines the criteria for World Heritage recognition and even the actions necessary to ensure protection of such assets.

The constant tension between the universal approach underlying the World Heritage List and the extraordinary multiplicity of existing cultural forms and creations on a global scale is also reflected at the procedural level. The requirement for sites to have a management plan—a protection and management system that ensures the maintenance and improvement of the Outstanding Universal Value through a coordinated apparatus of legislative, regulatory and managerial measures, using participatory methods—represents an interesting balancing point between the attempt to formulate a universal protocol for protective actions on the one hand, and the need to adapt them to the highly fluid peculiarities of the local contexts in which sites are located, on the other. In this regard, it is telling that no single model has been furnished for the preparation of the Management Plan.⁴

Overall, therefore, the multiplicity of cultural heritage contexts and—in some ways—their irreducibility, is highlighted. But, at the same time, a transcultural (universal) focus on the importance and protection of cultural heritage can now be thought to have been established. Also, there is at this point an awareness of the fact that a nexus exists between heritage on the one hand and other important territorial context dimensions on the other; especially a nexus between heritage protection, economic development and sustainability.

3 Development and Sustainability

The idea that “heritage is more than just monuments” (ICOMOS 2021, p. 12) has been firmly established in the UNESCO documents as well as its advisory bodies over the last decade.⁵ Considerations on the connection between heritage preservation and the socio-economic development of the community involved were stoked by the problems posed by safeguarding cultural heritage in urban contexts and fixed in the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach of 2011: “The historic urban landscape approach is aimed at preserving the quality of the human environment, enhancing the productive and sustainable use of urban spaces, while recognizing their dynamic character, and promoting social and functional diversity. It integrates the goals of urban heritage conservation and those of social and economic development. It is rooted in a balanced and sustainable relationship between the urban and natural environment, between the needs of present and future generations and the legacy from the past” (UNESCO 2011, §11). Special attention is paid to “preserving the quality of the human environment (…) while recognizing [its] dynamic character and promoting social and functional diversity”.

The road was paved by ICOMOS’ Paris Declaration on heritage as a driver of development, adopted on the 1st of December 2011,⁶ and featuring the slogan “No Past, No Future” (ICOMOS 2011). The debates over the following decade showed that the opposite is also true, meaning that there cannot be a past without a debate about the future. The main scope of the World Heritage Convention, of course, lies in the safeguarding of the past cultural or natural heritage; in the reflections regarding the management of such heritage sites, however, development requirements will necessarily come up.

The management of heritage sites is inevitably a management of change. The joint ICCROM, ICOMOS, IUCN and UNESCO handbook on Managing World Heritage (2013) assumes the broader concept of heritage management introduced by the Paris Declaration: “The expanding concept of heritage and the increased importance given to how heritage places relate to their surroundings mark an important shift in thinking. Heritage places cannot be protected in isolation or as museum pieces, isolated from land-use planning considerations. Nor can they be separated from development activities, isolated from social changes that are occurring, or separated from the concerns of the communities” (ICCROM, ICOMOS, IUCN, UNESCO 2013, p. 12). ICCROM here expresses a clear understanding that heritage preservation policies must be part and parcel of the general territorial planning tools of a protected territory, which cannot neglect the development necessities of the local community. The authors further state that heritage can no longer be “confined to the role of passive conservation of the past but should instead provide the tools and framework to help shape, delineate and drive the development of tomorrow’s societies” (ICCROM, ICOMOS, IUCN, UNESCO 2013, p. 19). Consequently, the authors conclude, the management of heritage sites “would no longer be left in the hands of heritage experts but discussed among many counterparts” (ICCROM, ICOMOS, IUCN, UNESCO 2013, p. 21). We will deal more extensively with this point in the final chapter.

A further step in viewing heritage protection as a key component of territorial development was taken with the Sustainable Development Goals of the Agenda 2030 adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015. UNESCO integrated the concept of sustainability as part of its Policy for the Integration of a Sustainable Development Perspective into the Processes of the World Heritage Convention (WHC Resolution 20 GA 13, 2015) (UNESCO 2015). With reference to UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention (§5), the Operational Guidelines and the 2002 Budapest Declaration, the World Heritage Committee demands that “States Parties should recognize, by appropriate means, that World Heritage conservation and management strategies that incorporate a sustainable development perspective embrace not only the protection of the Outstanding Universal Value, but also the wellbeing of present and future generations” (#6) and therefore “States Parties should integrate conservation and management approaches for World Heritage properties within their larger regional planning frameworks” (#10).

The sustainability concept established in the UN Agenda 2030 will remain a benchmark in all further considerations of the nexus between heritage preservation and local development.⁷

It is precisely the understanding of such a nexus that calls into question the role of development cooperation activities, in their greater or lesser capacity, when it comes to planning heritage preservation actions that are.

• (a) based on an adequate reading of the socio-cultural context and the dynamics of interaction between its various components, and

• (b) capable of orienting the context toward objectives of social balance and sustainable development.

Therefore, the general commitment, which the Cooperative system is called upon, is extremely complex.

The complexity and subtlety of the task increase exponentially in territorial realities that are characterized by fragility, whether of a social, environmental or warlike nature, and where development cooperation action is forced to intervene in conditions of urgency, danger, tension or social conflict.

How is one to proceed in such cases? What objectives should be pursued? What forms of heritage should be protected as a priority? How could the concept of authenticity be adapted? These and other questions arise alongside interventions in fragile realities, albeit often in an implicit form.

4 The Structure of the Book

The contributions offered in the following pages have been the result of the issues and cases discussed at the conference.

A large part of the volume, as well as of the conference, focused on Afghanistan, whose cultural heritage the international community has been very committed to protecting. For Afghanistan, in fact, the incorporation of heritage protection policies into a development perspective appears particularly urgent, as was highlighted at the 2016 Rome Conference Cultural Heritage & Development Initiatives, which was organized by the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, World Bank and UNESCO (2016).⁸

After the abrupt interruption of all field activities that followed the establishment of the Emirate in August 2021, the Florentine event provided the first opportunity to take stock of the situation, but also, and above all, to discuss the risks associated with the new context, whether a possible re-engagement in the region is advisable, and the ways to go about it.

The first part of the volume brings together a series of studies on the cultural heritage protection and enhancement projects carried out in the Bamiyan Valley, one of the two UNESCO sites in Afghanistan upon which, since the fall of the first Taliban regime and its inclusion on the World Heritage List in danger (2003), the attention of international cooperation and donor countries has been largely focused: mainly Italy, France, Germany, Japan and South Korea.

The first chapter offers a broad overview of the acquisitions made over two decades of international engagement in Bamiyan, by an author (Mounir Bouchenaki) who has been devoted from the very start to the protection of that most precious heritage site. The next contribution offers a critical illustration of the various hypotheses of reconstruction of the Buddha statues advanced over the years by international experts, also highlighting the very distant heritage preservation outlooks that co-exist in the field (Hinz). Colombo and Panunzio focus on the cultural heritage found in the caves of Bamiyan’s central cliff and lateral valleys, consisting mainly of the remains of Buddhist-era frescoes, providing an up-to-date assessment of the state of conservation two years after the interruption of cooperation interventions. The next two chapters deal with the sensitive issue of the protection of the cultural landscape, which was explicitly branded an object of protection in the 2003 nomination, yet remained on the margins of safeguarding actions for a long time. The first chapter (Toubekis) outlines the studies conducted between 2003 and 2013 on behalf of UNESCO by the University of Aachen/Germany, helmed by the late Michael Jansen, for the recognition and protection of Bamiyan’s cultural landscape. The second chapter (Loda, Di Benedetto) describes the specific measures proposed by urban planning tools—and in particular, by the Strategic Master Plan developed in 2018 by the University of Florence on behalf of the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation—for the protection of the Bamiyan cultural landscape, in an otherwise weak regulatory context regarding this aspect of heritage. In addition to providing details on the issues particular to Bamiyan’s cultural landscape, the two chapters offer reflections on different approaches to the protection of the cultural landscape, both in practical and conceptual terms.

The second part of the volume is dedicated to contextualizing heritage protection within the broader framework of socio-cultural and local development dynamics, with examples that help develop guidelines for interventions in similar realities. Based on the Historic Urban Landscape approach (HUL), the first chapter illustrates the gradual emergence of integrated and potentially holistic approaches to heritage preservation in UNESCO practices (Francini, Rochozkina). This is followed by four chapters that illustrate the intertwining of preservation practices and other relevant local processes, and which use empirically collected primary data from within Bamiyan, in the period immediately prior to the Taliban’s seizure of power. Hinz and Loda discuss ethnic tensions arising from the constraints introduced to safeguard cultural heritage, and the degree to which local populations have accepted these constraints; Loda, Amiri and Narayanan analyze the spillover of land titling policies in Zargaran (Bamiyan) and highlight their ability to facilitate participatory urban upgrading processes, even in contexts of prestigious cultural heritage; Loda, Di Benedetto and Potestà outline the pivotal elements for redevelopment policies aimed at urban districts subject to protection restrictions; Tartaglia and Ahmadzai examine the strategic role that accessibility to educational facilities plays, as part of the above-mentioned redevelopment policies. They then develop a specific method aimed at assessing the degree of educational sites’ spatial accessibility. The second part of the volume concludes with a contribution focusing on the interaction between heritage preservation measures and urban development in Aleppo/Syria (Pucci). The third part of the book expands on how the conceptual tools described in the previous sections, inform operational approaches to the safeguarding of cultural heritage in fragile contexts by some of the main international actors in the field of international cooperation. Among these actors are UNESCO, ICCROM, Aliph, as well as the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS), which technically and financially supported both the Conference in Florence and the present publication.

The first three chapters by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation describe the Agency’s approach to culture as a tool of prosperity. That is to say, of improving livelihoods. The introductory chapter (Abenante-Strinati) describes an array of projects carried out by AICS in the Region focused on in this volume, to exemplify how, from a methodological and operational viewpoint, Italian actions are designed to generate economic activity and participation for and through culture. This approach places people, their own tools and objectives, at the center of cooperation practices, promoting ownership and inclusivity, and a form of cooperation that is seen as mutual learning and interaction between partners. The two following contributions re-employ this approach in Lebanon (Calia-Piermattei) and Jordan (Blasi), by focusing on the main initiatives carried out in the cultural sector and highlighting the impact of such initiatives on the tourism-driven economy of the two countries. The contributions continue by describing the main operational approaches of AICS’ initiatives, such as the support to and upskilling of local professionals’ capacities, the on-the-job training of unskilled workers, and the building of wide partnerships with both public institutions and civil society.

The contribution on the Shobak castle in Jordan (Nucciotti, Bala’awi, Sassu, Puppio, Candido) goes further into detail in describing the technical approach to site risk assessment, developed in one of the ongoing AICS funded projects in Lebanon. The authors explain how such an approach has been shared with local experts to allow priorities for long-term management to be established by the Department of Antiquities of Jordan.

The following paper (Khawam-Jigyasu) expands on ICCROM’s approach to heritage education by focusing on the ICCROM Heritage Recovery Program in Mosul/Iraq, implemented in the framework of the UNESCO Revive the Spirit of Mosul initiative. The authors detail the stages of a capacity-building program on post-conflict heritage recovery that has proven valuable in improving livelihoods and empowering youth in the recovery of identity and of a sense of belonging through heritage. Operational approaches such as participatory need assessment, diversification of beneficiaries and intergenerational knowledge transfer have proven to be key success factors.

Hayashi’s contribution describes the part that UNESCO has played in Afghanistan, from the 1950s to today. Beyond detailing UNESCO’s actions, the contribution highlights the importance of memorialization processes that underpin the inscription of the Bamiyan Valley in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The contribution reminds the reader that reconstruction and restauration interventions will necessarily enter into a dialogue with memory. No matter how technically advanced, such interventions must consider the specific history of the site as well as the meaning and values communities give to the site, thus the connected living tradition.

The paper by Urtziverea describes the work of the International alliance for the protection of heritage in conflict area (Aliph) and its specific engagement in Iraq in heritage post-conflict reconstruction. The Alliance’s actions, although carried out in emergency, are seen as efforts to foster collaboration and partnership with Iraqi institutions.

The last contribution of this section offers an up-to-date examination of international legislation in the field of cultural heritage protection (Greppi). The fourth part of the volume offers two contributions aimed at inferring methodological pointers for future interventions in the field of cultural heritage protection from the cases examined in the volume, both in the sphere of analysis and research (Loda) and in that of cooperation practices (Cabasino).