UNESCO approved this Wednesday the inclusion of the historic center of Odesa, a Ukrainian port city, on its list of World Heritage in danger, thereby acquiring a special status of protection against damage from the Russian invasion.
Also on the list were the Rachid Karami International Fair, designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in Lebanon, and the main monuments of the ancient kingdom of Sheba in Yemen.
The decision was adopted by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, meeting this Wednesday in Paris in an extraordinary session in which the three candidacies were examined by an urgent procedure applied to sites of exceptional interest that are considered threatened.
In the case of the port city of Odessa, on the shores of the Black Sea, the urgent inclusion of its historic center on the World Heritage list was objected to by the Russian delegation, which criticized an alleged lack of scientific rigor in the content of the proposal. .
In his opinion, it lacked objectivity and contained fragments "copied" from the Wikipedia portal and tourism blogs.
Of the 21 members of the committee, only Russia voted against, 6 members voted in favor and 14 opted to abstain, enough numbers to adopt the measure by majority.
"Odessa, a free city, a world city, a legendary port that has left its mark on cinema, literature and the arts, thus comes under the reinforced protection of the international community," said Audrey Azoulay, the agency's director general. of the UN for Education, Science and Culture (Unesco), in a statement issued immediately after the decision.
Regarding the Rachid Karameh International Fair, located in the Lebanese city of Tripoli, the Committee used the emergency procedure to inscribe the site as World Heritage due to its alarming state of conservation, the lack of financial resources for its care and the latent risk of development projects that could undermine the integrity of the complex.
Located in northern Lebanon, this construction was conceived by the Brazilian architect Óscar Niemeyer on a 70-hectare plot located between the historic center of Tripoli and the port of Al Mina. It was the flagship project of the modernization policy undertaken by Lebanon in the 1960s.
The main building is made up of a huge boomerang-shaped pavilion 750 meters long and 70 meters wide in which various countries could freely set up their exhibition spaces.
The monuments of the ancient kingdom of Sheba, meanwhile, comprise seven archaeological sites that attest to its architectural, aesthetic, and technological achievements from the first millennium BC until the arrival of Islam.
Its registration under the emergency procedure was due to threats of destruction related to the ongoing conflict in Yemen.
The List of World Heritage in Danger includes cultural properties that are considered threatened by serious dangers, such as the threat of disappearance due to accelerated deterioration, natural catastrophes, armed conflicts, abandonment or projects of great urban works, among others.
Registration through this urgent route allows the World Heritage Committee to immediately allocate assistance to the threatened property, from the World Heritage Fund.
In legal terms, it implies the establishment of an extended protection zone under the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage of 1972, to which both Ukraine and Russia are signatories.
The States parties must, in this sense, collaborate in the protection of the places included in the list and are obliged not to adopt any deliberate measure that could directly or indirectly damage this heritage.
