Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs Mario Giro expressed great satisfaction with the unanimous adoption by the UNESCO executive committee of a ruling — presented by Italy — establishing “protected cultural areas”. The ruling’s aim is to protect cultural treasures in areas of conflict, particularly as regards the deliberate destruction of heritage sites, plundering and illegal trafficking in cultural treasures.
“Protecting cultural heritage and incorporating culture into conflict prevention and resolution is not only an culture emergency, but also a political and security imperative. Italy promoted the ruling because we believe that destruction of the past means hatred the future”, Under-Secretary Giro asserted, who was one of the advocates of the Italian initiative.
The need to create “protected cultural areas” emerged with urgency following the deliberate destruction of World Heritage Sites in Iraq and Syria. The historic town and mosque of Omayyadi in Aleppo in Syria could be the pilot area for negotiating the war’s “freezing”, an important step in facilitating resolution of the conflict as well as in building trust between the parties to it.
“Identities built on the past, give us also today a new world geography, a geopolitics of identities. Cultures can separate peoples but they can also unite by fostering pluralism. War is born first in the minds of men and it is in the minds of men that we can, by safeguarding historic those identities that are the fruit of layers of coexistence, contribute to building a more solid defence of peace”, Giro concluded.
