ICCROM-ICOMOS Guidance on Post-Disaster and post Conflict for Heritage Places of Cultural Significance and World Heritage Cultural Properties

Abstract

ICOMOS-ICCROM Joint Committee would like to thank and express its utmost gratitude to all ICOMOS and ICCROM experts, who commented on the draft versions of this work. Special thanks go to: Rohit Jigyasu; Toshiyuki Kono; Teresa Patricio; Nancy Pollock-Ellwand; Aparna Tandon; and Kai Weise.

Foreword

The scale, persistence and nature of destructive events of recent times have heightened awareness of the vulnerability of cultural inheritance – heritage places of significance and World Heritage properties across the world are under threat. The concern of the World Heritage Committee and that of other international bodies active in the field of cultural heritage protection is focused on the resulting challenges for recovery and possible reconstruction. These challenges have reinforced the commitment by international organisations and local populations to the common purpose of preserving and transmitting places of significant cultural value to future generations.

In 2015 the World Heritage Committee emphasised the importance of ‘a post-conflict strategy for reconstruction of damaged World Heritage’. The means to be considered would include technical assistance, capacity-building, and the exchange of good conservation and management practices. In 2016 the Committee tasked the Advisory Bodies with developing guidance on the reconstruction of such properties. A range of initiatives has emerged to address different aspects of the challenges posed. This Guidance document builds on the initiatives of ICOMOS and ICCROM and those of other bodies, and extends the collaboration of the ICOMOS–ICCROM Project ‘Analysis of Case Studies

in Recovery and Reconstruction’, published in 2021. In this regard, we want to express our sincere gratitude to all colleagues, including ICOMOS former President Toshiyuki Kono, who worked on these seminal initiatives and commented on the draft versions of this new work.

This document relates to issues of reconstruction within the processes of post-trauma recovery.
In full realisation of the many dimensions of trauma and recovery, the Guidance relates to the concerns of the cultural heritage field generally and specifically those of World Heritage properties. It acknowledges the particular challenges for those places where action is required to give back homes to people, and where heritage might be an agent of human-rights-based social and economic recovery. It asserts the need to integrate cultural heritage protection within the broad framework of post-trauma recovery actions and across the spectrum of issues encountered.

Where World Heritage properties are concerned, reconstruction brings into focus the attributes that convey Outstanding Universal Value (OUV). At the same time, it is expected that the framework set out in the document may have wider application and may assist damaged heritage places in identifying a wide spectrum of possibilities for their future recovery.

The experiences of the recent past have also drawn attention to the increasing threat to societies and their cultural heritage that is posed by climate change. It is hoped that this document may also stimulate continuing attention to the deep challenges posed to conventional approaches to the protection and transmission of this inheritance.

For ICOMOS,

Teresa Patricio, President Marie-Laure Lavenir, Director General

For ICCROM,

Webber Ndoro, Director General Zaki Aslan, ICCROM-Sharjah Director