NEW DELHI: The UNESCO World Heritage Committee, meeting in New Delhi, India, has decided to inscribe the site ‘The Monastery of Saint Hilarion/Tell Umm Amer’ in Palestine simultaneously on the World Heritage List and on the List of World Heritage in Danger. This decision recognises both the site’s value and the need to protect it from danger.
In view of the threats to this heritage site posed by the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip, the World Heritage Committee used the emergency inscription procedure provided for in the World Heritage Convention, a UNESCO press release said.
In accordance with the terms of the Convention, its 195 States Parties are committed to avoid taking any deliberate measures likely to cause direct or indirect damage to this site, which is now inscribed on the World Heritage List, and to assist in its protection.
Inclusion on the List of World Heritage in Danger automatically opens the door to enhanced international technical and financial assistance mechanisms to guarantee the pro
tection of the property and, if necessary, to help facilitate its rehabilitation.
The monastery of Saint Hilarion/Tell Umm Amer, one of the oldest sites in the Middle East, was founded by Saint Hilarion and was home to the first monastic community in the Holy Land. Situated at the crossroads of the main routes of trade and exchange between Asia and Africa, it was a centre for religious, cultural and economic exchanges, illustrating the prosperity of desert monastic sites in the Byzantine period.
In December 2023, at its 18th session, UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict had already decided to grant ‘provisional enhanced protection’ to the monastery under the 1954 Hague Convention and its Second Protocol
Source: Emirates News Agency
