ICCROM plans course on First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Conflict

ICCROM, 2 March 2010: From 24 – 26 February, an interdisciplinary group of professionals met at ICCROM to lay the groundwork for a pilot training project on first aid to cultural heritage in times of conflict.

The purpose of this course will be to equip professionals with knowledge and skills necessary for protecting cultural heritage in the event of an armed conflict, and to promote its recovery post-war. This new ICCROM initiative is based on a substantial body of research emphasizing that cultural heritage plays an important role in recovering from conflict situations and that it must be integrated into the planning of peacetime preparatory measures and post-conflict recovery strategies.

The planning meeting was attended by the representatives of UNESCO, ICOM, World Association for the Protection of Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage in Times of Conflict (WATCH), US National Committee of the Blue Shield (USCBS), Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro (ISCR), Italy, and Nationaal Archief, Netherlands, as well as members of ICCROM’s Collections and Sites units.

The course is scheduled for September 2010 and will be announced shortly.

In 2005, ICCROM also organized a forum on the topic: ‘Armed Conflict and Conservation: Promoting cultural heritage in post war recovery’.
Their publication on this topic is available online for free: http://www.iccrom.org/eng/02info_en/02_04pdf-pubs_en.shtml#conflict

http://www.iccrom.org/eng/news_en/2010_en/events_en/03_02meetingCHConflict_en.shtml

This intervention is very topical in relation to times of crisis more generally, for example recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, the collapse of a minaret in the World Heritage city of Meknes, Morocco, and floods at Machu Picchu in Peru.