At the tip of July, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee added a site within the Gaza Strip – the Monastery of St. Hilarion, also often known as Tell Umm Amer – to each the list of “World Heritage” and the list of “World Heritage in Danger”.
The decision, taken through the forty sixth session of the World Heritage Committee in New Delhi, India, reflects the worth and wish for defense of the traditional monastery, based on UNESCO.
The committee added the monastery – one among the oldest sites within the Middle East based on UNESCO – to each lists under an expedited procedure set out within the World Heritage Convention. The procedure allows for the accelerated inscription of threatened sites.
“The ongoing conflict in Gaza, which could pose a threat to this archaeological site, is a situation in which this procedure is possible,” a UNESCO spokesperson told CNBC Travel.
UNESCO said it has not found any damage to the location thus far and is monitoring the location remotely using satellite imagery.
What this implies
As a results of the entries, UNESCO’s 196 “State Parties” – or countries which have World Heritage Convention UNESCO stated that comprehensive protection of the location – which it adopted in 1972 – must prevent direct or indirect damage and contribute to its protection.
Although Israel isn’t any longer a UNESCO member, it’s a contracting state and is subsequently certain by the provisions of the convention to guard the monastery and never cause harm to it, UNESCO told CNBC Travel.
Together with the United States, Israel left UNESCO on December 31, 2018 amid allegations of anti-Israel bias on the UN agency, which reached its peak after the organization admitted “the State of Palestine” as a member in 2011.
Under the Biden administration, the United States officially rejoined UNESCO in July 2023.
Israel has not rejoined UNESCO, but has sent delegations as non-voting observers to the World Heritage Committee's annual meetings, including a high-profile appearance on the 2023 meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Application of the emergency procedure
Simultaneous inscriptions on the UNESCO World Heritage List and the “Endangered” lists are quite common, a UNESCO spokesperson told CNBC.
Recent examples include the historic centre of the Ukrainian port city of Odessa and the archaeological sites of the previous Yemeni Kingdom of Sheba, each of which were added to the list in January 2023.
There are currently 1,123 sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List, but only 56 are on the List of Sites in Danger, which incorporates sites threatened by war, natural disasters, pollution, excessive tourism or other problems.
Sites on the At-Risk List can also receive technical and financial assistance for defense and restoration work.
Requests to make use of the emergency procedure for simultaneous registrations must come from a State Party, the UNESCO spokesman said.
“Palestine first placed the site on its provisional list in 2012,” the spokesman said, referring to a listing of websites that countries intend to nominate as World Heritage sites in the longer term. “In June 2024 [it] submitted the nomination of the 'Saint Hilarion/Tell Umm Amer Monastery' with the request to process it in an emergency.”
The admission was decided by consensus among the many committee members, the spokesman said.
The forty sixth session of the World Heritage Committee ended on Wednesday with 26 latest sites added to the UNESCO World Heritage Listand the small Micronesian island of Nauru became its 196th contracting state.
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