USCBS News

UN agency plans assessment after water recedes in affected areas

By Naveed Ahmad, Correspondent Published: 00:00 August 18, 2010 

Islamabad: With another massive deluge looming in the northern region of Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan, three of the country’s best known archaeological locations face a high risk of flooding.

Out of six World Heritage Sites in Pakistan, remains of 3rd millennium BC-old Mohenjo-Daro along the river Indus, the Buddhist monastic complex of Takht-i-Bahi in Swat region and 14th century remains of Thatta have been vulnerable to the ongoing “super floods” across Pakistan with southern Sindh province bearing the brunt of the floods.

Irina Bokova of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) is holding a special meeting in Paris today to discuss the ongoing situation.

Dr Warren Mellor, Unesco Director and Representative in Pakistan, confirmed that the high level meeting, chaired by Bokova and attended by Assistant Director General for Culture, will be focusing on mobilising additional personnel and technical resources for the calamity-hit country.

“Of the three high-risk sites, the ruins of the huge city of Mohenjo-Daro remain the most vulnerable due to soil conditions and the high water table in the area near the raging River Indus,” he told Gulf News in Islamabad.

Mohenjo-Daro was built entirely of unbaked brick in the 3rd millennium BC. “The acropolis, set on high embankments, the ramparts, and the lower town, which is laid out according to strict rules, provide evidence of an early system of town planning,” reads Unesco World Heritage Site’s brief about the ancient location.

Damage

The Unesco team is waiting to rush for assessment of damage as soon as the water recedes and the emergency phase is over, said the Unesco country representative.

Dr Mellor, however, said there was no substantive damage so far that Unesco is aware of. Local residents in Swat region report that heavy rains and flooding have caused some damage to the Buddhist monastic complex of Takht-i-Bahi (Throne of Origins), founded in the early first century.

Well-preserved

Though owing to its location on the crest of a high hill, it escaped successive invasions and remains exceptionally well-preserved, eye witnesses report some damage.

However, no experts are ready to comment or authenticate any such random assessment. The ruins of Sahr-i-Bahlol, a small fortified city dating from the same period, are also located in the same area.

Thatta, the southern city of Sindh, capital of three successive dynasties and later ruled by the Mughal emperors of Delhi, dates back from the 14th to the 18th century. The remains of the city and its necropolis provide a unique view of Sindh civilisation.

Unesco is concerned about the issue of culture and cultural livelihood, such as the artifacts, which “females prepare indoors that not only become sources of livelihood but also a way of preservation of the local heritage,” said Dr Mellor.

About month-long monsoon rains have so far affected 20 million people in Pakistan, costing over $4 billion (Dh14.68 billion) according to conservative estimates.

Food crisis looms

The United Nations warns that unless farmers in hard-hit Punjab and Sindh provinces manage to plant their winter crop of wheat in mid-September as normal, there might be food shortages in the region and the nation as a whole.

In the north, where the floods began nearly three weeks ago, fruit farmers are also hurting.

Last year, cherries, peaches and apricots in the Swat Valley rotted on the trees because of an army operation against Taliban militants. This year, roads and bridges have been washed away so crops cannot be carried to the rest of the country.
http://gulfnews.com/news/world/pakistan/floods-threaten-unesco-world-heritage-sites-1.669657
With input from AP

USCBS, the Smithsonian Institution, and the American Institute for Conservation are working to salvage and stabilize cultural heritage in Haiti.  We have opened the Haiti Cultural Recovery Center in Bourdon.  Keep up with USCBS in Haiti on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=63752022657&ref=ts

March 17, 2010

USCBS President Corine Wegener recently traveled to Port-au-Prince, Haiti with a U.S. delegation headed by Dr. Richard Kurin, Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution.  Click the link below for a PDF of her trip report (note this is a large document and may take a moment to download.)

http://www.uscbs.org/documents/uscbs_haiti_trip_report.pdf

Dear colleagues,

The international conference on “Archaeology in Conflict” will take place from the 6th to the 10th of April 2010 in the Vienna International Center/UNO-City in Vienna, Austria.

The conference is powered by the World Archaeological Congress (WAC) and the Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield (ANCBS) in cooperation with learned societies, academic research institutions and non-governmental organizations from all over the world. It is organized by Friedrich T. Schipper, University of Vienna, and Magnus T. Bernhardsson, University of Iceland & Williams College and hosted by Michael F. Pfeifer on behalf of the United Nations Youth and Student Association - Austria.

As the president of ANCBS I will personally deliver a talk about the Blue-Shield-network and also host a special session on cultural heritage protection.

I want to use the opportunity of this conference at a very distinct venue to schedule an ANCBS board meeting on the 6th of April at the UNO-City in Vienna.

Best regards,

Karl von Habsburg

President ANCBS

For more information, please visit the conference website at:

http://www.archaeologyinconflict.org/

Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield (ANCBS)
Postal address:
ANCBS Office,
Laan van Meerdervoort 70
2517 AN The Hague,
The Netherlands
E mail address: contact@ancbs.org
Web address: www.ancbs.org
Telephone: 00 31 (0)70-3466161
Fax: 00 31 (0)70-3467232
http://www.ancbs.org

UNESCO laid the foundation for an International Coordination Committee (ICC) for Haitian culture at a meeting on 16 February in Paris, opened by Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO. The meeting was chaired by Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassègue, Haiti’s Minister of Culture and Communication, and Françoise Rivière, the Organization’s Assistant Director-General for Culture.

Addressing the Minister, Ms Bokova said, “Our goal is to define the most effective means that will allow UNESCO to help prepare and implement a comprehensive programme for the benefit of Haitian culture, by drawing on the vast capacities of your country’s cultural community, which has already mobilized its efforts, and by calling on internationally renowned experts.”

The Committee, which will be similar to those established by UNESCO for Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iraq, will be officially created once it receives final approval from UNESCO’s Executive Board at its next session (30 March – 15 April).

Having recalled that the earthquake on 12 January killed 230,000 people and displaced another half-million, the Haitian Minister stressed that her country had also “just lost 100 years of architecture”. The purpose of the meeting, she continued, was to “set up this programme to inventory, safeguard and rehabilitate all the assets and remains linked to Haitian heritage.”

The 150 participants included representatives from UNESCO Member States and organizations including Interpol, Blue Shield, the World Customs Organization, the International Council of Museums (ICOM), International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), and museums including the Quai Branly (France) and the Smithsonian Institution (United States).

The first part of the meeting focused on assessing the damage the earthquake inflicted on tangible as well as intangible heritage and on cultural industries. The most urgent measures to be taken - at the same time as the creation of the CIC – were examined.

UNESCO will provide institutional support to the Haitian Ministry of Culture in order to establish with utmost urgency the inventory of sites and collections to be safeguarded. A fund to support artists and help them to continue their work is also being considered.

The Haitian delegation stressed that all of the emblematic buildings in Port-au-Prince had been damaged, particularly the cathedral, National Palace, Palace of Justice, Dessalines barracks, Alexandre Pétion school, Trinity, Saint Anne and Saint Joseph churches, justice and culture ministries and Saint-Louis de Gonzague school.

Jacmel was among other cities struck by the earthquake. On Haiti’s Tentative List of properties to be proposed for inscription on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, Jacmel has sustained extensive damage, particularly downtown.

In Leogane, close to the epicentre, damage is also considerable although the wooden colonial houses are relatively intact. The Institute for the Preservation of National Heritage (ISPAN) has not yet completed a detailed inventory of the town’s devastation.

In addition, numerous museums and art galleries, both public and private, libraries and national archives have been severely damaged and risk looting. UNESCO Director-General On 27 January, Irina Bokova wrote to Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, calling for safeguarding measures “to ensure, as far as possible, the immediate security of the sites containing these artefacts.”

Ms Bokova will go to Haiti on 9 March to meet with Port-au-Prince authorities to examine the implementation of UNESCO’s assistance, not only in culture but also in education and science.

17.02.2010
Source: UNESCOPRESS

To see the original story on the UNESCO website click here

January 29, 2010 

UNESCO is launching a campaign to protect Haiti’s moveable heritage, notably art collections in the country’s damaged museums, galleries and churches, from pillaging.

The Director-General of the Organization, Irina Bokova, on Wednesday wrote to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, asking for his support in preventing the dispersion of Haiti’s cultural heritage.

“I would be most grateful,” she wrote, “if you would request Mr John Holmes, your Special Envoy for Haiti and Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian affairs, as well as the relevant authorities in charge of the overall coordination of UN humanitarian support in Port-au-Prince – the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the Department of Peace Keeping Operations (DPKO) – to ensure, as far as possible, the immediate security of the sites containing these artefacts.”

Ms Bokova further asked Mr Ban to consider recommending that the Security Council adopt a resolution instituting a temporary ban on the trade or transfer of Haitian cultural property. The Director-General also suggested that institutions such as Interpol, the World Customs Organization (WCO) and others assist in the implementation of such a ban.

The Director-General is also seeking to mobilize the support of the whole international community and of art market and museum professionals in enforcing the ban. “It is particularly important,” she urged in her letter, “to verify the origin of cultural property that might be imported, exported and/or offered for sale, especially on the Internet.”

Referring to UNESCO’s previous experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Director-General said she intended to draw on national and international experts to orient and coordinate the assistance required to protect Haiti’s cultural heritage. “This heritage,” she insisted “is an invaluable source of identity and pride for the people on the island and will be essential to the success of their national reconstruction.”

It is important to prevent treasure hunters from rifling through the rubble of the numerous cultural landmarks that collapsed in the earthquake. Among them are the former Presidential Palace and Cathedral of Port-au-Prince, along with many edifices in Jacmel, the 17th century French colonial town Haiti planned to propose for inscription on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

The one property already inscribed on the List – the National History Park - Citadel, Sans Souci, Ramiers - with its royal palace and large fortress appears to have been spared by the quake. As were the country’s main museums and archives.

UNESCO has already helped salvage the exceptionally rich historical archives of George Corvington, the historian of Haiti. It is also contributing to attempts to rescue whatever panels or significant fragments remain of the remarkable painted murals that decorated the Episcopal Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Port-au-Prince.

29.01.2010  Click here to go to UNESCO site

This bulletin serves to inform the IFLA community about the current situation of libraries in Haïti and the many aspects of support that needs to be provided in the aftermath of the earthquake of 12 January 2010.

There are two IFLA members in Haiti: The Bibliothèque Nationale d’Haïti and the Fondation Connaissance et Liberté (FOKAL), both located in Port au Prince.

Damage

On 15 January 2010, the director of the national library reported: “the building of the National library is safe, the shelves and holdings have shifted…we will prevail … our building is the only one standing in the whole area. I have not yet been able to locate all the personnel,1/2 of them are safe we keep on checking. We will keep you posted.” Later reports made clear that the building may still be standing, but both the building and the collections and other materials are heavily damaged. 

The FOKAL headquarters which holds the Monique Calixte Library, one of the most used libraries of Port au Prince, is still standing. The gardens and parking lot in the back have been transformed into a refugee camp for the neighborhood and library employees. At the peak time 600 people took refuge there. All FOKAL employees are accounted for, but most of them have lost their homes.

Saint Martial College in which there is the Bibliothèque Haïtienne des Pères du Saint Esprit collapsed. This is the oldest library in Port au Prince. The curator Patrick Tardieu is alive and currently in Canada. The Library of Saint Louis de Gonzague is heavily damaged. Both those libraries gathered very old collections (from the 16th century). Several manuscripts were brought by the missionaries who came from Europe. Other have been collected in the Caribbeans (notably, publications on the Haitian revolutions, transcriptions of oral voodoo traditions, personal documents from the 18th centuries).

Most of the university buildings were completely destroyed. The Library of the University Quisqueya is heavily damaged.
(Source: Bibliothèques sans Frontières - BSF)

Statements

On 15 January 2010, IFLA President Ellen Tise issued a statement in parallel with a Blue Shield statement.  In addition to the English original, we have also made available translations in Arabic, Chinese, German, Russian and Spanish.

In addition, the CfI (Comité français IFLA) issued a statement of support on the same date.

Danielle Mincio is IFLA’s Haiti liaison for the Governing Board. 

Relief Initiatives

ABINIA (Association of Iber-American National Libraries), the National Library of the Dominican Republic, ACURIL (Association of Caribbean University, Research and Institutional Libraries) and the Graduate School of Information Sciences of the University of Puerto Rico are joining efforts to consider the protocol, the best strategies to assist libraries and archives. A joint inspection mission to Haiti, consisting of staff of the Dominican National Library, led by Mrs. Barbara Perez-Eguren was held on 21-22 January 2010.

Blue Shield initiatives include a special Haïti 2010 website requesting professional colleagues to register experts for hands-on support activities and consultancy. Additional news and correspondence will also be be made available through Facebook and Twitter. 

National Committees of the Blue Shield (US, France, Germany) are working with their partners over the next couple of weeks to establish a volunteer team to go to Haïti when circumstances allow and if needed.

Prince Claus Fund/CER (Cultural Emergency Response) has worked closely with IFLA on occasions like the Iraq war (2004) and the earthquake in Sichuan, China (2008). Their partner in Haiti is Fondation AfricAmerica.  CER is considering how to support the libraries sector in Haïti in its recovery efforts.

Next Steps

IFLA will give full support to relief initiatives for destroyed or damaged libraries in Haiti, focusing on collaboration with Blue Shield committees, ACURIL, ABINIA and the National Library of the Dominican Republic.

IFLA will promote Blue Shield initiatives to register experts and encourage IFLA members to provide expertise and consultancy where possible. Special attention will be paid to help for our two IFLA members in the country.

IFLA will seek collaboration with the CER of the Prince Claus Fund in Amsterdam, Netherlands in finding emergency assistance to libraries in Haïti .

IFLA has made the Stichting IFLA Fund available for any donations for Haïti libraries and will announce further information on how to donate.

IFLA will encourage all IFLA Officers to widely disseminate information to their constituencies on how to make expertise available, to consider volunteering for professional assistance and on how to make donations.

IFLA President Ellen Tise and President-elect Ingrid Parent are considering a visit to Haïti to meet with members; tentative dates are set for June 2010.

1 February 2010 http://www.ifla.org/en/news/news-and-developments-regarding-libraries-in-ha-ti

The Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield (ANCBS) wants to help the people of Haiti.
 
The earthquake in Haiti of 12th January has caused an enormous devastation. The amount of people that lost their lives is beyond imagination. At the moment basic humanitarian aid and the rebuilding of a functioning infrastructure is crucial.
 
However, as soon as the situation in Haiti has become more stable, Blue Shield wants to help to enable experts from all over the world to support their Haitian colleagues in assessing the damage to the cultural heritage and therefore to the identity of their country. Subsequently, Blue Shield wants to support recovery, restoration and repair measures necessary to rebuild libraries, archives, museums, monuments and sites. 
 
An important task of ANCBS is to coordinate information. ANCBS needs to know who and where the experts are. ANCBS therefore calls upon archivists, restorers, curators, librarians, architects and other experts to register online as a volunteer.
 
ANCBS wants to be able to bring experts in contact with those organizations that will send missions to Haiti, and make sure that volunteers will be informed about the situation in Haiti.
 
Please join Blue Shield to help your Haitian colleagues.
 
You may find the application form via: http://haiti2010.blueshield-international.org/.
 
For the statement of Blue Shield on the Haitian earthquake see: http://www.blueshield-international.org.
 
The actions of Blue Shield can also be followed on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=info&gid=247281734340 and Twitter: http://twitter.com/blueshieldcoop.
 
Please feel free to spread this message!
 
On behalf of ANCBS,
 
Karl von Habsburg, President
 

January 24, 2010

By MARC LACEY New York Times  

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Long before its ground started heaving, Haiti was already a byword for a broken place. Its leaders were considered kleptocrats; its people were jaw-droppingly poor. But there was still a pride that burst forth from the people here, linked both to the country’s heroic history and to the vibrant culture that united them and enabled them to endure.

Now many of the symbols of that proud side of Haiti lie in ruins. The National Palace, the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Supreme Court, all are in various states of collapse. Also devastated is the Episcopal Church’s Holy Trinity Cathedral, known for its murals of Bible stories with all black figures.

The earthquake on Jan. 12 has caused untold suffering and has taken tens of thousands of lives — more than 150,000 bodies have been buried, according to a preliminary and undetailed government assessment on Saturday. The pain of the cultural loss cannot compare.

But in stealing symbols that gave Haitians their hope and grandeur and reminders of a common purpose, the earthquake cast a different kind of shadow over their future.

“Of course, we should care about the people first,” said Axelle Liautaud, an art dealer who has been trying to save what is left of the murals. “But the reason why there is still a country, despite all our troubles, is our strong culture.”

The landscape of the capital was in tatters long before this month’s disaster, and many markers of the country’s past had been looted and destroyed during the political upheavals that racked the country in recent decades.

But Haiti has always clung to its history, the struggle to break the bonds of slavery and become the world’s first independent black republic, even if its governments have not done all they could to preserve that legacy.

Its vibrant arts scene celebrated the country’s creation, and its public buildings sought to capture the elegance of a past that Haitians held onto though political trauma, staggering violence and a string of natural disasters.

That alone has made the depth of the destruction of Haiti’s heritage hard to fully capture.

Teeluck Bhuwanee, the Unesco representative in Haiti, who has toured the city, is still having trouble fathoming what he saw. “You go around and you say, ‘Oh my God,’ and then you go further and you say it again,” he said. “We haven’t assessed all the damage at all the cultural sites, but we know it’s bad.”

The National Palace was the country’s principal symbol, Haiti’s White House, a grand building surrounded by iron gates, which dates back less than a century but was designed in a French Renaissance style. It was a building worthy of a country born after a slave revolt against its French colonial rulers.

The quake left the imposing structure shattered, its signature white domes collapsed, its Oval Office equivalent a total loss.

The palace had no permanent collection of artifacts, since leaders often stripped the place as they were chased out of office. But presidential aides said they were worried about irreplaceable artwork and sculptures that were on display in heavily damaged ceremonial rooms.

The saddest scenes were at the some of the places where Haitians go to pray, ornate churches filled with historical artifacts. At Holy Trinity Cathedral, the murals featuring Haitian renderings of biblical scenes on its interior walls now resemble an unfinished jigsaw puzzle.

The organ, which Haitians proudly say was one of the largest in the Caribbean, was smashed.

When Ms. Liautaud, the art dealer, heard that demolition crews were already lined up to clear the site, she scrambled to stop the work in hopes that bricks and shards of concrete containing portions of the murals could be pieced together again.

“We had so much despite the fact that we’re so poor,” Ms. Liautaud said. “Nothing that’s new can replace what’s old. Gone in a day. It’s all gone.”

Still, there were signs that at least some treasures could be resurrected. Experts think that the key collections at the country’s National Museum, built underground in a park facing the National Palace, probably survived.

At the National Archives, there was some structural damage, but important historical documents did not appear threatened, said Bernard Hadjadj, a special envoy for Unesco.

And a giant sculpture in front of the palace that features a man blowing a conch shell as he breaks the bonds of slavery, is surrounded by squatters but standing.

The art world also suffered heavy losses.

At an art center that played a crucial role in making Haitian paintings known around the world, the damage was severe.

Across the capital on Thursday, an artist raised his two bandaged hands in the air and let out a sound that was half sob, half roar.

More than his physical injuries, what seemed to pain the man, Paul Jude Camelot, a student at the École Nationale des Arts, was the damage to his latest creation, a painting of the universe that had had a clay sculpture representing life growing out of the center.

“That’s about all I had left,” he said.

Artists say they lost many of their colleagues in the quake, although nobody yet knows just how hard hit Haiti’s creative community was.

Among the truths bared by the quake was the reality that, after so many years of government dysfunction, private groups and individuals had become some of the most important protectors of the country’s treasures.

Many of the country’s most valuable historical texts, for instance, were owned by individuals, and preserved at their homes — rather than under glass or in wood-walled libraries as they might have been in Washington or other moneyed capitals.

So last week, as they have done so many times since their country’s latest tragedy struck, Haitians again stepped up to perform rescues themselves because other help was slow in coming.

Patrick Vilaire, a sculptor, met on Thursday night with others concerned about saving some of the country’s legacy from looters or further building collapses. They put at the top of their agenda preserving the book collections at two private homes, a cache of irreplaceable history, political and economic texts from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Asked how he could focus on old books after such a catastrophic event, Mr. Vilaire said, “The dead are dead, we know that. But if you don’t have the memory of the past, the rest of us can’t continue living.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/world/americas/24heritage.html?emc=eta1

Paris, 15.01.2010. - The Blue Shield expresses its sorrow and solidarity with the population of Haiti for the loss of lives and the destructions caused by the earthquake which occurred on 12th January.

Culture is a basic need, and cultural heritage a symbolic necessity that gives meaning to human lives connecting past, present and future. Cultural heritage is a reference full of values helping to restore a sense of normality and enabling people to move forward. Cultural Heritage is fundamental in rebuilding the identity, the dignity and the hope of the communities after a catastrophe.

The Blue Shield Mission is “to work to protect the world’s cultural heritage threatened by armed conflict, natural and man‐made disasters”. While it appreciates that the immediate priority is to find the missing, and to help the injured and homeless, it places the expertise and network of its member organisations at the disposal of their Haitian colleagues to support their work in assessing the damage to the cultural heritage of their countries including libraries, archives, museums and monuments and sites, and subsequent recovery, restoration and repair measures.

The Blue Shield calls on the international community, responsible authorities and local population to give the fullest possible support to the efforts, official and voluntary, underway to protect/rescue the rich and unique heritage of Haiti. The member organisations of the Blue Shield are currently liaising with Haitian colleagues, to obtain further information on both the situation in the area and on the possible needs and types of help required so as to mobilise our networks accordingly.

A more complete report on damages, needs and actions will be published subsequently, to facilitate coordination.

http://haiti2010.blueshield-international.org/