WORLD MONUMENTS FUND PRESENTS: THE PAST, TODAY Preservation during conflict: Seizing the moment – to protect the Middle East’s cultural heritage

 

With Zaki Aslan, Director of ICCROM-ATHAR (Sharjah United Arab Emirates) with introduction by Tracey Crouch MP

Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR

Tuesday 16th May 2017, 7pm (doors open at 6.30pm)

If I wasn’t going to be abroad I’d love to go to this talk:

Conflict continues to dominate the Middle East and we regularly hear about cultural catastrophes as heritage is deliberately targeted by direct damage, looting, abandonment and neglect. Historic buildings, artistic treasures, monuments and neighbourhoods are repeatedly dismantled or destroyed. Alongside the physical destruction comes the loss of people to champion heritage and the expertise to conserve it.

As part of an important series of talks about heritage in conflict zones, World Monuments Fund Britain presents Zaki Aslan, Director of ICCROM-ATHAR – an international body that works to conserve cultural heritage in the Middle East. Zaki Aslan will provide significant insight into the state of heritage in the region and discuss how the world’s nations could help more with conservation. The evening will be introduced by Tracey Crouch, Minister for Sport, Tourism and Heritage at DCMS.

This event follows the 2015 inaugural talk World Monument Fund talk in which Professor Maamoun Abdulkarim, the Director-General of Syrian Antiquities, visited the UK for the first time. With the recent news that Palmyra in Syria has just been freed from ISIS for a second time, Maamoun Abdulkarim will join the lecture by video to give us the very latest position on his country’s besieged cultural heritage.

 

Zaki Aslan comments, World nations should unite for heritage protection as this is part of our human story. We are facing cultural cleansing in countries such as Iraq and Syria; images we’ve received are appalling. Destruction of heritage should be treated as a war crime by the international community at large. We need to plan well for the recovery phase guiding all parties involved in the reconstruction process.

World Monuments Fund is the leading independent charity devoted to saving the world’s most treasured places. Their programme of issue-based events brings speakers to London who are closest to the international heritage stories making the very latest news.

Photograph: © iStock RPMGas

Twitter @WorldMonuments, @JohnD_WMFB, #PreservationConflict Box Office Tickets are available for £20 (£15 for WMF members) from

www.wmf.org.uk/activities or 020 7251 8142