The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) supported Ukraine's proposal to add the city of Odessa to the World Heritage List. The press service of the organisation reported this, further to the meeting in Paris, on 30 August, between the Director-General Audrey Azoulay and the Ukrainian Minister of Culture and Information Oleksandr Tkachenko
Experts have already been involved in the work on adding Odessa to the list, the report says. Thus, the inclusion of the Ukrainian city can be urgently considered by the member countries of the World Heritage Committee.
In parallel to these steps and in view of the new needs expressed by professionals in the field, Audrey Azoulay announced that UNESCO would strengthen its support to the city of Odessa by providing:
- Funding to repair the damage inflicted on the Odessa Museum of Fine Arts and the Odessa Museum of Modern Art since the beginning of the war, and to finance the hiring of additional staff dedicated to the protection of collections.
- Support for the digitization of at least 1,000 works of art in Odessa as well as the documentary collection of the Odessa State Archives, through the provision of appropriate hardware.
- New equipment to the Odessa Regional Administration for the in situ protection of cultural property: protective panels, sandbags, fire extinguishers, fireproof fabrics and gas masks will be delivered to the Department of Culture, Religion and Protection of Architectural Heritage. They will allow the recovery of public monuments and sculptures, which has been underway since the beginning of the war, to continue.
The Committee will also be recommended to include the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Kyiv and Lviv on the list of World Heritage in Danger.
