Unesco, Azerbaijan: the perfect victim.

Wereceive and publish this article in response to the editorial by the editor of Finestre Sull’Arte, Federico Giannini, entitled UNESCO World Heritage Site, Criticism rains down this year. Is it a system that needs to be changed? published last August 4 in our magazine. The author of the article, Daniel Pommier, is a researcher in sociology of political phenomena at the Department of Communication and Social Research at La Sapienza University of Rome.

View of Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. Ph. Credit Ministry of Tourism and Culture of Azerbaijan.

Often in Italy we read, in our historical centers or in some valuable natural areas (from the center of Rome to Venice, from the Val di Noto to the Val dOrcia) the indication Unesco sites or World Heritage Sites. LUnesco is an organization within the United Nations, which promotes and protects the cultural heritage of peoples, from the artistic, archaeological, environmental, even intangible point of view related to traditions, language, music, cuisine, sports and all manifestations that in a deeper sense express the cultural pluralism of humanity. LUnesco is the body that implements the World Heritage Convention approved in 1972 and ratified by virtually all member countries of the United Nations.

The organization, like FAO, WTO, and IMF, has its own autonomous governance and mode of operation. Unesco recognition is a prestigious goal of states and local communities, which brings fame and also has important material benefits, for example in tourism. Obtaining the Unesco seal is not easy and commits recipient states to a strict policy of protecting the area or tradition that enters the World Heritage List. One can also exit the list due to poor conservation policy, and many sites are classified as endangered. The World Heritage Committee, a kind of political governing body of Unesco, meets periodically to identify new sites for inclusion in the global list. The committee’s last session was held in July in Baku, capital of the Republic ofAzerbaijan, and saw the inclusion of twenty-nine new sites: from the Prosecco Hills in the Veneto region, to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Waterfall House, to the city of Sheki in Azerbaijan itself: an incredible architectural ensemble of houses and palaces, built between the 18th and 19th centuries, where Eastern and Western styles are combined with a proximity unique in the world. After the approval of the list, controversy starts.

The target is Azerbaijan, with the usual array of platitudes, double standards, unfounded accusations toward one of the few countries of Islamic culture that is deeply secular, multicultural, stable in institutions and economy, as well as in the Caucasian geopolitical dimension. The accusations follow the usual script of fake news and unverifiable news: destruction of sites of Armenian culture in Azerbaijani territory, pressure to have its sites included in the UNESCO list and other accusations answered, in Italy, with factual data lambassador Mammad Ahmadzada. The reasons for such doggedness? It is a country that bothers: to some lobbies, to those who do not want a small independent state to break established balances for example in energy policies, to those who draw the idea of a monocultural and Christian West that rejects pluralism, secularism, encounter and dialogue with the other. From this point of view, Azerbaijan, which also prefers to invest in culture and not only in the military (despite the fact that 20 percent of its territory was illegally invaded by Armenia twenty-five years ago and remains occupied) is a perfect victim. To defend it is not only to represent historical truth, but to fight for a model of development, international relations, and cultural policies against those who are only capable of raising walls and fences and would have us alien to diversity.

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