https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9087-3611
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ABSTRACT
The twenty-first century has seen near constant crises and conflicts across the Middle East, many of which have had a devastating impact on the region’s rich cultural heritage. Confronted by this reality, UNESCO – the world’s foremost body designed to promote the protection of heritage – has struggled to meaningfully address site destruction and has been hamstrung by its own institutional inertia. The vacuum created by UNESCO’s failures has given rise to a hybrid heritage landscape of multilateral agencies, INGOs, state bodies and local organisations which seek to emulate, improve on or radically re-imagine the work that UNESCO was designed to lead. In turn, this has created burgeoning business opportunities and a thriving consultancy culture for INGOs, often with little public oversight, accountability or effective monitoring. This paper critically examines the rise of these heritage INGOs and their efforts in the Middle East, bringing into question their efficacy and legitimacy by drawing on results from original surveys conducted in both Mosul and Aleppo. The results indicate that these heritage INGOs largely fail to adequately engage locals in their programmes to protect and restore heritage and that respondents would prefer to see domestic control over the future of their past.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The Arab Barometer is a nonpartisan research network that provides insight into the social, political, and economic attitudes and values of ordinary citizens across the Arab world. They have been conducting high quality and reliable public opinion surveys in the Middle East and North Africa since 2006 and are the longest-standing and the largest repository of publicly available data on the views of men and women in the MENA region.
2 The surveys were conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the Deakin University Research Ethics Committee, Melbourne, Australia.
3 The Iraqi respondents were predominantly young people, with 57% aged between 18 and 29 years, 42% between 30 and 59 years and only 1% over 60 years. The survey had a slight gender bias (53% male). A slim majority of respondents had completed high school (52%), with 11% completing subsequent education, only 8% had no formal education and a further 36% had only completed elementary school. In terms of identity, 99% considered their national identity to be Iraqi (1% identified as Iraqi-Kurdish), 94% described their ethnic identity as Arab (2% Kurdish, 2% Turkmen, 3% other) and 98% identified their religious identity as Muslim (1% other).
4 The Syrian respondents were relatively evenly spread across several age groups, from 18–29 (26%), 30–39 (31%), 40–49 (25%), 50–59 (11%) and over 60 (2%). The survey had gender parity (50% male and female). A slim majority of respondents had completed high school (51%) with 16% completing subsequent education; only 4% had no formal education and a further 18% had only completed elementary school. In terms of identity, 97% considered their national identity to be Syrian (3% identified as Syrian-Kurdish), 89% described their ethnic identity as Arab (6% Kurdish, 3% Armenian / Assyrian or other Christian group and 1% Turkmen); and 93% identified their religious identity as Muslim (5% Christian, 1% Yezidi).
6 I. Bokova, speech at the Conférence internationale de Haut Niveau sur le Patrimoine et la Diversité culturelle en péril en Iraq et en Syrie, UNESCO, December 3, 2014, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002310/231070M.pdf, accessed March 20, 2017.
7 Speech by Irina Bokova at the opening of the Expert Meeting on Syrian Heritage, Berlin, June 2, 2016, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002449/244994E.pdf, accessed March 28, 2017.
8 Speech by Irina Bokova ‘Cultural Heritage: Extremism’s New Target,’ at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, July 1, 2015, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002336/233661E.pdf, accessed March 23, 2017.
9 See https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000383115, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000244092, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000378866.
11 Heritage warfare is understood as the centrality of cultural heritage in conflicts, military strategy and accountability, see https://global.upenn.edu/global-initiatives/news/sandra-day-oconnor-college-law-asu-penn-global-and-university-copenhagen.
13 https://www.iccrom.org/news/course-participants-offer-hope-mosul%E2%80%99s-future and https://www.iccrom.org/news/iccrom-kickstarts-heritage-recovery-programme-mosul-iraq.
23 Report of the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights (3 February 2016) A/HRC/31/59.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Lynn Meskell
Lynn Meskell is a Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She is Richard D. Green Professor in the Department of Anthropology, School of Arts & Sciences, Professor in the Department of Historic Preservation at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, and Curator in the Middle East Section of the Penn Museum. She is also AD White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.
Benjamin Isakhan
Benjamin Isakhan is a Professor of International Politics and Founding Director of Polis, a research network for Politics and International Relations in the Alfred Deakin Institute at Deakin University, Australia. He is also an Adjunct Senior Research Associate, Department of Politics and International Relations, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg.