Across the Asia-Pacific region, cultural heritage continues to be overlooked in preparing for and recovering from disasters and armed conflict. As a result, cultural heritage sites, monuments, movable heritage, collections and museums remain vulnerable and at risk. With few exceptions, even World Heritage properties lack adequate policies, protocols and resources in planning or responding to disasters and armed conflict. Without such frameworks in place, sites and objects are subject to direct damage, looting and illicit trafficking.
There is a need to ensure that appropriate measures for preparing for, responding to and recovering from disaster and armed conflict situations are reflected in cultural heritage policies and practices. While the World Heritage Committee has already flagged the importance of including disaster risk reduction measures as part the sustainable management of sites, from an operational point of view, much remains to be done in terms of enhancing baseline information, strengthening institutions, building capacity and mobilizing resources at all stages from preparedness to recovery. Similarly, the resilience of other immovable and movable cultural heritage also needs to be strengthened in the context of disaster risk reduction.
The UNESCO conference will build upon the momentum of the Third UN Disaster Risk Reduction Conference in Sendai, Japan in early 2015. The specific aims of the conference are as follows:
Over 20 country delegations from around the Asia-Pacific region are invited to take part, with each delegation including senior representatives of the cultural heritage agency and the disaster management agency.