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Capital to host global meet to protect world heritage

Abu Dhabi - France will make the proposal during the Abu Dhabi conference

Delegates from around the world will gather in Abu Dhabi on Friday, seeking to build a global alliance to protect cultural heritage threatened by extremism and conflict.
France and the UAE are leading the initiative at a conference to establish an international partnership that could respond to dangers such as Daesh group terrorists rampaging through ancient sites in Iraq and Syria.
Appalling footage of Daesh using sledgehammers, bulldozers and explosives to erase ancient cultural sites - some of them millennia-old - that they deemed un-Islamic have spurred the calls for action.
The proposed partnership would include governments, public institutions, private groups, non-governmental organisations and experts.
His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces; French President Francois Hollande; Unesco director Irina Bokova and representatives of some 40 nations will attend the conference.
It comes "in response to the growing threats to some of the world's most important cultural resources arising from sustained periods of armed conflicts, acts of terrorism and illicit trafficking of cultural property," organisers said.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation says that 55 out of a total of 1,052 heritage sites around the world are now listed as World Heritage in Danger.
Round-table forums will focus on three themes - prevention, emergency protection and post-conflict rehabilitation.
The conference aims to create an international Geneva-based fund of $100 million, according to French authorities behind the initiative.
France and the UAE will be key contributors to the fund that would help cover the cost of transporting, safeguarding and restoring affected monuments - including using 3D reconstruction.
France will contribute $30 million to the fund, former culture minister Jack Lang, who heads the Paris-based Institut du Monde Arabe, said on Tuesday.
Another aim is to establish "refuge zones" around the globe for endangered works of art, a source close to organisers said.
"Just as there is a right for asylum (for refugees) ... we should also have asylum rights for artefacts," Hollande said in an address at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in September.
On November 1, he announced a safekeeping facility due to open in northern France in 2019, which in addition to housing the Louvre Museum's stored collection, could also be a refuge for endangered artworks.
The facility will have "another role, sadly linked to the events, dramas and tragedies which may unfold in the world, wherever works of art are in danger because terrorists decided to destroy them ... (especially) in Syria and Iraq," Hollande said.
He said France will make the proposal during the Abu Dhabi conference.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi, the opening of which is expected in 2017, "could also become a refuge zone" for endangered artefacts, a French official said.
How to safeguard works of arts would depend on the governments of the countries involved, but the UN Security Council could be drawn in to establish general guidelines based on international law, French officials say.
Mali President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Afghanistan's Ashraf Ghani are expected to be among the heads of state attending the two-day conference. Both their countries have seen cultural heritage destroyed by extremist Islamists.