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UAE to celebrate 'World Heritage Day' on April 18

The UAE has helped to preserve world heritage monuments and protect them from destruction.

The UAE will celebrate 'World Heritage Day' on April 18, supported by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO, to promote human heritage and the efforts of relevant organisations.

Since the era of the Founding Father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the UAE has been a leading model of protecting human heritage, in light of its strong belief in the protection of the cultural and historic identities of societies in a changing world.

Many Emirati initiatives support heritage locally and globally and the country is now linked to many world heritage treasures.

Locally, the UAE has been keen to turn its national heritage protection efforts into institutional work, based on strategies and plans with clear and specific objectives. Under this framework, many authorities and entities concerned with heritage protection were established, such as the Emirates Heritage Club, the Emirates Diving Association, the Popular Heritage Revival Society, the National Centre for Documentation and Research, and various tourism and culture departments and authorities.

The UAE has always sought to transform heritage, both tangible and intangible, into a sector that enjoys the development witnessed by all other sectors, as well as make it part of community identity.

The heritage festivals hosted by the country throughout the years, such as the Qasr Al Hosn Festival, the Abu Dhabi Hunting and Equestrian Exhibition, and the Sheikh Zayed Heritage Festival, clearly reflect the image of people of the UAE, especially following the country's success in attracting visitors from around the world.

Internationally, the UAE has played a pioneering role in protecting global heritage since it ratified the Convention concerning the Convention concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage in 1972.

The UAE has helped to preserve world heritage monuments and protect them from destruction, especially those excluded from world heritage lists. Among the most prominent of these landmarks is the Dome of the Rock, the Umar ibn Al-Khattab Mosque, (Mosque of Umar), the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Great Mosque of al-Nuri and its iconic leaning minaret, and the Clock Church and Al Tahira Church in the Iraqi city of Mosul, as well as the Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Theatre, formerly the Château de Fontainebleau's historic Imperial Theatre, the Museum of Islamic Art in Egypt, the McMillan Memorial Library, Nairobi, and Nuzul Al Salam in the Bahraini city of Muharraq.

The UAE expressed its view that these historic monuments are global human heritage while continuing its approach of tolerance and human coexistence. As the culmination of its pioneering efforts to safeguard the world heritage, the UAE obtained permanent membership as an observer status in the observer status on the Council of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, ICCROM.

This is the first occasion when the council has decided to make the UAE the second country in the world to obtain this position after Italy, where its headquarters is located. The move will enable the UAE to fully participate in various working groups formed by the council.

In 2016, the UAE organised the " International Conference on Safeguarding Endangered Cultural Heritage" in Abu Dhabi, as part of the "International Partnership Initiative," to protect the cultural heritage in areas of armed conflict.

The two-day conference resulted in the "Abu Dhabi Declaration," the first nucleus of a long-term project, which confirmed the commitment of participating countries to establish a fund to finance the protection of antiquities in conflict areas.

During the conference, which is the outcome of the joint efforts between the UAE and France, an initiative to establish an International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas was announced, to support the financing and restoration of cultural heritage and create an international network of safe havens to protect and preserve endangered cultural property.