The recent UNESCO mission to Lebanon to assess the state of the country´s cultural heritage sites received worldwide media attention, including articles in national newspapers in the UK and elsewhere.

The mission, led by Mounir Bouchenaki, Director-General of ICCROM, called for urgent measures to clean up the oil spill along the shoreline of Byblos, a World Heritage Site.

Though noting the limited extent of war damage to cultural heritage, the mission also highlighted the need for remedial action at several sites, including Tyre where frescoes in a Roman tomb had been damaged by bomb vibrations, and Baalbek where temples had suffered in similar fashion.

The Director-General stressed the need for  long-term measures to preserve Lebanon´s cultural heritage: setting up photogrammetric equipment to monitor fissures in several sites; helping Lebanon´s Department of Antiquities to develop its human resources to improve the safeguarding and management of cultural heritage sites; drawing up of a risk map identifying cultural properties with serious structural weaknesses; and undertaking measures to consolidate the most seriously threatened structures.

Mission members

• Mounir Bouchenaki, Director-General of ICCROM (International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property);
• Alain Bouineau, Honorary Professor at the Jean Monnet University of Saint Etienne, France;
• Giorgio Croci, Professor at La Sapienza University, Rome, Italy;
• Véronique Dauge, Head of the Arab States Unit at UNESCO´s World Heritage Centre;
• Joseph Kreidi, Culture Project Officer at UNESCO´s Beirut Office;
• Tamara Teneishivili, Cultural Programme Specialist at UNESCO´s Beirut Office.

updated on: 21 May, 2008