Tehran, YJC. -- The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Committee has decided to remove the site of Bam, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, from the List of World Heritage in Danger.
The World Heritage Committee has decided that improvements in the management and conservation of the World Heritage site of Bam and its Cultural Landscape, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, meant the property could be removed from the List of World Heritage in Danger and remain on the World Heritage list.
Bam and its cultural landscape was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2004, shortly after it was struck by a major earthquake. Damage caused by the quake warranted the site’s simultaneous inscription on the List of Heritage in Danger. The Committee has now noted that remains of the desert citadel, which reached its apogee from the 7th to 11th centuries, had been sufficiently stabilized and its management was sound enough for the site to be declared safe.
The List of World Heritage in Danger is designed to inform the international community of conditions, such as armed conflicts and natural disasters, which threaten the very characteristics for which a property was inscribed on the World Heritage List, and to encourage corrective action. The listing of a site as World Heritage in Danger is not a sanction, but established to respond to specific conservation needs.
The World Heritage Committee opened its thirty-seventh session in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Monday. The 12-day session will be devoted to the inscription of new sites on the World Heritage List, but also to a review of the conservation of properties already on the List.
Particular attention will be paid to the World Heritage sites of Mali and of the Syrian Arab Republic.