The World Heritage Committee has decided to inscribe 139 French, German, Belgian, American and Commonwealth funeral and memorial sites of the First World War, a preservation under the aegis of UNESCO justified by the linked Outstanding Universal Value.
image: Ministère De La Culture
… decision is the result of a project carried out for many years by local authorities and State services…
Ministère De La Culture writes:
… Initiated by France and Belgium in the early 2010s during the commemorations of the Centenary of the First World War, this inscription continues the work of transmitting the memory and history of the First World War, shared by many countries around the world. The inscription of these funerary sites and memorials of the First World War (Western Front) on the UNESCO World Heritage List is thus a unique opportunity for the transmission of national memory as well as for world memory.
Among the sites proposed, 45 are national necropolises in France and 6 are French military cemeteries in Belgium, under the responsibility of the Ministry of the Armed Forces. The other sites are memorials and monuments but are often military cemeteries, representing the different countries that participated in the First World War. Their inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage will make them better known to the general public, French and foreign, and will participate in the development of memorial tourism for the territories concerned.
This decision is the result of a project carried out for many years by local authorities and State services and the main structures responsible for the management and development of these sites for their support: the National Office of Combatants and War Victims for French National Necropolises; the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the American Battle Monuments Commission and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Quotations :
“After a first joint application that saw the Belfries of Belgium and France become a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999, this new transnational inscription of the memorial and funerary sites of the Great War is a major step in the work of memory and history that has been accomplished for more than a century in these damaged territories. At a time when war has returned to the gates of Europe, where major heritage destruction is being perpetrated by Russian forces in Ukraine, these places of remembrance embody more than ever a plea for peace, dialogue and culture.”
Rima Abdul Malak, Minister of Culture
“I welcome the inscription of these sites, which will allow them to be preserved and enhanced globally. Respect for the dead is a universally shared value: it responds to the inhumanity of war by restoring to the dead soldiers an identity, a place in history and a recognition of their sacrifice. To pass on our common history, that of the first great world conflict, is to ensure that history does not repeat itself and to unite the different nations around the preservation of peace.”
Patricia Miralles, Secretary of State to the Minister of the Armed Forces, in charge of Veterans Affairs and Memory
