The 45th UNESCO World Heritage Committee, chaired by Russia and initially scheduled for June 19 - 30 in the city of Kazan, has been postponed. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this meeting, in which the inscription of the Talayotic Menorca candidacy on the World Heritage List should be decided, has been put on hold pending future outcomes. On March 15 and 16, the Executive Council of the World Heritage Committee met and, despite member countries having considered various alternatives and solutions, the meeting ended without an agreement.
Faced with the stagnation and worsening of the war in Ukraine, the representatives of forty-six member countries of the World Heritage Convention, including Spain, signed an open letter in early April stating that they wouldn't attend the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee if it was held in Russia, and that they wouldn’t attend if it was held in another country but under the Russian presidency.
Lastly, on April 19, the permanent delegate ambassador of Russia to UNESCO, Alexander Kuznetsov, in his capacity as current president of the Executive Council of the World Heritage Committee, sent a letter to all the members of this council notifying the postponement of the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee, initially scheduled for June 19-30. In this communication, he didn’t specify any deadline or alternative solution to celebrate the Committee, and indicated that if he didn’t receive a response before April 21 at 1:00 p.m., he would understand that everyone agreed with this decision.
Considering this situation, all the member states of the European Union have unanimously decided not to respond to this letter, considering that for now the postponement of the 45th session of the Committee is the most pragmatic solution.
The Vice President and Conseller of Cultural Affairs of the Consell Insular de Menorca, Miquel Àngel Maria, considers that this decision, although foreseeable, is still painful, first and foremost because of the suffering that the victims of the war have to endure. And secondly, because it means that the inscription of Talayotic Menorca on the World Heritage List will have to keep waiting.
It must be said that this news doesn’t affect the evaluation process of the Menorcan candidacy by ICOMOS, which is already underway and in its final stages. In accordance with the Practical Guidelines for the Application of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, a mandatory reference guide, the final report from ICOMOS must be sent six weeks before the start of the session of the World Heritage Committee.
This means that if the call for Kazan had been maintained, the final report on the Talayotic Menorca candidacy and the recommendation for registration on UNESCO would have been known at the beginning of the second week of May. Now, with the postponement of the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee, it is most likely that ICOMOS, following the established procedures, will wait to send the final report until a new date has been set for this decisive meeting.
In this regard, Miquel Àngel Maria indicated that the candidacy’s work is complete and that all that remained was to wait for the aforementioned final report from ICOMOS. With the prudence with which he has expressed himself whenever asked about Talayotic Menorca’s possibilities, Maria is still satisfied with the work done, maintaining the positive feelings about the final outcome expressed after the evaluation meetings held with ICOMOS.
Maria concludes that a new call for the 45th session would be the best news to culminate the long road of Talayotic Menorca’s candidacy, with the hope that it would also mean the return of peace, freedom and stability for Ukraine and the world.