Gridlock: UNESCO, global conflict and failed ambitions

Abstract

Deliberations over World Heritage designation increasingly provide a platform for new political alliances, international tensions and challenges to global cooperation. How has this situation arisen in UNESCO, an organization dedicated to fostering peace, tolerance and international co-operation? Since we now face an ever more interconnected world and our problems are more global they require solutions that traverse nation-states and require them to work effectively together. Yet any decision to act or protect, especially during conflict, inevitably leads to multi-polarity, fragmentation and impasse. Drawing on Hale and Held’s theory of gridlock that underscores the failures of multilateralism across the UN generally, I suggest that World Heritage provides a salient example. Since UNESCO relies on the consent and participation of sovereign nations, their decisions often mirror the very lowest level of ambition to prevail. Case studies are drawn from recent conflict over World Heritage sites in Mali, Syria and Crimea.

Keywords:

• UNESCO
• World Heritage
• conflict
• multilateralism
• Russia
• Mali

Acknowledgements

This article owes much to shared fieldwork and ongoing discussions with Claudia Liuzza around the politics of UNESCO World Heritage. I am also grateful to Patty Gerstenblith, Charlotte Joy and Gertjan Plets who kindly shared their work and thoughts. Lotte Hedeager deserves special thanks as well as two anonymous readers for their suggestions and guidance.

Notes

1 http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/772 (consulted 28 May 2014).

2 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18657463 (consulted 23 May 2014).

3 http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2013/sc10987.doc.htm (consulted 23 May 2014).

4 http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2014/sc11292.doc.htm (consulted 23 May 2014).

5 Quoted in Fasulo (2009, 7).

6 http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/987 (consulted 28 May 2014).

7 World Heritage properties in Syria consist of the Ancient City of Damascus, Ancient City of Bosra, Palmyra, the Ancient City of Aleppo, Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Saalah El-Din and the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria.

8 While this is a direct quote, it is worth noting that it is not UNESCO, but rather the intergovernmental World Heritage Committee itself that made this request to Syria.

9 The Syrian Arab Republic became a party to the Hague Convention in 1958, and all its neighboring countries of Turkey (1965), Lebanon (1960), Jordan (1957), Israel (1957) and Iraq (1967) have also joined the Convention. Moreover, the six neighboring nations are parties to the 1972 World Heritage Convention (Gerstenblith 2014).

10 http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1108 (consulted 28 May 2014).

11 http://en.unesco.org/news/director-general-condemns-killing-ukrainian-journalist-vyacheslav-veremyi-and-calls-safety then later see Russian response http://rt.com/news/155000-russian-media-press-protection/ (consulted 28 May 2014).

12 http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002272/227294e.pdf (consulted 28 May 2014).

13 http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1411 (consulted 28 May 2014).

14 http://praguepost.com/eu-news/37854-full-text-of-putin-s-speech-on-crimea#ixzz3IR7NqHwx (consulted 8 November 2014).

15 http://www.mid.ru/bdomp/brp_4.nsf/e78a48070f128a7b43256999005bcbb3/32938ab93ffbd20e44257cba0053e202!OpenDocument (consulted 23 May 2014).

16 http://www.unesco.ru/en/?module=news&action=view&id=562 (consulted 28 May 2014).

17 http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/turchynov-dismisses-ambassadors-to-foreign-states-2–348,149.html

18 See WHC-11/35.COM/9A (consulted 23 May 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lynn Meskell

Lynn Meskell is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Archaeology Center at Stanford University. She received her BA (Hons) First Class and the University Medal from the University of Sydney in 1994. For her PhD in Archaeology (1994–7), she was awarded the Kings College scholarship from Cambridge University. She held the Salvesen Junior Research Fellowship at New College, Oxford University (1997–9) before accepting a position at Columbia University in New York City where she became Professor in 2005. From that time onwards she has been Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University and Honorary Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. In 1999 she founded the Journal of Social Archaeology for which she serves as Editor. She has been awarded grants and fellowships including from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Australian Research Council, the American Academy in Rome, the School of American Research, Oxford University and Deakin University. Some of her recent books and edited collections include The Nature of Culture: The New South Africa (2011, Blackwell) and Global Heritage: A Reader (2015, Blackwell). Her new research focuses on the role of UNESCO in terms of heritage rights, sovereignty and international politics