The UNESCO committee, currently meeting in Busan, South Korea, has added several sites to its World Heritage List. According to reports, Greece’s tallest mountain, Mount Olympus, was added along with the five WWII Normandy landing beaches—Omaha, Utah, Sword, Juno, and Gold.
The committee also added six new sites to UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger, with three of them being added on an emergency basis. Here is a rundown of the six additions:
Boma-Badingilo Migratory Landscape, South Sudan (emergency basis): Part of the vast East African savanna, it hosts the largest known terrestrial mammal migration in the world, and its biodiversity makes it an ecosystem of global significance. It also has important cultural and linguistic diversity, with several ethnic groups who have been custodians for centuries or millennia.
Mount Amel Castles, Lebanon (emergency basis): The five castles that make up this site show the evolution of defensive systems in the region from the Crusades and Islamic dynasties through to the end of the 19th century. The site is currently suffering heavy damage.
Sebastia, State of Palestine (emergency basis): This site preserves the archaeological record of the successive occupation of the site by different civilizations from at least the 9th century BCE, with later architectural remains dating to the Crusader era, as well as the Ayyubid/Mamluk and Ottoman periods.
Ancient City of Tauric Chersonese and its Chora, Ukraine: Regular monitoring of the state of conservation of the site using satellite images have revealed a significant deterioration in the authenticity and integrity of the property, resulting from new construction and large-scale archaeological excavations.
Historic Inner City of Paramaribo, Suriname: Several construction projects have been carried out without an assessment of their impact on the heritage or consideration of the committee’s recommendations. The new National Assembly hall and the Yogh parking garage detract from the property’s historic urban landscape and result in a significant loss of its authenticity and integrity.
Tyre, Lebanon: The Committee expressed its deep concern over the ongoing hostilities in Lebanon, which continue to pose a threat to the property, and determined that the conditions necessary to ensure the conservation and protection of the property’s Outstanding Universal Value are no longer met.
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