ART - NEW 06.12.23 18:33
Eleni Methodiou*

Mount Sinai is a Greek Orthodox monastic center with an uninterrupted spiritual life of 18 centuries. The Orthodox Monastery of Saint Catherine is located at the foot of Mount Horeb where, according to the Old Testament, Moses received the Tablets of the Law. A prominent place is occupied by the monastery's catholicon, a three-aisled basilica, from the time of Justinian (6th century) designed by the architect Stefanos of Ailisios, the origin of which is evidenced by an inscription engraved on the roof beams.

The Monastery Library is one of the oldest and most important libraries in the world. Among the relics, the collection of portable icons stands out, the richest numerically and most important worldwide.

In 2002, UNESCO included the Holy Monastery of Sinai with all its movable and immovable monuments, as well as its wider area, in the list of World Heritage Sites. Criterion VI, which refers to intangible values, was also attributed to the justification of the declaration, given that the Monastery has been a point of reference for believers of Christianity, Judaism and Islam throughout time.

The area of Agia Aikaterini with an area of 60,100 hectares includes the monastery and town of Agia Aikaterini, small settlements and Mount Horiv. Large-scale infrastructure works (hotels, mountain resorts, road networks) have already been done and others are in the process of being implemented with the aim of developing religious tourism without prior tourism and environmental impact studies, a visitor management plan as well as an impact study on visual aesthetics integrity of the Monastery.

Traditional settlements in the Bedouin villages are demolished and replaced with new concrete buildings that alter the landscape. During the works, excavations have been carried out without the results being known.

In addition, the area has been declared a nature reserve and uncontrolled development will disturb the balance of the ecosystem. Rare species of birds and plants are hosted there. The plants are rooted in rock formations more than 800 million years old, providing pasture and habitat for dozens of endangered animals, such as the Nubian ibex and the Sinai leopard.

The World Heritage Committee at its annual session (September 2023) retrospectively adopted without discussion the recommendation of the competent secretariat of UNESCO (World Heritage Centre) according to which the Egyptian authorities are invited to prepare the required studies and suspend work until an autopsy by UNESCO experts.

It is estimated that the monument should have already been registered in the "List of World Heritage in Danger" to preserve its visual - aesthetic integrity and the authenticity of the landscape.

Several of the 195 member states of the World Heritage Convention (Switzerland, Sweden, United States, Mexico, Palestine, Qatar, Czech Republic...) during the General Assembly (22-23/11/23) expressed the opinion that the credibility of the committee is questioned because it decides with political motivations and pressures against the evidence, while civil society is excluded from the decision-making processes.

Indicative is the commission's refusal to register de facto highly threatened sites on the "List of World Heritage in Danger", which meet the conditions of the Convention (Article 11.4), such as Venice, the fortress and cultural landscape of Diyarbakır, the volcanoes of Kamchatka, the historical zones of Istanbul (ongoing damage to Hagia Sophia is irreversible).

(Inscription on the "Endangered List" is wrongly considered a censure of the state with implications for tourism).

Also, out of a total of fifty new nominations for inscription on the World Heritage List, the committee approved the inscription of sixteen monuments with incomplete file data, without management plans and undocumented their outstanding universal value, ignoring the negative recommendations of institutionalized advisory organizations (ICOMOS, IUCN).

It is desirable that the committee (21 members), in which our country participates, renewed with nine new elected members (Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lebanon, S. Korea, Ukraine, Senegal, Jamaica, Turkey) will keep the spirit and letter of the World Heritage Convention.

*Archaeologist, former vice-president of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, member of the Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Chair for Antiquities - The opinion published here represent the author's opinion