A Family in Baghdad

The UNESCO has decided to send a technical mission to the Old City of Jerusalem, inscribed on UNESCO's Wolrd Heritage List and on the World Heritage in Danger List, to a carry out a technical assessment of the works on the access to the Sacred Sanctuary (Al-Haram al-Sharif)...

Several fellow bloggers have posted this on their blogs, a plan to start a campaign of sending letters TODAY (the 3rd of March) to the UNESCO and ask them to assign a permanent chamber in the Old City to monitor the excavations and stop any attempts to damage the foundations of the Aqsa Mosque as an important part of world's heritage.

Following extensive consultations with all the parties concerned, the Director-General requested the mission to leave as soon as possible, probably early next week. It will be led by the Director of UNESCO's World Heritage Centre, Francesco Bandarin, and include the Director-General of the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), Mounir Bouchenaki; the President of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), Michael Petzel; and Véronique Dauge of the World Heritage Centre...

Below is a template of a letter that I strongly encourage You (You, reading this right now) to send on your behalf to the Director-General of UNESCO Mr Koichiro Matsuura (geneva (at) unesco (dot) org ), and Director of UNESCO office in Ramallah, Palestine - Mr. Bechir Lamine (b(dot)lamine (at) unesco (dot) org)).

Update: Mr. Bechir Lamine of the UNESCO office in Ramallah is currently on vacation, please contact Ms. Hala Tannous (h (dot) tannous (at) unesco (dot) org)


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Dear Sir,


We acknowledge and appreciate your great efforts to protect and save the priceless human heritage all over the world. Recently, we read that a group of professional investigators has been sent by the Unesco to Jerusalem to investigate the situation of Israeli excavations at the area of the sacred sanctuary of Al Masjed Al Aqsa, which we have a big concern that this may affect the foundations and lead to buildings collapse for one of the most important historic elements of this area and all over the world.

We do support your efforts and your investigation group and looking for assigning a permanent chamber near this area to monitor, announce and stop any trial to destroy our heritage either for political or religion reasons.

Thank you and best regards,

Sincerely,