Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday delivered an address at an international conference entitled “The Next 50: The Future of World Heritage in Challenging Times, Enhancing Resilience and Sustainability”. The conference is being held at the eponymous Delphi site in south-central Greece.
The two-day event is organized by the country’s culture ministry in association with UNESCO, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention’s adoption in 1972.
In an announcement, UNESCO stated that the aim of the conference is “…to present critical factors of our times that affect cultural and natural monuments, worldwide, and the potential of the World Heritage Convention to contribute to their identification and mitigation,” as well as to focus on climate change and sustainable tourism.
Mitsotakis inaugurated the conference in the presence of UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azouley.
The conference comes in the wake of a growing instrumentalization of world heritage monuments for political expediencies.
The most egregious example is the Erdogan regime’s July 2020 reconversion of the Hagia Sophia of Constantinople from a museum into a mosque.
UNESCO has pledged to send experts to inspect the greatest of all basilicas of eastern Christendom in order to determine whether the incomparable monument will be declared in a threatened state.