Reconstruction across the Middle East: UNESCO and the rise of heritage INGOs

ABSTRACTThe twenty-first century has seen near constant crises and conflicts across the Middle East, many of which have had a devastating impact on the region’s rich cultural heritage. Confronted by this reality, UNESCO – the world’s foremost body designed to promote the protection of heritage – has struggled to meaningfully address site destruction and has been hamstrung by its own institutional inertia. The vacuum created by UNESCO’s failures has given rise to a hybrid heritage landscape of multilateral agencies, INGOs, state bodies and local organisations which seek to emulate, improve on or radically re-imagine the work that UNESCO was designed to lead. In turn, this has created burgeoning business opportunities and a thriving consultancy culture for INGOs, often with little public oversight, accountability or effective monitoring. This paper critically examines the rise of these heritage INGOs and their efforts in the Middle East, bringing into question their efficacy and legitimacy by drawing on results from original surveys conducted in both Mosul and Aleppo. The results indicate that these heritage INGOs largely fail to adequately engage locals in their programmes to protect and restore heritage and that respondents would prefer to see domestic control over the future of their past.