Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 12th April. UN Development Programme on Tuesday said that it has delivered a first shipment of twenty containers to archaeological museums in Hatay and Kahramanmaraş to help protect the irreplaceable cultural heritage of the earthquake-affected regions.
In a press release issued in New York, the agency it is a wider effort to support the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in protecting damaged artifacts, ahead of full restoration.
UNDP said that the deliveries took two months after major earthquakes caused the deaths of 50,000 people, displaced over 3.3 million, and caused an estimated $103.6 billion in damage.
UNDP Resident Representative Louisa Vinton said that “These containers are just the beginning,”
“UNDP is currently seeking funding to support a broader effort to rebuild thousands of damaged cultural heritage monuments, in all their splendid diversity.
“This is not just about physical objects, as crucial as they are to historical memory; it is also a contribution to reviving the region’s unique identity and human spirit.”
Ministry of Culture and Tourism listed over 8,000 historic structures across the eleven provinces, which have suffered the most due to the deadly quakes.
According to the TERRA survey conducted by the Government with support from the UN, the European Union and the World Bank, over 60 percent of all the structures that heritage experts were able to inspect suffered some level of damage.
Turkish actor and UNDP Goodwill Ambassador Mert Firat said “With so much of Antakya still in ruins, we need to protect and restore what we can of the enduring symbols of our city,”
Firat’s family comes from the ancient coastal city of Antakya, and, as a founder of the Needs Map civic organization, he has been active in earthquake response from the first day.
UNDP will be supplying handheld radios, drones, and tablets, which are needed to assess damage to artifacts, map damaged areas, take photographs for documentation and ensure the security of the artifacts while damage assessment studies continue.
The agency has supplied 25 containers to firefighters in Hatay, as a temporary replacement for the building in Antakya that housed the fire department and all its trucks; it collapsed completely during the earthquakes.
UNDP is supplying waste management equipment, tools, and commodities to help manage earthquake debris in a way that protects public health and the environment; and establishing mobile day-care centres for the elderly and persons with disabilities.
It is with women’s cooperatives to set up mobile kitchens supplied with local farm produce; and supporting efforts to scale up vocational training for earthquake survivors displaced to other regions.
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