UNESCO Moscow office closes down
Ukrainian experts see this decision as politically motivated and assure that the organization will continue to pay special attention to Crimean monuments
Allegedly due to financial difficulties, UNESCO is forced to reduce the number of their representative offices. The Moscow bureau is the latest victim of this austerity drive. According to Russian news agency RIA Novosti, Russia’s permanent representative to the international organization Eleonora Mitrofanova said that the closure of the office was caused precisely by financial difficulties. The Moscow office will stop functioning in the second half of 2015. According to Mitrofanova, UNESCO is considering the expansion of its International Institute of Information Technology, conveniently located in Moscow, as a replacement, and it is likely that director of the institute will have the powers that the representative of UNESCO used to enjoy.
This decision was preceded, however, by Russia’s letter to the international organization director general Irina Bokova, alleging that rights of Russian international news agency Russia Today’s reporters are violated in Ukraine and the EU. It might have somehow influenced the choice of office to be closed down to cut spending right now. Iryna Nikiforova, member of the official delegation of Ukraine at sessions of the organization, said that our country would benefit from it politically.
“In principle, the closure of the Moscow bureau does not endanger monuments in the slightest, as it will just reduce job count and spending. Still, it might be politically motivated, for why was Russia and not another country selected for it?” Nikiforova mused. “For Russian or Ukrainian monuments, such decision will not bring any momentous changes to the situation. The control will stay on. Ukraine has no UNESCO bureau, but its head office in Paris knows about the state of our monuments.”
The Crimean monuments’ situation, however, is a difficult issue. The official position of the international community is that Crimea and its monuments, including UNESCO World Heritage Site Chersonesus, are Ukrainian. Nonetheless, following the occupation, there is no way to control what is really going on there, and whether any threats to the existence of these sites have emerged. Neither representatives of the international body nor officials of our Ministry of Culture are allowed to access them.
Deputy minister of culture Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta confirmed for The Day that their communications with the reserve were still cut off. Meanwhile, Russia already filed a report on the Crimean sites with the UNESCO, which the international institution deemed to be illegitimate. Also, when similar situations arise in other countries, the organization never abandons heritage sites, but rather starts more thorough and closer monitoring effort to control their status. To get such access to Crimea, the October session of UNESCO adopted a resolution on monitoring the situation on the peninsula together with the UN and the OSCE. The question is whether the Russian side will allow them there.
