Funerals Of The First World War To The Genocide Site Of Rwanda Designated As A UNESCO World Heritage

World War I Cemetery in Verdun, Bevaux, France (Wikimedia Commons/Dudva)

JAKARTA - Funerals of the First World War in Belgium and France, genocide hills in Rwanda in 1994, and former torture centers in Argentina have been declared UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Prior to the four locations, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland and the Hiroshima Peace Monument in Japan were sites to commemorate the suffering of humanity included in the list of World Heritage closely monitored by the UN cultural body.

At a UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday, the member states agreed to add the site World War First and Rwanda to the list, after adding a torture monument in Argentina on Tuesday.

"The examination of these three files marks a new stage in the role of World Heritage on a global scale," UNESCO's briefing said.

Earlier, UNESCO's 2018 meeting had delayed the addition of a warning site to the list, as the agency debated whether the cultural heritage list was a relevant tool for memory sites linked to atrocities and conflict.

The agency said member states agreed in early 2023 that the sites could play a key role in peace building, which is UNESCO's main goal, that the committee would consider nominating the three sites.

The First World War site includes a series of military graves, battlefield graves and memorials linked between northern Belgium and eastern France.

A total of 139 locations trace the outline of the First World War Western Front and store the remains of tens of thousands of troops from various countries.

"At the time of war again in Europe, these sites are more than ever a form of request for peace," French Culture Minister Rima Abdul-Malak said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the location of genocide in Rwanda consists of a series of hills where in 1994 an estimated one million people Tutsi, then also Hutu and moderate Twa were killed by armed militias.

The Argentine ESMA Museum, the location of the former Naval Mechanical School in Buenos Aires, was a secret detention center during the 1976-1983 dictatorship, which was used to torture and kill opponents of the military regime, UNESCO said.