ICOMOS Statement on Lviv and Odesa Attacks
ICOMOS, as Advisory Body to the World Heritage Committee, joins the Director General of UNESCO in expressing its strongest condemnation at recent repeated attacks on World Heritage areas in Ukraine–Lviv and Odesa–destroying lives and damaging significant cultural sites.
Sunday 23 July morning’s barrage of missiles on Odesa, inscribed on the World Heritage List (and also the World Heritage in Danger List in January 2023), severely damaged, among other, the Transfiguration Cathedral in the city’s World Heritage zone.
ICOMOS reminds the Russian Federation of its commitments as a State Party to the 1972 World Heritage Convention and the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and of the implications of UN Security Council Resolution 2347 (2017).