United Nations:
UNESCO is more than two-thirds short of the 11 million USD needed to fulfill its promise to help restore Timbuktu's storied mausoleums and other Malian cultural treasures destroyed by Islamic radicals two years ago, the UN cultural agency said yesterday.
Three months after announcing the project, UNESCO has raised only 3 million USD, said Lazare Eloundou, the head of UNESCO's office in Mali. That figure that has not changed since April.
The director of UNESCO's New York office, Vibeke Jensen, said raising 8 million USD may not seem difficult, but it competes with appeals for help on horrific humanitarian crises such as those in Iraq and Syria.
"It shouldn't be a big issue. I mean, $8 million. But competition is very hard. You see what is happing in Iraq, in Syria," she said at a news conference.
Islamic radicals who overran Timbuktu in 2012 destroyed 14 of the city's 16 mausoleums, one-room structures that house the tombs of the city's great thinkers. The mausoleums are now barely more than heaps of mud, reminders of the brutal rule of the jihadists, who imposed Shariah law on the fabled city, forced women to wear veils and carried out executions and public whippings. The extremists were driven after nearly a year by a French military intervention.
Two of the mausoleums have been rebuilt through the project, which is being carried out by local masons with guidance from international experts. Although UNESCO initially predicted the restorations would take a month, Eloundou said the first two reconstructions ended up being a pilot phase that revealed technical and cultural complexities. He said each mausoleum is the responsibility of different family, which chooses a specific mason for the restoration.
"We want the community to rebuild their own heritage. It's not just about rebuilding stones. It's also about keeping the cultural significance and keeping the role that the mausoleum had in structuring the life of the community," he said.
Eloundou said the next phase will start in September after the rainy season ends, but he can no longer estimate if the project will take months or years.