UNESCO to Help with Damaged Heritage Sites

UNESCO, the UN´s culture and science organization, offered last week to help assess and repair damage caused to World Heritage sites in Indonesia by an earthquake that left nearly 6,000 dead.

“While first efforts focus on emergency relief to help the injured, the hungry and the homeless, UNESCO is preparing to provide expertise and share its experience in dealing with the damage caused to World Heritage sites affected by the earthquake,” its Director-General Koichiro Matsuura said.

Early reports said that the 10th-century Prambanan Hindu temple compounds in Java, inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1991, were damaged in the quake, UNESCO said.

But the eighth- and ninth-century Borobudur temples, also located in Java and listed as World Heritage sites since 1991, are not thought to have been damaged.