UNESCO Director Pledges $10 M. Toward Rebuilding Ukraine’s Devastated Culture Sector

The director general of UNESCO has pledged more than $10 million towards efforts to rebuild Ukraine’s devastated arts landscape after a tour of the embattled country this week. A new report from UNESCO, however, has put the dollar number needed to properly rehabilitate Ukraine’s culture and heritage at $6.9 billion. 

Audrey Azoulay spent two days visiting the cities of Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Odesa with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, reaffirming “the organization’s support to the population [as well as] to advance the reconstruction of the country’s cultural sector,” UNESCO said in a statement. 

UNESCO’s comprehensive recovery plan has projected the cost of “short-term needs” (2023–26) at $2.3 billion and “medium- to long-term needs” (2027–33) at $4.6 billion, for a total $6.9 billion.

“The early stage is expected to include damage assessment and documentation, emergency measures for cultural immovable and movable properties (including debris removal), stabilization and conservation measures for cultural assets, storage management, preparedness plans, and immediate conservation to prevent further loss and looting,” the document reads.

It adds: “This plan should include alignment with international standards, enhanced legal protection and governance, the development of protocols and guidelines for protecting and recovering cultural heritage, and a comprehensive digital architecture to document and manage cultural property.”

On Twitter, Azoulay shared that the organization was currently “mobilizing more than $10m to strengthen its response to the education emergency in Ukraine.” Among the initiatives funded, she added, is on-site reconstruction training for Ukrainian architects, conservators, and urban planners. Meanwhile in the northern city of Chernihiv, “Unesco will develop this year with [local] authorities a complete rehabilitation project for the historic center, inscribed on the country’s World Heritage Tentative list.” UNESCO has kept a continually updated list of the cultural sites damaged by Russia since the invasion began in February 2022.

Earlier this year, UNESCO added the historic center of the Ukrainian Black Sea port city Odesa to its list of endangered World Heritage sites—a move which offers Odesa additional international aid along with potential consequences for its destruction. The port city, coveted by Russia for its strategic location, is renowned for its cosmopolitan history and architectural landmarks, including the Odesa Opera House and the long harbor staircase immortalized in the 1925 silent film classic Battleship Potemkin. 

Last July, an aerial assault on the city resulted in the destruction of part of the Odesa Museum of Modern Art and Odesa Museum of Fine Arts. UNESCO funded repairs to both museums and financed efforts to digitize artworks and provide protective equipment. The Odesa Museum of Fine Arts housed more than 12,000 works before the war, but nearly the whole collection was transported for safekeeping by the museum employees in February.

That year, the United States National Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) decried the intentional destruction of cultural sites in Ukraine by the Russia as “reckless,” adding that it violates the “reasonable expectations of civil society and the treaty obligations of which the United States, Russia, and Ukraine are all signatories.”