Mrauk-U’s UNESCO heritage bid pushed to 2022

By Myo Thiri Kyaw 29 Jan 2021

Myo Thiri Kyaw | DMG
29 January, Sittwe

Submission of a final proposal intended to put Mrauk-U on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites has been put off till next year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and regional instability, officials said.

The schedule to submit the proposal was set in January of last year, but it was delayed due to instability in Mrauk-U Township and a statewide COVID-19 outbreak that began in mid-August and continues to affect the region.

U Soe Soe Linn, director of the subdepartment of World Heritage, under the Department of Archaeology and National Museum in Arakan State, said: “We submitted the draft to put Mrauk-U on the UNESCO list in 2019. When we arranged to submit the final proposal last year, we faced difficulties.”

“We will face challenges in 2021. So, we decided to submit it in 2022,” he said.

Though the process to submit the final proposal is delayed, the department is doing what it should do in the interim, he said.

The draft of the proposal to put Mrauk-U on the UNESCO’s World Heritage list was initially submitted to the UNESCO World Heritage Center in Paris on September 25, 2019.

Thura U Aung Ko, Union minister for Religious Affairs and Culture, said the final proposal was not submitted in January of last year because field inspections could not be conducted.

“We could not submit the final proposal as scheduled because we could not do field inspections due to security reasons. So, we decided to delay one year after negotiating with officials from the UNESCO head office,” he said.

Daw Khin Than, chair of the Mrauk-U Heritage Trust, said the government should undertake effective measures to protect the cultural heritage of Mrauk-U from being destroyed, saying the area was at risk of denigration from both armed conflict and squatters.

“We feel sad when we see the cultural heritage in Mrauk-U destroyed. To conserve the area, the government needs to protect it effectively by enacting acts,” she said.

UNESCO had been expected to make a determination on Mrauk-U’s World Heritage application this year.