RWANDA MEMORIALS ADDED TO WORLD HERITAGE LIST

Forty-two new sites, including memorials of the Rwandan genocide, have been inscribed on the World Heritage List, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) announced at the end of a two-week meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The organization said its World Heritage Committee – which met from Sept. 10 to 25 – approved 33 cultural and nine natural sites, bringing the total on the List to 1,199 across 168 countries.

Rwanda had its first two inscriptions:  Nyungwe National Park, and the genocide memorial sites at Nyamata, Murambi, Gisozi and Bisesero, which include the locations of massacres in 1994.

Between April and July of that year, an estimated one million people were killed across the country by armed militias that targeted Tutsi but also murdered moderate Hutu and Twa people.

The Gisozi site in the capital city Kigali houses the 1999-built Kigali Genocide Memorial, where more than 250,000 victims have been buried, while the hill of Bisesero (western Rwanda) hosts a memorial constructed in 1998 to honour the fight of those who resisted for more than two months before being killed by the genocide perpetrators.

Rwandan officials welcomed the inclusion on the World Heritage List, stating that the “historic” inscription… “increases international visibility, and also honours the memory of the victims they represent throughout the world.”

UNESCO said that with the 2023 listings for Africa - five in all - the continent has “reached the symbolic milestone of 100 sites” on the List (which has a preponderance of properties in Italy, China, Germany, Spain and France). 

Over the past decade, the UN agency says it has been working to remedy under-representation on the List, urging member states to put forward sites for inscription.

This year, the organization emphasized new recognition for “Sites of Memory” - places in which an event occurred “that a nation and its people, or certain communities wish to memorialize”. It said the inclusion of such places on the List “makes them part of our shared global heritage, and recognizes the part they play in the peace process.”

The World Heritage Committee, for instance, also inscribed Argentina’s torture memorial (the ESMA Museum and Place of Memory - Former Clandestine Detention, Torture and Extermination Centre), and Belgium and France’s “Funeral and Memorial Sites of the Western Front in the First World War”.

Photo: Flame of Hope at the Gisozi memorial site.

For more information on the UNESCO World Heritage List, see: UNESCO World Heritage Centre