The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced the latest inscriptions to its memory of the world registered on Thursday.
Presented by 72 countries and four international organizations, they cover issues such as the scientific revolution, the contribution of women to history and the main milestones of multilateralism, such as the writing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights almost 80 years ago.
Heritage at risk
The record consists of documentary collections that include books, manuscripts, maps, photographs and sound or video recordings, which testify to the shared inheritance of humanity.
These elements are often extremely fragile and run the risk of deteriorating or exposure to disaster.
The collections are added by decision of the UNESCO Executive Board, after the evaluation of nominations for an Independent International Advisory Committee.
A human creation map
Guilherme Canela, director of the UNESCO Division for Digital Inclusion and Policies and Digital Transformation, stressed the importance of registration in an interview with UN news.
“If you want to understand the chemical composition of our planet, consult the periodic tables of elements,” he said.
“If you want to have a diversified map of what human beings have created in the equally varied fields of literature, history and international relations, science, music, religion, philosophy, languages, cinema and many others, then you resort to the memory of the world of the world of the world.”
Itḫāf al-MAHBṻB documents the contributions of the Arab world to astronomy, planetary movement, celestial bodies and astrological analysis during the first millennium of our time.
Diversity of contributions
Among the freshly registered collections, 14 belong to the scientific documentary heritage, such as the Itḥāf al-mahbūb, presented by Egypt.
The manuscript documents the contributions of the Arab world to astronomy, planetary movement, celestial bodies and astrological analysis during the first millennium of the modern era.
Darwin’s archives were presented by the United Kingdom, while Germany provided the literary heritage of philosopher, poet and composer Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as radiographs of Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, the first registered X -ray photographs.
Documents related to the memory of slavery have also been included, such as a slave census made by Portugal in their territories abroad in Angola, Cabo Verde and Mozambique between 1856 and 1875.
The 79 slave registration books provide detailed records of enslaved Africans and liberated persons, feeling the basis for the abolition of slavery in 1869.
UNESCO said that the archives on prominent women are still largely missing in the registry. In this sense, Indonesia and the Netherlands presented letters of Raden Along Kartini, a pioneer of girls’ education.
Several collections document key moments in international cooperation, including Geneva conventions and their protocols, international treaties that aim to limit the brutality of war. Get more information about Geneva conventions in Our explanatory On International Humanitarian Law.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in December 1948, and the 1991 Windhoek Declaration of Namibia, a global reference for press freedom, have also been added.