Silk Road: News, Events, Articles

The Great Silk Road is of outstanding cultural value to humanity. This accounts for the emphasis that UNESCO, a UN division handling educational, scientific and cultural matters, puts to the study as well as preservation of the great heritage passed on by the ancient nations.

In 1972 UNESCO adopted a Convention concerning the protection of the world cultural and natural heritage. 146 countries support this international treaty. In accordance with the Convention the international community assists the countries to safeguard cultural and natural sites which are recognized as having world-wide significance. To select them, the List of the World Heritage was made, which today comprises 721 sites from more than 100 countries.

This extensive activity directly correlates with the development of cultural tourism. The analysis carried out by the European Commission, showed that for 60 percent of tourists, culture is the prime interest in their travels. Thus it was natural that the 12th Session of the WTO General Assembly adopted the resolution on 'Preservation of the World Heritage for the new millennium". Today thousands of tourist routes have been worked out and are being operated on all the continents. However, the most attractive and the longest route, the length of which is 12800 kilometers, is the Great Silk Road. It is much due to the tourist itineraries arranged along the Great Silk Road that most of the mankind has got a straight access to the global heritage beyond the geographical domains.

In 1998 UNESCO declared the beginning of a ten-year project called 'Integral Study of the Great Silk Road - the Road of a Dialogue'. It provides for a wide and comprehensive study of history of civilizations, establishment of close cultural relations between the East and the West, improvement of interrelation between the numerous nations that populate Eurasian Continent. Revival of the Silk Road serves the purpose of recommencement of a thousand-year dialogue of civilizations.

In the course of the project realization numerous scientific conferences and workshops have been held, various films have been shot, many books, brochures and articles have been published, a number of archaeological and architectural monuments have been restored. International scientific expeditions along the Great Silk Road have undoubtedly become factual and informative basis for this activity.

First travel, in which members of 19 countries participated, took place in the summer of 1990 across the desert from Xian to Kashgar and then to China. A deep resonance of the world's public followed the voyage from Venice, which is considered to be the 'gateway' from the West to the East, to Osaka at the end of 1990 and the beginning of 1991. No less fruitful was the travel around Mongolia in 1992. One of the main achievements of this expedition was the establishment under the aegis of UNESCO of the International Institute for Study of Nomadic Civilizations in Ulan-Bator.

UNESCO's project called 'Integral Study of the Great Silk Road, the Road of Dialogue' was so effective and stirred so much of society's interest that it was decided to prolong the programme within the framework of a new project of UNESCO 'East-Western Intercultural Relations in Central Asia', which was adopted at the 29th Session of UNESCO General Conference in the autumn of 1997.

This ten-year project, aimed at accumulation and study of materials concerning history of culture belonging to the nations who lived in the regions along the Great Silk Road, has been successfully completed. Now UNESCO realizes a number of specific projects, the purpose of which is to revive and support particular cultural issues of the region, to protect the unique 'intangible' monuments of the Great Silk Road.

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