(13 March 2017) The first part of the “Support for institutional activity for the safeguarding and recovery of Iraqi cultural heritage” concluded at the beginning of March with two training courses on monitoring archaeological landscape and conservation techniques funded to the General Secretariat of the Ministry of culture by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs / Italian Agency for Development Cooperation. The two courses focusing on the transfer of technology and skills started on January 15, consisted of twenty Iraqi and Kurdish students for a total of 420 hours of lectures and fieldwork. Mibact (Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism) has collaborated with UNESCO, the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage of Iraq and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in the satellite monitoring of the damage inflicted by ISIS on cultural heritage in occupied territories since 2014. As part of the effort to protect and restore Iraqi cultural heritage, staff of the Iraqi Ministry of Culture and the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan underwent training in order to make Iraqi offices autonomous in applying these advanced technologies. The programme which will end next October, continues with the arrival of Italian conservators at the restoration laboratories of the Baghdad archaeological museum to assist their Iraqi colleagues in the conservation of books and archival material, archaeological stone sculptures and ancient ivory and metal artefacts. (Red)

CLOSING CEREMONY OF THE TRAINING COURSES

A closing ceremony for the two courses “Monitoring and Saving Archaeological Landscape: from Remote Sensing to Field Survey” and “First Aid and conservation techniques of Damaged Archaeological Sites” was held at the Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage (IICAH) in Erbil.