Survey on the countries supporting the restoration of damaged items of cultural heritage
In recent years, requests for cooperation and emergency assistance concerning cultural heritages damaged by natural disasters have been increasing, and an effective execution of international cooperation for restoration of damaged items of cultural heritage has been more and more important. Therefore, the Japan Consortium for International Cooperation in Cultural Heritage is now surveying the collaborative structure of relevant organizations and surveying supporting countries on how to perform emergency treatment. We have interviewed a total of 27 organizations in USA (on August 17th-26th), Netherlands and France (September 26th – October 8th) up to present, focusing on the administrative, civilian and international organizations.
In the USA, it became apparent that flexible treatment was performed during the Haiti Earthquake, making use of personnel dispatch systems to damaged items of cultural heritage and the information association network which had been functioning beforehand in USA. In the Netherlands it was revealed that the division of roles of each organization was clear and the content of support was specialized in small-scale financing assistance immediately after disasters occurred. Meanwhile, we found out that in France, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been putting emphasis on the cultivation of emergency support specialists (urgentistes) in cooperation with NGOs. This is in order to further strengthen the conventional cooperation system network.
Enhancing readiness for disasters that occur sequentially is a common issue in Japan, and we acquired useful information through a series of research when considering the Japanese international cooperation system.