BANGKOK — The United Nations cultural agency on Thursday recommended Laos invite monitors to the historic city of Luang Prabang, a World Heritage site, amid concerns that proposed dam construction along the Mekong River could cause it to lose its world heritage status.
While the World Heritage Committee welcomed Laos’ efforts to improve data collection on the dam’s potential impacts and mitigate damage to the UNESCO World Heritage site, it recommended that Laos bring in a new team of experts to directly assess the conservation status.
Laos appears to be on board with the idea, with its representative at the annual meeting in New Delhi saying authorities were ready to “work hand in hand” with UNESCO to preserve the sites.
Legend has it that the Buddha rested there during his travels. The city sits on a peninsula at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995 for its unique mix of historic architecture from the Laotian and French colonial periods.
A multi-billion-dollar dam under construction about 25 kilometers upstream and its impact on the Mekong’s flow have raised concerns about its impact on protected wetlands and the city’s riverbanks.
The dam is being built close to an active fault line, and although design studies have concluded it could withstand an earthquake, many locals worry about what would happen if the dam were to break and release a wall of water.
UNESCO is also concerned about protecting historical monuments that are unrelated to the dam’s construction.
FILE – Cambodian Buddhist monks visit the Angkor Wat temple in Siem Reap, Cambodia, Nov. 15, 2023. CREDIT: AP/Heng Sinith
In a similar move, the committee recommended Cambodia bring in a new team of experts to monitor conditions at Angkor, one of the world’s largest archaeological sites, where attempts by authorities to relocate residents have drawn allegations of human rights abuses from Amnesty International and others.
UNESCO said the decision was adopted without debate on Wednesday, but the US-based human rights group Save Cambodia criticised the decision as going too far.
The monitoring missions are a welcome small step forward but “fall far short” of what’s needed to address the core problems, said Morton Scholar, the group’s general counsel.
“The fundamental problem is that every time long-term residents are evicted from their traditional villages, the Angkor Wat Convention is violated,” he said in an email. “UNESCO is complicit in these violations by failing to take effective measures to prevent and remedy prohibited evictions.”
“To meet the conditions of the Cultural Heritage Agreement, prohibited evictions must end and displaced people must return to their homes,” he added.
Cambodian authorities did not respond to requests for comment.
The Angkor Archaeological Park covers an area of about 400 square kilometers (155 square miles) in northwestern Cambodia. It contains the ruins of the capital of the Khmer Empire from the 9th to the 15th centuries, including the temple of Angkor Wat.
When the area was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1992, it was described as a “living heritage site” where local people preserve ancestral traditions and cultural practices that have disappeared elsewhere.
Still, UNESCO noted at the time that Angkor was under “double pressure” from “constant attempts to expand the settlement” by the roughly 100,000 inhabitants living in 112 historic settlements, and from encroachment from the nearby town of Siem Reap.
Cambodia’s answer was a plan to relocate 10,000 families living illegally in the area to Ranthaek and other locations, as well as encourage some residents to relocate from 112 historic settlements as their families grow.
Cambodia will begin relocating people to Rantayek in 2022, giving those who volunteered to leave their homes in the Angkor area land, two months’ worth of canned food and rice, tarpaulins and 30 corrugated metal sheets to build their homes.
In a November report, Amnesty questioned how voluntary the relocations actually were, saying many of those interviewed had been moved under threat or coercion, calling the relocations more like “disguised forced evictions.”
In a decision adopted by the World Heritage Committee, members expressed “concern at independent reports of possible forced resettlement”, but Amnesty said that was not enough.
“The decision stops short of requiring Cambodia to make an explicit commitment not to carry out forced evictions at Angkor,” Amnesty said, “nor does it require the Cambodian authorities to take all necessary remedial measures to fully respect the human rights of affected communities.”