Alliance for Cultural First Aid, Peace and Resilience is a ground-breaking project, which in partnership with the ALIPH Foundation, will strengthen capacities for risk reduction, preparedness, response and recovery among communities adversely affected by armed conflicts, extreme hazard events and epidemics. The project focuses on the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan region (MENAP) affected by intersecting conflicts which has led to extreme vulnerabilities to hazard events and health crises.
The project is built on the principle that integrating cultural heritage protection with humanitarian relief makes a meaningful contribution to alleviating the trauma of affected communities, while promoting early recovery and transition to sustainable peace. Its goal is to form a proactive alliance of “Cultural First Aiders” from the region, who can work with security forces and humanitarians to provide conflict-sensitive protection and care to cultural heritage and contribute to peace and resilience.
Over 23 months, 4 mentors and 20 professionals will be trained to implement between 15 and 20 field projects. They will seek to protect endangered heritage – movable, immovable and intangible – by involving local communities and stakeholders.
Through targeted training, awareness building and on-the-ground application, Alliance for Cultural First Aid, Peace and Resilience will gather evidence to make the case for culture. This will include:
The preparation and translation of learning resources:
- Videos on how to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on tangible and intangible heritage and associated communities in conflict situations.
- The Arabic translation of ICCROM’s widely-implemented Handbook and Toolkit on First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis.
- A learning package on community-based approaches for crisis response and risk management for cultural heritage in conflict areas.
Dissemination of ALIPH Foundation’s call for proposals mitigating impacts of COVID-19 on heritage amongst ICCROM network in conflict and post-conflict countries.
Training, both online and in-person:
- A course-design meeting with ICCROM’s professional networks will develop a context-specific curriculum based on multi-hazard and people-centred approaches.
- Four months of online learning and preparatory mentoring.
- Two weeks of in-person, hands-on training, which will take place in Cairo, Egypt.
- Seven months of structured follow-up, which will include seed grants and online mentoring as training participants carry out projects that will see community members trained and greater coordination mechanisms between humanitarian agencies.
A post-project publication that will feature stories of participant field projects and successes, as well as lessons learned.
Partners
ICCROM will collaborate with Egyptian Ministries of Antiquities and Defence; the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation, a foundation created as a result of ICCROM’s training, which is dedicated to the protection of cultural heritage in crises; the Center for Security Studies, a Zurich based organisation dedicated to promoting the understanding of security policy challenges as a contribution to a more peaceful world; as well as many of its long-standing partners and its alumni network of cultural first aiders.
Other partners important to the project will be identified from mainstream agencies working in the field of disaster risk reduction, humanitarian aid and conflict transformation. The expected input of these partners will be at a technical level, in order to help shape the training modules, as well as develop and promote interagency coordination.
This project is made possible thanks to the generous contribution of the ALIPH Foundation.