Cultural monuments of BRICS states to expand UNESCO’s World Heritage List - Medinsky

MOSCOW, June 17 /TASS/. The BRICS states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) should expand UNESCO’s List of World Heritage by their cultural and architectural monuments as well as cultural landscapes and monuments of nature, Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky told a meeting of the BRICS culture ministers on Wednesday. "Protection of cultural landmarks on the UNESCO list should be a vital aspect of our joint work. We should consider the fact that cultural and architectural landmarks, landscapes and monuments of nature of the BRICS states are insufficiently represented in the UNESCO List of World Heritage," Medinsky said. Also on Wednesday, the culture ministers of the BRICS states signed a preliminary agreement, which, according to Medinsky, preluded the first-ever multilateral inter-governmental agreement on cultural cooperation of the BRICS states to be signed at the BRICS summit in Ufa, Bashkortostan (Russia), on July 8-10. "I would like to emphasize that the signing of this document will in no way restrict the freedom of our countries to cooperate with any other states and does not put up any barriers to it. On the contrary, it opens up new opportunities, including the provision of broader access of our citizens to each other’s cultures and the establishment of horizontal ties among our cultural institutions," the Russian cultural minister stressed. Preparations of the BRICS inter-governmental multilateral draft agreement on cultural cooperation started in 2012. Until recently, the Culture Ministries of the BRICS states have been developing cultural cooperation on the bilateral basis. The BRICS culture ministers will hold their next meeting in India. Read more