On 18 September 2026, UNESCO hosted a second International Partners’ Meeting on Improving International Coordination and Response Effectiveness to Safeguard Culture in Emergencies. The event brought together representatives of 40 partner institutions and organizations working on culture in emergencies at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France.
The often-deliberate destruction of the heritage of entire nations lays bare the will of some to annihilate cultures and identities. But in times of crisis, solidarity and cooperation are the most powerful tools at our disposal.
UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Culture, Nayef Al-Fayez
The meeting featured two keynote presentations on cross-cutting themes, which guided discussions throughout the day. During a session titled ‘Women, Culture and Emergencies,’ the UNESCO study Voices of Courage, which examines the impact of emergencies on women in culture, was presented. In turn, UN Women presented how to reinforce gender equality in crisis contexts. A session ‘Framing cultural emergencies from a cultural rights perspective’ welcomed the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of Cultural Rights, Alexandra Xanthaki, who urged participants to systematically take cultural rights into account and to uphold them as an integral part of the response to cultural emergencies.
Buildings, objects, practices are the core of who we are, so we need to protect the meaning they have for our essence. Protecting just the culture itself cannot happen alone: we need to protect the people that carry it and work together with the military, volunteers and NGOs to defend cultural rights.
UN Special Rapporteur in the field of Cultural Rights, Alexandra Xanthaki
Panel discussions addressed a range of pressing issues facing heritage today, from the impacts of climate change to the opportunities and risks of new technologies, as well as global humanitarian and development funding undergoing its steepest contraction in a decade.
In this context, with some organizations reporting losses of up to 60% of their reership-based funding models to sustain the sector
On climate-related threats, they pointed out that only 27% of countries reporting under the UNFCCC currently identify cultural heritage as a concern, reflecting a significant gap between planning commitments and operational readiness. Discussions also stressed the need to identify and share the tools and resources required to strengthen emergency preparedness and response, and to bring humanitarian, disaster risk reduction and recovery efforts more closely in step with the culture sector. Participants agreed that embedding culture within existing coordination mechanisms, and establishing common indicators and definitions before crises occur, would allow the sector to respond more effectively alongside these actors.
These discussions built on the first Partners’ Meeting, which took place in 2024, during which participants underlined the importance of holding regular meetings among culture and emergency actors and called for a more coherent and coordinated approach, for example under the umbrella of joint operational principles for culture in emergencies.
The 2026 meeting provided a vital platform for partner institutions and organizations to resume these discussions, build further synergies and better prepare for emergencies impacting culture. Following preparatory work carried out by working groups that met prior to the conference and developed draft joint operational principles for interventions on culture in emergencies, the meeting culminated in the agreement to continue working collectively on such principles in the months to come.
The event also served to kick off the UNESCO Culture x El Niño initiative, aimed at safeguarding culture from the strong El Niño weather phenomenon. It also coincided with a special photo exhibition on the Heritage Emergency Fund, showcasing 10 years of achievements in cultural emergency preparedness and response, on view until 31 October 2026.
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