UfM Coordination Meeting for the Recovery and Reconstruction of the Built Heritage and Historic/Regular Residential Buildings of Beirut
13 October 2020. As a follow-up to the UfM Senior Officials’ meeting of 23rd September, 2020, the UfM is organising an online informal coordination meeting, which will be hosted on Tuesday, 13 October, 2020, between 14:00-15:30 hrs. CEST.
The objective of the meeting is to facilitate information exchange, enable comparison of notes, and to contribute to efforts towards pooling potential grants by individual UfM countries for the recovery and reconstruction of the damaged built heritage and historic/regular residential buildings of Beirut before the onset of the rainy season in December.
Lebanese representatives will include:
– Judge Marwan Abboud, Governor of Beirut
– Rony Lahoud, Chairman and Director-General, Public Corporation of Housing
– Sarkis Khoury, Director-General for Antiquities and Heritage at the Ministry of Culture
– Wafa Charafeddine, Head of the Finance Division at the Council for Development and Reconstruction
– Jad Tabet, President of the Order of Engineers and Architects
Restoring Beirut’s damaged historic built heritage, which is part and parcel of the Mediterranean identity and heritage, is a priority before the onset of the rainy season (December to March), since rain may damage façades even further. There is a need to cover around 100 buildings before the rains, and support the structure of 45 houses near the port, as well as 50 other houses that have been badly hit further up. The Directorate-General of Antiquities and Heritage of the Ministry of Culture of Lebanon has already concluded the rapid damage assessment of the historic built heritage. An action plan has been launched for the recovery process, in coordination with UNESCO and ICCROM.
