ATHENS – Culture and Sports Minister Lina Mendoni, acting on behalf of the Greek government, has signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with the President of ALIPH Dr. Thomas Kaplan, at the 2nd ALIPH Donors’ Conference, which took place on Monday at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

According to an announcement by the culture ministry, the conference took place five years after the founding of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in war zones and places of conflict in general. ALIPH was founded in March 2017 in Geneva, through the initiative of France and the United Arab Emirates, in response to the massive destruction of cultural heritage in recent years in the Sahel region and the Middle East. Since 2018, ALIPH has supported nearly 150 cultural heritage protection projects in approximately 30 countries, on four continents and in particular in Iraq, Mali, Afghanistan, Yemen and Northeast Syria.

In her speech, Mendoni referred to Greece’s initiatives for the multilevel policy for the protection of cultural heritage, both with national policies and in the framework of international agreements. Specifically – as stated in the ministry announcement – the minister noted that every three years, Greece brings to the UN the purely Greek initiative for a Resolution entitled “Return or Restitution of Cultural Property to their Countries of Origin”. This resolution is always adopted. At the last UN General Assembly, about two months ago, 111 states voted in its favour.