Beirut (AFP)

Unesco will organize two international conferences with a view to ensuring "considerable" funding dedicated to schools and cultural heritage in Beirut devastated by a gigantic explosion, announced Thursday its director general, Audrey Azoulay, from the Lebanese capital.

"The first, in the immediate future, will be a meeting of the World Coalition for Education devoted to Lebanon," Azoulay told AFP, during a tour of the disaster areas of the Lebanese capital, including a school heavily damaged by the explosion of 4 August.

"It is a set of partners that we brought together on the occasion of the Covid-19 pandemic to help distance education (...) The country must absolutely be more prepared for this question", she added.

According to the United Nations Organization for Culture and Education (Unesco), around 160 schools were destroyed or damaged by the explosion, which left more than 180 dead and devastated entire neighborhoods of Beirut on August 4.

The director of Unesco said at least 85,000 children had been directly affected by the destruction.

Only a few days before the start of the school year, the explosion dealt a further blow to the Lebanese education system, hit hard this year by an unprecedented economic crisis, amplified by the pandemic.

According to a preliminary assessment, the reconstruction of damaged schools will require a budget of 22 million dollars (18.5 million euros), said Ms. Azoulay.

A second conference will also be organized, probably at the end of September, to raise funds for the benefit of the architectural heritage of Beirut and the cultural world.

The objective is "to mobilize international funding for culture, which often in reconstruction operations comes only after".

"But this must happen now, there are a lot (...) of historic buildings destroyed or damaged", requiring the mobilization of "considerable resources", pleaded the director of Unesco.

- "Soul of Beirut" -

At a press conference later in the day, Azoulay said that "it takes several hundred million dollars for the heritage" of Beirut, adding that Unesco might not be able to collect the full amounts at the next conference.

"I do not think that they will be lifted all at once (...) but Unesco will be able to provide expertise, also a guarantee of transparency and integrity of restoration standards", she added.

By comparison, around $ 100 million was collected for the Iraqi city of Mosul, whose historic center was razed during the conflict with the jihadists of the Islamic State group in 2017.

"It is the soul of Beirut which is at stake. Without its historic districts, without its creators, Beirut would no longer be Beirut", insisted the patroness of Unesco.

Ms. Azoulay also said that she raised the issue of real estate speculation in the affected areas with President Michel Aoun, whom she met earlier in the day.

"Perhaps we have to decide to grant a special status to this area (...) Perhaps we should temporarily freeze all transactions (...) But we need" concrete actions on the part of the authorities to preserve heritage, she hammered

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