Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Thanh Son, who doubles as Chairman of the Vietnam National Commission for UNESCO, made the comment at a conference to review the commission’s 2011 performance in Hanoi on Jan. 10.
Last year, the commission submitted dossiers and successfully campaigned for UNESCO’s recognition of t he Citadel of Ho Dynasty as world cultural heritage and Xoan singing, a vocal art of villages in the ancestral land of Phu Tho , as Intangible Cultural Heritage in need of Urgent Protection.
With these results, Vietnam has more cultural heritages honoured by the world. The country’s UNESCO-recognised heritages were introduced in many events, including Vietnamese Culture Days and Weeks in Russia , Japan , the Republic of Korea , Denmark and Norway .
The doctor laureate steles in Van Mieu – Quoc Tu Giam (the Temple of Literature ) in Hanoi was included in the world documentary heritage list of UNESCO’s Global Memory of the World Programme after being recognised as a documentary heritage in the Asia-Pacific region.
Also in the year, the commission submitted the dossiers of the Buddhist sutra-carved woodblocks at Vinh Nghiem pagoda and “Hoa Lu thi tap”, a collection of poems on the ancient capital of Hoa Lu, to UNESCO for recognition as documentary heritages in the Asia-Pacific region.
In addition, several heritage preservation projects were implemented in 2011, including a 1.2 million USD project to conserve the Thang Long-Hanoi cultural heritage area funded by the Japanese Trust Fund and an Italy-funded 1.5 million USD project to restore My Son towers./.
(VNA)
