Odesa added to World Heritage in Danger List

Why in news?

• The Ukrainian city of Odesa/Odessa has been added to the UNESCO World Heritage List and inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger. The list has 55 such sites.

About ODESA of Ukraine:

• The site is located near the Black sea and is 500 km from the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv.
• Empress Catherine founded Odesa after taking away the region from the Ottoman Empire in 1794.The name Odesa is Greek.
• Catherine gave religious freedom to the people in Odesa and also offered them lands. She also gave Porto Franco, meaning a free port. No taxes were imposed on the port. This expanded the trade in Odesa attracting several foreign merchants.

About World Heritage in Danger list:

• To protect the sites from catastrophic damages, UNESCO designates them as World Heritage in Danger sites.
• World Heritage Sites face several problems such as development in tourism, war, natural disasters, poaching, urbanization, and pollution.
• Russian forces are conducting frequent air strikes in Ukraine. For this reason, the world heritage site Odesa is in danger.
• Now that UNESCO has made it a World Heritage Site in Danger, United Nations will now allocate funds to protect the site

PRACTICE QUESTION:

City of Odesa, recently inscribed on the UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger, is located in:

(a) Syria

(b) Afghanistan

(c) Ukraine

(d) Russia

Answer