UNESCO in Khartoum has assured that it plans to maintain its works related to preserving the documentary heritage of Sudan through a project aimed at determining, preserving and digitizing valuable, historic documents.
During a workshop dubbed “Determining Priorities of Documentary Heritage in Sudan”, Ayman al-Badri, interim director of UNESCO Bureau in Kartoum, said the Sudanese documentary heritage is a priority for the UNESCO, mainly museums, adding that this project is held in partnership with the Sudanese Document House, Sudanese Documentation Association, and a Japanese fund worth $300,000 in collaboration with UNESCO to protect and support significant, historic documents in the Sahel region.
“The historic documents are evidence of human activity in the pre-industrial periods. Science and knowledge have developed over the years driven by education, and lessons should be learned and transferred through generations,” the Japanese ambassador to Sudan said during the workshop.
The ambassador said Sudan is an ancient civilization with three regions enlisted as world heritage sites, in addition to the Kingdom of Kush, which prospered for centuries, and paved the way for the current Sudanese state.
The Japanese ambassador believes that Sudanese documents are priceless, and therefore, cadres of documentary heritage should be trained, noting that Japan will make all efforts to support the project in Sudan and Sahel region.
For his part, Dr. Abdo Othman said “the project aims at saving the documentary heritage by figuring out a special mechanism to compensate many documents that Sudan has lost due to clashes, floodings, and crime.”
Dr. Afaf al-Amin, director general of the Sudan Document House, called on UNESCO and the sponsoring organizations to address the problems facing the documentary heritage in Sudan. She also said the house keeps over 100-year-old documents, including 33 about the history of Sudan, Islamic sultanates, Turkish occupation, and Mahdist State.
Al-Amin said the house is currently working on 100 documents and training a number of cadres from related institutions, noting that the house is also reconsidering the institutions dealing with the cultural heritage. She also stressed the importance of expertise exchange to facilitate the documentary heritage preservation.
“The association has successfully managed the Sudan Memory Project and supported many initiatives launched by civil society associations interested in heritage preservation,” Khaled al-Zein from the Sudanese Association of Knowledge Documentation, told Asharq Al-Awsat.
“As long as we have the potential to support, we shall not forget the vocal heritage because it’s very rich and can be beneficial for our society. Even the scientific research stacked on shelves should be seen as useful documents,” he added.
At the end of the workshop, Abdul Qadir Zein al-Abidin, UNESCO’s culture official in Khartoum, said “the way to saving documentary heritage depends on taking the necessary measures to protect it from damage and loss, as well as setting foundations to determine and collect documentary heritage, and raise awareness for this subject in school curricula.”
The workshop’s recommendations were many including a call to establish a documentary TV channel to raise awareness among the public, sharing all the important documents on the Documents’ House official website for an easier access, launching a campaign to motivate the public on handing the documents of their families, as well as searching for over 50,000 lost documents on Sufism.
The workshop came as part of many documentary heritage projects launched by the UNESCO in Sudan, such as the project to maintain old manuscripts, Scholarship of UNESCO bureau in GGC countries and Yemen for the Sudanese Memory Institutions, preservation of documentary heritage of the cultural council and promoting national languages at the information ministry, in addition to the “project to create and maintain a digital archive of music and folklore” at the Institute of African and Asian Studies, Khartoum, aimed at digitizing 1,000 cassettes, and publishing more about the Sudanese cultural heritage on the web to make it locally and globally accessible.
