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60 Monuments Under Fire: The US-Israeli Assault on Iran’s Cultural Memory
The deliberate targeting of sites that have withstood centuries of conquest, colonial incursion, and modern warfare—including World War II and the Iran-Iraq War—constitutes a flagrant violation of international norms.
Mar 26, 2026
In modern warfare, destruction is not limited to armed forces or strategic installations. When historic sites are bombed and ancient cities violated, the target becomes civilization itself. The ongoing US-Israeli offensive in Iran exemplifies this brutal calculus with stark clarity: a deliberate campaign not merely to dominate the battlefield, but to erase the memory of a people and the tangible heritage of human history.
According to the Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, nearly 60 museums and historical sites have suffered damage in the first days of the campaign. This staggering figure is more than a statistic; it constitutes a cultural massacre, erasing millennia of accumulated knowledge and artistry. These sites are not inert monuments—they are living archives of human endeavor, ranging from ancient Persian dynasties to Islamic empires, where palaces, mosques, markets, and gardens coalesce into an irreplaceable cultural mosaic.
In Isfahan, long celebrated as “Half the World,” the Ali Qapu Palace has sustained damage to its 17th-century carved wood and frescoes. The iconic Chehel Sotoun Garden, with its elaborate tiled halls and painted pavilions, has seen its delicate ornamentation destroyed. Even the Naqsh-e Jahan Square, one of the world’s largest historic plazas, has witnessed structural damage to surrounding heritage buildings. The Grand Mosque of Isfahan, a millennium-old architectural jewel, has lost portions of its turquoise tiles from domes and minarets.
Tehran has not been spared. The Golestan Palace, dating back to the 14th century and later the Qajar royal residence, has endured shattered stained glass, damaged wooden ornamentation, and debris scattered across its historic gardens after strikes on nearby structures. In western Iran, Falak-ol-Aflak Castle in Khorramabad, an ancient Sassanian fortress hosting local museums, has been partially destroyed following an airstrike on a cultural ministry building.
What moral authority does a nation claim when it devastates the heritage of others while asserting itself as a defender of human values?
The offensive has also struck smaller, yet historically significant, urban areas. In Bushehr province, the old quarter of Siraf—a centuries-old maritime trade hub—has suffered damage to traditional homes and heritage structures. Tehran alone has registered damage to 19 historical sites, highlighting the scale and indiscriminate nature of the strikes.
The deliberate targeting of sites that have withstood centuries of conquest, colonial incursion, and modern warfare—including World War II and the Iran-Iraq War—constitutes a flagrant violation of international norms. Both the Geneva Conventions and UNESCO conventions clearly mandate the protection of cultural property during armed conflict. The United States, in its orchestration of these strikes, has shown contempt for these legal frameworks, weaponizing heritage itself as a means of coercion and terror.
UNESCO has expressed profound concern over the attacks, warning that continued military operations threaten dozens of other cultural landmarks. This is not a local loss—it is a global one. Every destroyed site erases a chapter of shared human history; every shattered mosque, palace, or fortress obliterates a fragment of collective memory. Cultural heritage is not merely aesthetic; it is the anchor of identity and the repository of human civilization. Its deliberate destruction is an attack on the concept of history itself.
What is unfolding in Iran transcends conventional warfare; it is a war against memory, against the very idea of civilization. When historic squares, palaces, mosques, and fortresses are reduced to rubble, the moral bankruptcy of the aggressors is exposed. The US, in coordination with Israel, is not only waging a military campaign—it is perpetrating a calculated assault on cultural identity, turning its technological might against the living archives of humanity.
This is a conflict in which the battlefield is not only territory, but memory; not only cities, but the centuries of human achievement embedded in stone, tile, and timber. The deliberate targeting of Iran’s cultural heritage raises profound questions: What kind of civilization sanctions the obliteration of history? What moral authority does a nation claim when it devastates the heritage of others while asserting itself as a defender of human values?
The answer is stark. The United States has weaponized history itself, converting museums, mosques, and palaces into collateral in a broader agenda of coercion. In doing so, it has shown the world that its power is not measured in justice or civilization, but in the ruthlessness of its ability to erase the past. The human story, in Iran as elsewhere, is under siege—and the consequences reverberate far beyond its borders.
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‘My Memory Is Being Demolished’: US-Israeli Bombings Damage Protected World Heritage Sites in Iran
"War fans say that whatever gets destroyed, someone will build a better one later," said one Iranian scholar. "Fine, go ahead and build a new Golestan Palace, a new Chehel Sotun, and a new Taq-e Bostan too."
Mar 11, 2026
In addition to killing and injuring thousands of Iranians, the US-Israeli war in Iran is bringing ruin upon some of the oldest and most cherished historical landmarks in the world.
Several centuries-old locations, designated as World Heritage sites by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), have suffered damage from bombings since the US and Israel launched the war on February 28. As UNESCO noted last week, these sites are protected under multiple statutes in international law.
"Iran is home to one of the richest concentrations of historical sites on Earth, representing civilizations that stretch from the Elamites and Achaemenid Persians to Islamic dynasties and modern Iran," wrote Haley Fuller for Military.com on Wednesday.
"Iran contains dozens of sites recognized by the international community as having 'outstanding universal value,'" she said. "The country currently has nearly 30 locations listed as UNESCO World Heritage sites, including ancient cities, monumental architecture, and archaeological landscapes spanning thousands of years."
UNESCO said that it has communicated the coordinates of protected sites to all parties in the conflict, including Israel. Iranian authorities, meanwhile, had already begun marking important historical sites with the internationally recognized Blue Shield symbol, established in the 1954 Hague Convention to designate protected areas. But several have still been attacked.
According to multiple local reports, as well as photos and videos posted to social media, an Israeli airstrike on Monday shattered windows, scattered debris, and broke doors at the Chehel Sotoun Palace and other sites within the 17th-century Naqsh-e-Jahan Square in the city of Isfahan.
The city was the capital of Persia under the Safavid dynasty from 1501-1736, and it boasts some of the country's most significant works of architecture and art. The Israeli military was reportedly targeting the governor’s building, which sits near the square.
"Chehel Sotoun is renowned for its extensive frescoes depicting historical battles, royal receptions, and scenes from Persian mythology, which are among the largest, most unique examples of Persianate painting," wrote Sarvy Geranpayeh in a report for The Art Newspaper.
While most of the site's interior paintings survived the attack, provincial officials said the site's famous mirror-work decorations were damaged, and a 17th-century fresco depicting the Iranian Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasp and the Indian Mughal Humayun sustained a large crack.
Several other buildings in the square also took damage, Geranpayeh reported:
Authorities reported that the 17th-century Ali Qapu Palace had its doors and windows shattered, while the 17th-century Jame Abbasi Mosque, also known as Shah Mosque, sustained damage to sections of its iconic turquoise and calligraphic tiles...
Several other sites within the Safavid-era Dawlatkhaneh complex also reportedly suffered damage. These include the 17th-century Rakeb-Khaneh pavillion (House of the Jockey), originally built to store the equestrian equipment and harnesses of the royal stables, Ashraf Hall, a highly decorative residential structure associated with the Safavid court, and the nearby 15th-century Teymouri Hall, a Timurid-era building later converted into the Natural History Museum.
A previous attack on March 1, the second day of the war, caused damage to the only designated UNESCO World Heritage site in Tehran, the Golestan Palace, which is more than 400 years old.
Geranpayeh reported that the building was left "strewn with debris, its windows blown out and its distinctive mirror and glasswork damaged."
Some of the architecture that has come under attack is even older. On March 8, Israeli strikes on Khorramabad reportedly damaged the structures surrounding the Falak-ol-Aflak Castle, which is more than 1,800 years old, dating back to the Sassanid Empire in the 3rd century.
The US Committee of the Blue Shield, an international organization tasked with protecting heritage sites in times of war and crisis, said it was “disturbed” by the United States' expressions of disregard for the laws of war.
The committee drew attention to comments made by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week that “America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history... All on our terms with maximum authority. No stupid rules of engagement.”
According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, more than 19,000 civilian buildings have been damaged since the war began less than two weeks ago, including hospitals, residential buildings, and schools.
One attack, reportedly by the US, on a girls' school in Minab on the first day of the war, resulted in the slaughter of around 175 people, mostly children ages 7-12. According to the World Health Organization more than 1,300 people have been killed and 9,000 injured in total since February 28.
“The failure to observe international humanitarian law, including numerous international conventions to which the US is a state party, as well as customary international law, can lead to the commission of war crimes," the US Blue Shield Committee said. It added that this disregard extends to cultural sites as well.
"The destruction of cultural heritage is irreversible. It erases identity, history, and the shared memory of civilizations," the committee said. "No military or political objective justifies the willful or negligent destruction of humanity’s common inheritance. Such destruction is also one of the actions that can make returning to a state of peace more difficult."
According to a New York Times report on Wednesday, the destruction of culturally important sites has only heightened the anger Iranians feel as their country has fallen under attack.
"War fans say that whatever gets destroyed, someone will build a better one later," Mojtaba Najafi, a prominent Iranian scholar and researcher, said in a post to social media.
"Fine, go ahead and build a new Golestan Palace, a new Chehel Sotun, and a new Taq-e Bostan too," he continued, referring to another site which came under threat from US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025.
“For me, ancient monuments are as important as human lives, because they connect me to my past,” Najafi said. “And their destruction means my memory is being demolished."
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After US-Israel Operation Kills 180 Girls in Iran, Melania Trump Chairs UN Session on Children in Conflict
"For the United States, ‘protecting children’ and ‘maintaining international peace and security’ clearly mean something very different from what the UN Charter provides,” said the Iranian ambassador to the UN.
Mar 03, 2026
As the families of an estimated 180 schoolchildren and staff members killed in an Israeli attack on a girls' school in southern Iran mourned on Monday, first lady Melania Trump presided over a United Nations Security Council meeting where the impact her husband's military operations in the Middle East was briefly addressed—but only in regard to the first lady's pet cause, children and technology.
Trump spoke generally about children living in or fleeing conflict as she opened a meeting on "Children, Technology, and Education in Conflict," saying the US "stands with all children throughout the world."
But the meeting was held as the US Department of Defense and Israeli officials refused to acknowledge what had been widely reported: On Saturday, as the US and Israel began launching airstrikes across Iran despite diplomatic talks that had recently been making progress, Israel struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' school in Minab as children gathered there for the school day.
The building was destroyed and the roof collapsed, killing at least 180 people, according to PBS NewsHour correspondent Leila Molana-Allen—the majority of whom were girls between the ages of 7 and 12. Nearly 100 people were also injured.
An Al Jazeera investigation on Tuesday found that the strike—which the Trump administration and the Israel Defense Forces claimed they were unaware of—was likely a "deliberate" attack, based on satellite imagery compiled over more than 10 years, video clips, news reports, and official Iranian statements.
The outlet noted that the southeastern region where Minab is located is a hub for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps naval forces. The school that was hit was part of a broad network of institutions that educate the children of IRGC members.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor emphasized in a statement that "allegations regarding the presence of military facilities elsewhere in Hormozgan Province do not alter the school’s civilian character or justify targeting it."
"Any deliberate attack on a school or on civilians, as well as any indiscriminate or disproportionate attack that violates the principles of distinction and proportionality, constitutes a grave breach and may amount to a war crime where intent to target the school is established or where the attack is indiscriminate or disproportionate," said the group on Sunday. "The military attack on Iran constitutes an act of aggression and violates the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) also said the bombing "constitutes a grave violation of the protection afforded to schools under international humanitarian law."
"Attacks against educational institutions endanger students and teachers and undermine the right to education," said the agency.
Ahead of the UN Security Council meeting led by the first lady, Iranian Ambassador to the UN Amir Saeid Iravani said it was "deeply shameful and hypocritical" for the US to convene a summit on protecting children in conflict as its joint strikes with Israel have killed close to 800 civilians across Iran in recent days.
“For the United States, ‘protecting children’ and ‘maintaining international peace and security’ clearly mean something very different from what the UN Charter provides,” said Iravani.
During the meeting, Rosemary DiCarlo, the UN undersecretary for political and peacebuilding affairs, noted that the attacks on Iran have underscored how children are impacted by conflict, specifically pointing to the shifts to remote learning that have been made in countries where US military bases are located, such as Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman.
About the strike on the school in Minab, DiCarlo said, “United States authorities have announced that they are looking into these reports.”
The stated goal of the meeting—protecting children's access to education in conflict zones—has also been undermined by President Donald Trump.
As the Associated Press reported, the UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict was among the UN offices that have suffered funding cuts under the Trump administration, with the White House withdrawing US support for its work in January.
UNESCO and the UN Children's Fund have also faced drastic funding reductions.
The first lady's status as chair of the meeting on children in conflict, said UN diplomat Mohamad Safa, "while the US and Israel killing children in Lebanon and Gaza, and murdered 165 schoolgirls in Iran, is the most hypocritical thing we have seen in the history of the Security Council."
Trump led the session the same day that Democracy for the Arab World Now called for an emergency General Assembly session to "declare the assault a war of aggression in violation of the UN Charter and to demand the immediate cessation of all hostilities.”
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Trump State Dept Announces Withdrawal From UNESCO Over Palestine Inclusion
Like: Palestinian officials responded by urging the U.S. not to "bind its own international standing to the crimes and violations committed by Israel."
Jul 22, 2025
The Trump administration's unrelenting backing of Israel was on display Tuesday as the U.S. State Department withdrew support for the United Nations agency tasked with promoting education and cultural understanding—but the organization's leader pledged that it would continue its work while welcoming "all the nations of the world."
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce cited the decision by the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to accept the state of Palestine as a member state as part of the reason for the Trump administration's withdrawal.
The inclusion of Palestine is "contrary to U.S. policy, and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization," Bruce claimed without citing examples.
Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the agency, said the U.S. withdrawal—which President Donald Trump also imposed during his first term, and which will eliminate about 8% of UNESCO's international funding—was "regrettable," but that the organization would continue operating without a reduction in staff, having prepared for the president's exit.
"In spite of President Donald Trump's first withdrawal in 2017, UNESCO stepped up its efforts to take action wherever its mission could contribute to peace and demonstrated the pivotal nature of its mandate," said Azoulay, noting that UNESCO adopted a "global standard-setting instrument on the ethics of artificial intelligence," developed major programs for education in conflict settings, took action to defend biodiversity, and oversaw the reconstruction of Mosul, Iraq—all without the participation of the United States.
Azoulay added that the reasons for the U.S. withdrawal, which will go into effect in December 2026, "contradict the reality of UNESCO's efforts, particularly in the field of Holocaust education and the fight against antisemitism."
"Palestine firmly rejects the justifications provided by the United States for its withdrawal, considering them an unacceptable politicization of UNESCO's work and a failed attempt to deflect attention from the violations committed by Israel."
The Trump administration, along with many establishment Democratic and Republican lawmakers, has explicitly equated expressions of support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel with antisemitism. UNESCO has denounced the Israeli government and military for their destruction of schools and cultural sites and their killing of journalists in Gaza.
Azoulay emphasized that UNESCO is "the only United Nations agency responsible" for promoting Holocaust education and for the global fight against antisemitism, "and its work has been unanimously acclaimed by major specialized organizations such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., the World Jewish Congress and its American Section, and the American Jewish Committee (AJC)."
"UNESCO will continue to carry out these missions," she said, "despite inevitably reduced resources."
The agency is also well known for designating World Heritage sites, more than 20 of which are in the United States.
U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the withdrawal from UNESCO "another assault by the Trump administration on international cooperation and U.S. global leadership."
Along with promoting education about the Holocaust, Meeks said, UNESCO "directly benefits the U.S. economy through its Creative Cities and World Heritage programs, through which the United States has recently secured two new World Heritage inscriptions in Ohio and Pennsylvania—promoting to the world the beauty, culture, and heritage of American cities."
Before Trump withdrew from UNESCO for the first time in 2017, the Obama administration cut funding to the organization after it admitted Palestine as a member state in 2011.
The state of Palestine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed "deep regret" over the Trump administration's decision on Tuesday.
"Palestine firmly rejects the justifications provided by the United States for its withdrawal, considering them an unacceptable politicization of UNESCO's work and a failed attempt to deflect attention from the violations committed by Israel, the illegal occupying power, against heritage, culture, and archaeological sites in Palestine, as well as in other areas such as education, science, media, and the environment," said officials.
The ministry also advised the U.S. not to "bind its own international standing to the crimes and violations committed by Israel."
"Otherwise," it said, "it would find itself compelled to withdraw from the entire multilateral international system, in order to shield Israel from accountability, thus encouraging it to continue perpetrating its crimes as a rogue state operating outside the framework of international legality."
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Antiwar Voices Honor Parnia Abbasi, Iranian Poet Killed by Israeli Bombing
"Women have always been the first victims in times of conflict," said one Iranian academic.
Jun 18, 2025
Peace advocates including a prominent Iranian academic and Venezuelan delegates to a United Nations event in Paris paid homage Wednesday to a young Iranian poet killed along with her parents and teenage brother last week during Israeli bombing of Tehran.
Parnia Abbasi, who was just days away from her 24th birthday, was killed in a June 13 airstrike on a residential complex in Tehran's Sattarkhan neighborhood during the first wave of Israel's unprovoked U.S.-backed war on Iran, which has reportedly killed at least 585 people and wounded over 1,300 others as of early Wednesday.
Iranian media reported that Parviz Abbasi and Masoumeh Shahriari—Parnia's retired father and mother—and her younger brother Parham Abbasi were also killed in the Israeli strike. The family was reportedly sleeping when their home was bombed.
According to The Washington Post's Yeganeh Torbati:
[Abbasi] dreamed of seeing the band Coldplay live in concert. She loved trying new foods and was learning Italian. She wrote poetry constantly and shared it with friends and family. She was so proud of having summited Iran's highest peak, Mount Damavand, that she made sure to mention that fact to everyone she met. She was, as her friends described in phone interviews and text messages this week, as bright and full of life as the sunflowers that she adored...
Abbasi's friends shared in interviews, messages, and on social media their favorite memories of her: how she took them camping outdoors for the first time, how she freely gave them gifts, how her sense of humor often took a moment to sink in and then bowled them over with laughter. She did silly dances for the camera.
The Tehran Times called Abbasi, who was also an English teacher, "a rising star among Iran's new generation of poets" who was "celebrated for her poignant and introspective poetry."
Abbasi was quoted in a memorial post by the literary magazine Vazn-e Donya as saying, "I look at everything that happens to me as something I might be able to write down—to express the feeling I had in that moment through poetry."
📢 A young Iranian poet Parnia Abbasi was killed after an Israeli attack hit her residential complex in Tehran. As the conflict between Israel and Iran escalates, more casualties are expected. PEN Sydney calls for a diplomatic resolution to ensure no more innocent lives are lost. 🕊️#iran #israel
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— PEN Sydney (@pensydney.bsky.social) June 16, 2025 at 6:54 PM
The following is an excerpt from Abbasi's best-known poem, The Extinguished Star, as translated by Ghazal Mosadeq:
you and I will come to an end
somewhere
the most beautiful poem in the world
falls quiet
you begin
somewhere
to cry the
murmur of life
but I will end
I burn
I'll be that extinguished star
in your sky
like smoke
The Tehran Times reported that renowned Iranian academic and artist Zahra Rahnavard—who according to the advocacy group PEN America has been under unofficial house arrest since 2011 for her women's rights activism—said during a Wednesday tribute to Abbasi that "women have always been the first victims in times of conflict."
"This time, they fell prey to bombardments carried out by a criminal infamous worldwide for killing women and children, from Gaza to Iran," she added, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine.
Members of Venezuela's delegation to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) 10th Assembly of the Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in Paris also honored Abassi Wednesday, lamenting that "a voice died, a legacy in the making, another opportunity for cultural dialogue among peoples."
Arvin Abedi, one of Abbasi's many friends, told the Post that "when war happens, it's not just military people... who are casualties... Ordinary people can easily be destroyed."
Abedi added that Abbasi "has the right to not be forgotten."
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Scientists Warn Major Glaciers Won't 'Survive This Century,' With Grave Impacts for Billions
"Preservation of glaciers is not just an environmental, economic, and societal necessity," said one expert. "It's a matter of survival."
Mar 21, 2025
Scientists on Friday spent the United Nations' World Water Day and first-ever World Day for Glaciers warning about how fossil fuel-driven global warming melts ice across the planet, endangering freshwater resources and causing seas to rise, with implications for ecosystems, economies, and billions of people.
In a Friday statement, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo pointed to a publication that the U.N. agency released earlier this week: "WMO's State of the Global Climate 2024 report confirmed that from 2022-24, we saw the largest three-year loss of glaciers on record."
"Seven of the 10 most negative mass balance years have occurred since 2016," Saulo continued. "Preservation of glaciers is not just an environmental, economic, and societal necessity. It's a matter of survival."
The WMO report was followed by the Friday launch of a 174-page document from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) that stresses how "billions of people depend on the fresh water that flows from increasingly fragile mountain environments."
"As the water towers of the world, mountains are an essential source of fresh water for (irrigated) agriculture, power generation, industry, and large and growing populations—in the mountains and also downstream," the report details. "Generally, due to higher precipitation and lower evaporation, mountains supply more surface runoff per unit area than lowlands, providing 55-60% of global annual freshwater flows."
The document, The United Nations World Water Development Report 2025—Mountains and glaciers: Water towers, notes that "major cities that have been critically dependent on mountain waters include Addis Ababa, Barcelona, Bogotá, Jakarta, Kathmandu, La Paz, Lima, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Mexico City, New Delhi, New York, Quito, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo."
"Globally, up to two-thirds of irrigated agriculture may depend on mountain waters," the report states, "while the number of people in lowlands that strongly depend on water from mountains increased worldwide from around 0.6 billion in the 1960s to some 1.8 billion in the 2000s. An additional 1 billion people in the lowlands benefit from supportive mountain runoff contributions."
"Most of the world's glaciers, including those in mountains, are melting at an accelerated rate worldwide," the publication adds. "Combined with accelerating permafrost thaw, declining snow cover, and more erratic snowfall patterns... this will have significant and irreversible impacts on local, regional, and global hydrology, including water availability."
“The 21st of March 2025 is being celebrated as the first-ever World Day for Glaciers. ‘Celebrate’? Yes, we should celebrate glaciers and their crucial role in sustaining life on Earth for future generations,” says @iceblogger.bsky.social. Great stats here on the importance of glaciers 🧊
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— Covering Climate Now (@coveringclimatenow.org) March 21, 2025 at 8:31 AM
The UNESCO publication follows the international Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (GlaMBIE) team's study, published in the journal Nature last month, showing that glaciers have lost an average of 273 billion metric tons of ice annually since 2000.
That figure "amounts to what the entire global population consumes in 30 years, assuming three liters per person and day," Michael Zemp, a professor at Switzerland's University of Zurich and director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service who co-led the GlaMBIE study, explained at the time.
Zemp pointed to that finding and others on Friday, noting that from 2000-23, glacier melt caused global seas to rise 18 mm or about 0.7 inches. He said, "This might not sound much, but it has a big impact: Every millimeter [of] sea-level rise exposes an additional 200,000 to 300,000 people to annual flooding."
In a U.N. video, experts also highlighted parts of the globe that are particularly impacted by melting glaciers. Zemp explained that in "the European Alps, we are one of the regions that is most affected by climate change. Warming is about double the global average, and indeed, glaciers in the Alps are one of the most suffering around the world."
"We have lost, since 2000, almost 40% of the remaining ice. And that means under current melt rates, glaciers will not survive this century in the Alps," he warned.
Today is the first-ever #WorldGlaciersDay!Glaciers provide water for millions of people, regulate sea levels, and support biodiversity.Yet glaciers are disappearing at an alarming rate.#ClimateAction is key to protecting them & supporting those who rely on glaciers.www.un.org/en/observanc...
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— IngerAndersen.bsky.social (@ingerandersen.bsky.social) March 21, 2025 at 9:57 AM
Scientists are also concerned about the Hindu Kush in the Himalayas, which are often called the "third pole because they hold a lot of water resources," WMO's Sulagna Mishra said in the video. "Here, more than 120 million farmers in the downstream areas are impacted directly because of the melting of the glaciers."
"So, when there are a lot of floods, for example, happening because of melting of glaciers, the livelihoods are changed, people tend to migrate from one place to another," she continued. "So when you ask me how many people are actually impacted, it's really everyone."
As Carbon Brief reported Friday:
Dr. Aditi Mukherji—the director of the climate change, adaptation, and mitigation impact action platform of the CGIAR—tells Carbon Brief that the report is an important call for more "adaptation efforts and funding."
She says that mountain-dwelling communities are "already quite vulnerable due to their remote location and other developmental deficits" and are "increasingly losing their way of life due to no fault of theirs."
However, in some parts of the world, especially the United States, such calls face the pro-fossil fuel agenda of polluting companies and right-wing policymakers that are working to quash the movement for a just transition to clean energy by any means necessary.
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The Nightmarish Truth Behind World Heritage Sites
UNESCO must abandon its support for a conservation model that annihilates Indigenous peoples; it should begin by de-listing sites where human rights abuses occur.
Sep 18, 2024
I stand, mesmerized by the landscape. Distant mountains are cloaked in every shade of green, and a clear, still lake reflects the sky. The deep amber sunset lights the golden script carved into the wooden sign: Kaeng Krachan National Park.
Nearby, a young couple captures the moment in a selfie—a postcard from paradise, one of Thailand’s World Heritage Sites.
“Not there... there!” Kai, our guide, tugs my arm, and points to a spot by the river. “That’s where they found part of Billy’s body.” And, just like that, my reverie breaks.
For many Indigenous people, their lands declared as World Heritage Sites morph into alien territories, belonging not to them, but to “all the peoples of the world”—especially the fee-paying tourists.
Pholachi “Billy” Rakchongcharoen was an Indigenous Karen activist. He was collecting honey when he was arrested by park officials and vanished. Five years later, pieces of his skull surfaced in a drum under a bridge—right here in paradise. Billy was just 30, about the same age as those young selfie takers.
Later, we meet Menor, his widow. Her eyes heavy with sorrow, she says, “Why do we need a World Heritage Site on our ancestral land? It never gives the community any benefits. It just takes things away from us.”
This landscape, hailed by UNESCO for its “outstanding value to all humanity,” is home to a tragedy. And the Karen people, its true custodians, are its victims. The Karen practice rotational agriculture—where different plots of land are used over successive years and then left fallow for up to a decade. Essentially, they prepare a new area for planting by using controlled fires, which enrich the soil and enhance biodiversity. All of this is accompanied by rituals and ceremonies to honor the Earth, their food provider. Since colonial times, conservationists, blind to this harmony, branded it pejoratively as “slash and burn.”
In 1996, the Karen of Bang Kloi village were evicted by the government under the guise of protecting the park. They resisted. Billy was one of them—until his voice was silenced.
Inspired by Billy and his grandfather, the indomitable Ko-ee who died aged 107 after a lifetime of resistance, the Karen of Bang Kloi reclaimed their territory in 2020, only to be violently expelled again. Despite this grim history, despite the pleas of three United Nations special rapporteurs to address human rights concerns before the designation, UNESCO assigned the Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex (KKFC) World Heritage Site (WHS) status in 2021. The accolade was in the category “natural criteria,” defined as a “significant natural habitat for in-situ conservation of biological diversity.”
But despite the beliefs of UNESCO experts and tourists, the Kaeng Krachan habitat did not occur naturally. The landscape was sculpted and nurtured by Indigenous people for generations. As one Karen man pointed out, “The WHS staff only see the forest and animals; they don’t see the people. They don’t see us. It’s a kind of blindness.”
Another Karen voice added bluntly, “KKFC becoming a WHS is a serious violation of human rights.”
Since its designation as a World Heritage Site there’s been an increase in harassment and arrests, and a tightening of restrictions. Karen people said that the World Heritage status meant that attempts to force everyone out of the forest “have got worse”.
This isn’t just a Thai tragedy. It’s a global one. Human rights investigations have documented torture, rape, and killings of Indigenous people in “natural” World Heritage Sites—especially in Asia and Africa. These sites, celebrated for their beauty and ecological importance, become war zones for the locals. Governments and NGOs, armed with UNESCO’s blessing, push the Indigenous people out and blame them for the degradation of what they have long protected.
Countries crave UNESCO’s nod. It brings prestige, tourists, funding. But for those evicted, it’s a nightmare.
In my travels with Survival International, the global movement for Indigenous peoples’ rights, I’ve seen these “wonders of the world.” The Serengeti’s vast plains, Odzala’s shadowy Congo forests, India’s tiger reserves, Yosemite’s grandeur—all share a dark secret. The pristine wilderness tourists adore is soaked with Indigenous blood, sweat, and tears. These landscapes were their homes, sustained by their knowledge and practices until outsiders decided they were “wild nature,” needing protection from the very people who understood them best. It’s colonialism masquerading as conservation.
For many Indigenous people, their lands declared as World Heritage Sites morph into alien territories, belonging not to them, but to “all the peoples of the world”—especially the fee-paying tourists.
We need to put this conservation model on trial, just as we did with other unjust, outdated, and harmful ideas—racial segregation, gender inequality. The true protectors of our shared natural heritage are Indigenous peoples. Their ways of life are sustainable, rooted in providing for future generations. For them, nature is home, the foundation of life and survival. They are the best stewards of the natural world. As one group of Karen declared, defiant despite the years of oppression: “If we don’t fight today, there will be no future for our children.”
UNESCO must abandon its support for a conservation model that annihilates Indigenous peoples. It should begin by de-listing sites where human rights abuses occur. Only then can it begin to decolonize itself—and genuinely protect our planet.
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Researchers Warn of Imminent 'Death Spiral' for Rapidly Melting Alaska Ice Field
The Juneau ice field is melting at a rate of 50,000 gallons per second and is possibly heading "beyond a dynamic tipping point," a new study says.
Jul 02, 2024
The melting of Alaska's Juneau ice field—which contains more than 1,000 glaciers—is accelerating and could reach a tipping point much sooner than predicted, according to research published Tuesday.
The study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that ice loss from the Juneau ice field began accelerating rapidly after 2005.
The paper's authors found that "rates of area shrinkage were five times faster from 2015-2019 than from 1979-1990," while glacier volume loss—which had remained relatively consistent from 1770-1979—doubled after 2010.
"Forty years from now, what is it going to look like? I do think by then the Juneau ice field will be past the tipping point."
"Thinning has become pervasive across the icefield plateau since 2005, accompanied by glacier recession and fragmentation," the study states. "As glacier thinning on the plateau continues, a mass balance-elevation feedback is likely to inhibit future glacier regrowth, potentially pushing glaciers beyond a dynamic tipping point."
Study lead author Bethan Davies, a glaciologist at Newcastle University in England, said in a statement, "It's incredibly worrying that our research found a rapid acceleration since the early 21st century in the rate of glacier loss across the Juneau ice field."
"Alaskan icefields—which are predominantly flat, plateau icefields—are particularly vulnerable to accelerated melt as the climate warms since ice loss happens across the whole surface, meaning a much greater area is affected," Davies continued. "Additionally, flatter ice caps and icefields cannot retreat to higher elevations and find a new equilibrium."
"As glacier thinning on the Juneau plateau continues and ice retreats to lower levels and warmer air, the feedback processes this sets in motion is likely to prevent future glacier regrowth, potentially pushing glaciers beyond a tipping point into irreversible recession," she added.
Study co-author Mauri Pelto, a professor of environmental science at Nichols College in Massachusetts, told The Associated Press that the Juneau ice field is melting at a rate of about 50,000 gallons per second.
"When you go there the changes from year to year are so dramatic that it just hits you over the head," Pelto said. "In 1981, it wasn't too hard to get on and off the glaciers. You just hike up and you could you could ski to the bottom or hike right off the end of these glaciers. But now they've got lakes on the edges from melted snow and crevasses opening up that makes it difficult to ski."
As the AP reported:
Only four Juneau ice field glaciers melted out of existence between 1948 and 2005. But 64 of them disappeared between 2005 and 2019, the study said. Many of the glaciers were too small to name, but one larger one, Antler glacier, "is totally gone," Pelto said.
Alaska climatologist Brian Brettschneider, who was not part of the study, said the acceleration is most concerning, warning of "a death spiral" for the thinning ice field.
Pelto said that "the tipping point is when that snow line goes above your entire ice field, ice sheet, ice glacier, whichever one."
"And so for the Juneau ice field, 2019, 2018, showed that you are not that far away from that tipping point," he added. "We're 40 years from when I first saw the glacier. And so, 40 years from now, what is it going to look like? I do think by then the Juneau ice field will be past the tipping point."
It's not just Alaska. Glaciers around the world—from Greenland to Switzerland to Africa and the Himalayas—are melting at an alarming rate. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization warned in 2022 that glaciers in one-third of the 50 UNESCO World Heritage sites where they are found are on pace to disappear by 2050—even if planet-heating emissions are curbed.
Another study published last year by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Alaska found that even if humanity manages to limit planetary heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial temperatures—the more ambitious goal of the Paris agreement—half of Earth's glaciers are expected to melt by the end of the century.
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Gaza Journalists Killed by Israel Honored on World Press Freedom Day
"To claim these deaths are accidental is not only incredulous, it is insulting to the memory of professionals who lived their lives in service of truth and accuracy," said one expert.
May 03, 2024
As the international community marked World Press Freedom Day on Friday, journalists and advocates across the globe mourned and celebrated those killed in Israel's ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.
The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has publicly identified at least 97 media workers killed since Israel launched its retaliatory war on October 7: 92 Palestinian, three Lebanese, and two Israeli reporters.
"Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price—their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth," said CPJ program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in a Friday statement. "Journalists are civilians who are protected by international humanitarian law in times of conflict. Those responsible for their deaths face dual trials: one under international law and another before history's unforgiving gaze."
Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF)—or Reporters Without Borders—puts the journalist death toll in Gaza above 100. Middle East Monitor reports at least 144 members of the press are among the 34,622 Palestinians that Israeli forces have killed in less than seven months in what the International Court of Justice has called a plausibly genocidal campaign.
RSF on Friday released its annual Press Freedom Index. In its section on the Middle East, the group states:
Palestine (157th), the most dangerous country for reporters, is paying a high price. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have so far killed more than 100 journalists in Gaza, including at least 22 in the course of their work. Since the start of the war, Israel (101st) has been trying to suppress the reporting coming out of the besieged enclave while disinformation infiltrates its own media ecosystem.
At the war's six-month mark in April, Jonathan Dagher, head of RSF's Middle East desk, declared that "this massacre must stop. Gaza's reporters must be protected, those who wish must be evacuated, and Gaza's gates must be opened to international media."
"The few reporters who have been able to leave bear witness to the same terrifying reality of journalists being attacked, injured, and killed," he continued, ripping the IDF for "silencing those who are driven by a duty to report the facts."
"RSF calls on the international community, its leaders, and its governments, to do everything to step up pressure on the Israeli authorities to end this disaster," Dagher added. "Palestinian journalism must be protected as a matter of urgency."
The Paris-based group nominated Palestinian journalists covering Gaza for an annual award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)—an honor they received during a ceremony on Thursday.
"Each year, the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Prize pays tribute to the courage of journalists facing difficult and dangerous circumstances," said Audrey Azoulay, the U.N. organization's director-general. "Once again this year, the prize reminds us of the importance of collective action to ensure that journalists around the world can continue to carry out their essential work to inform and investigate."
Palestinian journalists covering Israel’s war on Gaza have been awarded UNESCO’s World Press Freedom prize. More than 100 journalists, mostly Palestinians, have been killed in the war. pic.twitter.com/uSfIKsqTyQ
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 3, 2024
Nasser Abu Baker, president of the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate and vice-president of the International Federation of Journalists, accepted the prize on behalf of his colleagues in the besieged enclave.
"Journalists in Gaza have endured a sustained attack by the Israeli army of unprecedented ferocity—but have continued to do their jobs, as witnesses to the carnage around them," he said. "It is justified that they should be honored on World Press Freedom Day. What we have seen in Gaza is surely the most sustained and deadly attack on press freedom in history. This award shows that the world has not forgotten and salutes their sacrifice for information."
Mariam Abu Dagga, a 31-year-old photojournalist for the Independent Arabic displaced in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, told CNN: "We are covering the war on Gaza because this is our journalistic duty. It is entrusted upon us... We challenged the Israeli occupation. We challenged the difficult circumstances and the reality of this war, a genocidal war."
"Whenever a journalist is targeted, we ask ourselves who among us will get their turn of being targeted tomorrow," said Abu Dagga, who also noted the emotional toll of tasks such as photographing children beneath the rubble.
“Palestinian journalists have seen what no journalist has.”
For #WorldPressFreedomDay, we spoke to Palestinian journalist Hani Aburezeq, who's been showing the world Israel’s war on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/YikPzX12a7
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 3, 2024
While Israel has repeatedly claimed—as it did to CNN on Friday—that "the IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists," members of the press and others have cast doubt on such comments.
“For far too long Israel has been able to operate with impunity in the occupied Palestinian territory, and this has included occasionally killing reporters, like the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022," Simon Adams, president of the Center for Victims of Torture, told the Inter Press Service.
Given the number of journalists killed in Gaza since October, he said, "to claim these deaths are accidental is not only incredulous, it is insulting to the memory of professionals who lived their lives in service of truth and accuracy."
Simon called for all journalist deaths in Gaza to be reported to the International Criminal Court and asserted that "World Press Freedom Day should be celebrated with a black armband this year."
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Get Smartphones Out of K-12 Schools, Say Child Advocates and Educators
"How can we expect kids to learn and teachers to teach when there are concerts, movies, parties, cyberbullies, shopping malls, and drug dealers in their pockets?" said the leader of a letter to the U.S. education secretary.
Oct 25, 2023
Dozens of parents, child advocates, and researchers this week called on U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to issue an official advisory "urging U.S. K-12 schools to adopt phone-free policies" to "promote student achievement, foster educational excellence, and ensure an equitable experience for all."
"We are a community of individuals and organizations who see an academic, mental health, and teaching crisis in every state of the union that can be improved automatically and effectually with a single strategy: removing students' personal mobile devices from our places of learning (with notable exceptions for those with special educational or medical needs)," states the Monday letter to Cardona.
"If all students are phone-free during the school day, there will be less distraction, less inappropriate content viewed, less cyberbullying, less planned fights," the letter stresses. "There will be more focus on academics, development of social skills, and students engaging with each other—in class and at extracurricular activities."
In 2019-20—the most recent data available—nearly 77% of U.S. public schools prohibited nonacademic use of cellphones or smartphones during school hours, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. However, research suggests much more needs to be done.
As the letter details:
According to the Common Sense Media report, Constant Companion: A Week in the Life of a Young Person's Smartphone Use, released this month, "Phone use during school hours is nearly universal but varies widely, reflecting a patchwork of different school policies." 97% of participants used their phones during school hours for an average of 43 minutes per day. The majority of students' time was spent on social media (32%), gaming (17%), and YouTube (26%). Mobile devices are a deterrent to learning.
Those findings are part of the growing collection of research and reporting that the signatories—including experts in early childhood development, education, psychology, and technology—highlighted to make the case for phone-free U.S. schools.
Researchers and journalists have documented differences in students' note-taking and grades as well as "alarming" misuse of personal devices, "from sexting to air-dropping compromising photos to hundreds of classmates with one click, to purchasing drugs," the letter notes. A theater teacher in Colorado told The Denver Post that her students are "more hesitant to take risks in class because they fear that they will be recorded, the video will be posted online, and then they will be judged."
The journalism referenced in the letter also captures positive responses to well-implemented policies, such as "phone hotels" where kids stash their devices during instruction. Public school district superintendents from Illinois to Maine told Education Week that students have thanked them for ending the distraction of phones in class.
Florida's newly implemented statewide ban "has been extraordinarily positive for [students'] mental health from an anecdotal perspective," one principal told Education Week. "Our kids are way more engaged. The apathy that we had seen from them in the last year to two years has seemed to wane. They seem more like they're waking back up to a social experience."
In addition to an official U.S. Department of Education advisory, the letter signatories urged Cardona to "encourage state boards of education to offer grants, like those offered in Massachusetts," to implement policies on the use of electronic devices.
The letter emphasizes the urgency of the situation, citing U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy's May advisory about the effects of social media on young people, which states that "at a moment when we are experiencing a national youth mental health crisis, now is the time to act swiftly and decisively to protect children and adolescents from risk of harm."
As Common Dreams reported, 41 states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday filed a pair of lawsuits against Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to protect children from features they argue are designed to keep users addicted to social media.
Efforts to better protect kids from social media platforms and electronic devices used to access them are far from limited to the United States. The letter points to China, England, and France's education-related phone policies as well as a recent United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report that advocates for a global ban on smartphones in schools.
"Phones are polluting our schools. They sabotage the teaching and learning processes," said Lisa Cline of the Screen Time Action Network at Fairplay for Kids, who spearheaded the letter to Cardona, in a statement on Wednesday.
"We know empirically that they are distracting—by design—so it's not a fair fight," she added. "How can we expect kids to learn and teachers to teach when there are concerts, movies, parties, cyberbullies, shopping malls, and drug dealers in their pockets?"
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