The first annual sub-regional conference “Volga-Caspian Corridor of the Silk Road”

The first annual sub-regional conference “Volga-Caspian Corridor of the Silk Road” was held in Baku (Azerbaijan) within the UNESCO and Japan FiT project “Support Silk Roads World Heritage Nomination(s) Process” (Phase III).

The event was organized by the UNESCO World Heritage Center and the International Institute for Central Asian Studies (IICAS, Samarkand) jointly with the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Permanent Delegation of the Republic of Azerbaijan to UNESCO and the National Commission of the Republic of Azerbaijan for UNESCO.

The meeting was attended by national coordinators and experts of the working group of the Serial Transnational Nomination “Silk Roads: Volga-Caspian Corridor” (Azerbaijan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan), as well as representatives of UNESCO, Teikyo University of Japan, UCL and IICAS. From the Republic of Tatarstan, the conference was attended by the Director of the Institute of Archaeology named after A.Kh. Khalikov of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, Doctor of History, Academician of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences A.G. Sitdikov.

During the conference, activity of the countries, included in the project, on identification and documentation of the “Silk Roads: Volga-Caspian Corridor” and preservation of its individual potential components were considered. The conference resulted in agreement on the general plan of project implementation and noted the need to expand the working group and coordination mechanisms of the process of nomination “Silk Roads: Volga-Caspian Corridor” to the World Heritage List.