Recovery for Built and Living Heritage in Conflict Contexts in the Middle East

Developing a comprehensive cultural heritage framework through the Recovery for Built and Living Heritage guidance offers a structured response to the complex challenges of post-conflict reconstruction. This approach promotes the recovery of both built and living heritage through integrated, human-centred management, aiming to conserve historic cities as living and evolving urban environments rather than static monuments. Urban cultural heritage plays a critical role in strengthening community identity, sense of belonging, and social cohesion, while fostering inclusion and equity. Conserving heritage assets and traditional settlement patterns supports inclusive socio-economic development, poverty reduction, improved urban liveability, and long-term sustainability. It also provides a framework to guide new development within historic and surrounding urban contexts. Heritage must be preserved and transmitted to future generations not as museum artefacts, but as adaptive systems shaped by geography, climate, construction traditions, and social practices. In post-conflict contexts, heritage becomes a foundation for human resilience, enabling communities to rebuild both physical fabric and social bonds through shared memory and collective practices—key elements for long-term peace. Built heritage embodies both tangible and intangible values accumulated over time. Its conservation therefore extends beyond physical restoration to include cultural, social, aesthetic, spiritual, and economic dimensions. Compared to intangible heritage alone, built heritage provides a spatial framework that enables the revival of traditions, skills, and community life. Experiences from historic centres in the Middle East illustrate how human-centred, community-based approaches can successfully reactivate both tangible and intangible heritage in conflict-affected environments. The proposed action aims to enhance resilience, cultural identity, social cohesion, and inter-community reconciliation by creating job opportunities and developing youth skills among internally displaced persons and returnees in the Old City of Aleppo, with potential application to other historic centres such as the Old City of Damascus. This approach aligns with the WUF theme “Housing the World: Safe and Resilient Cities and Communities” by linking heritage-led recovery to safe housing, social stability, and resilient urban communities.