A/HRC/37/29 52. In a video message, Mr. Masoudi explained that the staff at the National Museum of Afghanistan had transported 30,000 artefacts to safe areas when Kabul was affected by civil war in the late 1980s. That act had saved the precious artefacts, including Bactrian treasures. 53. He urged States to cooperate and facilitate the work of museum professionals, so that they could ensure the transfer of cultural heritage to future generations. Mr. Masoudi stressed that destruction of the cultural heritage was a crime, and noted that a nation stayed alive when its culture and history stayed alive. 54. Mr. Stone recalled the unbreakable link between people and their tangible and intangible heritage. Cultural heritage did not speak for itself; it needed to be interpreted and used by people to come alive. 55. He reported that the Blue Shield had brought heritage experts and military forces together to protect cultural heritage during armed conflict and following natural disasters. The Blue Shield approach set out the four time periods in which heritage experts needed to work alongside military forces: in the long term; immediately before a conflict; during a conflict; and in the post-conflict or stabilization phase. The approach identified seven risks to cultural heritage resulting from armed conflict: lack of planning; spoils of war; military lack of awareness about heritage; collateral damage; looting; enforced neglect; and specific targeting. By mitigating each of the seven the overall risk to that heritage could be lowered. 56. Mr. Stone provided a set of recommendations for the protection of cultural heritage that addressed ratification of relevant instruments, a human rights-based approach, granting visas to cultural heritage defenders, education, illicit trade, economic sustainability and the mandate of armed forces, which are reflected in section VI. B. Summary of discussions and inputs received 57. During the interactive discussion, representatives of Azerbaijan, Armenia and the Plurinational State of Bolivia took the floor, along with representatives of the following organizations: Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project in the Syrian Arab Republic, Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage in Cyprus and Turquoise Mountain. Written inputs were also received from States and civil society. 58. Participants noted that the safeguarding of tangible and intangible heritage was essential to lasting peace and sustainable development. They stressed the importance of integrating a human rights-based approach to the preservation of cultural heritage and the need to develop a clear plan of action on how to protect and preserve cultural heritage. 59. Some participants underscored that it was crucial to create conditions for the meaningful engagement of rights holders in protecting cultural heritage and ensuring accountability for its destruction. They underscored that the greater challenge was to preserve the conditions that enabled the creation of cultural goods and practices, such as the enjoyment of cultural rights and the rights to health, education, security and sustainable socioeconomic development, rather than the cultural goods and practices themselves. 60. It was also pointed out that the protection, preservation and restoration of cultural heritage could be effective if sites were planned to be of benefit for local populations through direct participatory mechanisms. Sites could become sources of income and contribute to poverty alleviation and employment generation. The representative of the Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage in Cyprus also noted the linkage between cultural heritage and economic incentives. Unless cultural heritage was an integral part of economic development, ratification of international law instruments alone would not suffice. Ms. Quaedvlieg-Mihailovic underscored the need to apply a holistic approach to measuring the value of cultural heritage; that value could not be only economic, but was also environmental, social and cultural. 61. Kristen A. Carpenter, member of the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, in a written submission underscored that indigenous peoples’ oral, visual, and other representations were not usually protected by national or international laws and thus 9