By Elaine Glusac
View of the coastal plain with Igaliku/ Garðar (click here) (Greenland)
UNESCO 2017 (click here)
Unesco annually expands its list (click here) of World Heritage Sites, and this year’s class of inductees, announced in July, offers both stimulation for travelers, with a rich and varied group of intriguing sites, and a reminder, especially with its remote and more vulnerable picks, that the list itself is not about tourism.
The World Heritage program aims to identify and protect cultural and natural sites around the world that demonstrate “outstanding value to humanity,” according to its website.
Those spots sometimes constitute the most sought-after destinations for global travel: the Great Wall of China, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru. Others, though, are more obscure or hard to reach or both, including three members of the class of 2017: Okinoshima, a sacred island in Japan; Dauria, a wild landscape shared by Mongolia and Russia; and Asmara, the capital of Eritrea in East Africa.
Okinoshima, for example, is off limits to women, per ancient practice. But it is the inclusion of Asmara, cited by Unesco for its modernist architecture dating to its era as an Italian colony, that is perhaps the most controversial choice. Eritrea is the subject of a U.S. State Department travel warning noting that the government restricts travel of foreigners to Asmara. The United Nations has accused Eritrea’s government of crimes against humanity, including enslavement and murder....
