The Institute of National Historic and Artistic Heritage (Iphan) instituted this Tuesday (21) the return of the Management Committee of Cais do Valongo, an archaeological site in the central region of Rio de Janeiro, which has been recognized since 2017 as a World Heritage Site by the Organization of United Nations for Education, Science and Culture (Unesco). 
The group will be made up of 15 civil society institutions and 16 government entities from the federal, state and municipal spheres. The main responsibility is to plan actions for the preservation, revitalization and promotion of the archaeological site. It is expected that meetings will take place at least once a month.
Among the committee’s institutions are the Ministry of Culture, the Palmares Foundation, the Brazilian Institute of Museums (Ibram) and the National Archive. Other institutions will be invited to participate in the meetings, but without voting rights, such as the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office and the UNESCO Office in Brazil. IPHAN will be the committee’s work coordinator. The prediction is that the members will take office tomorrow (23), at an event in Rio de Janeiro.
The operation of the management committee is one of the requirements of Unesco in order to maintain the title of heritage. It was created in 2018, met only twice and was extinguished by presidential decree in 2019. The Federal Court welcomed a lawsuit filed by the MPF in 2021 and determined the committee’s reinstallation. But IPHAN’s management at the time appealed the decision and obtained an injunction to keep the group inactive.
“It is important to highlight that the formation of the committee was based on a collective process and through a lot of listening and a lot of dialogue. From now on, the preparation and execution of actions will also continue to be done jointly”, said the president of Iphan, Leandro Grass. “Our primary objective is to protect the Site, making it a space of memory and historical reference”, he added.
