The International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH) is the principal global fund exclusively dedicated to the protection of heritage in conflict zones and post-conflict situations. It was created in response to the massive destruction of cultural heritage that began to escalate in recent years as a result of terrorism and war in the Middle East and the Sahel region.

 

ALIPH selects, finances, and steers protection or rehabilitation projects of monuments, sites, museums, collections of artifacts or manuscripts, places of worship, and intangible heritage. These are led and implemented by the Foundation’s partners, including NGOs and cultural institutions. The ALIPH way can be summed up in three words: action, agility, and the field. To date, ALIPH has supported 180 projects in over 30 countries on 4 continents. The organization is run with the mindset of a startup, making it an agile instrument, ready to respond quickly during crises. Its reactivity was demonstrated most recently in Ukraine: since early March, it has provided funding to more than 260 cultural heritage organizations (museums, libraries, archives, conservation institutions, etc).

 

A public-private partnership, ALIPH has counted seven member States since its founding – China, France, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Morocco, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – and three private donors – Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan, the Fondation Gandur pour l’art, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation – and Switzerland, its host country. Since then, other foundations and countries have made commitments to ALIPH, including Monaco, Oman, and Romania. Recently, the European Union and the Getty Trust have supported ALIPH’s work in Ukraine.