Inside Télé-Liban's headquarters in Beirut, Aug. 11, 2023. (Credit: JOSEPH EID/AFP)
BEIRUT — Caretaker Minister of Information Ziad Makary and the UNESCO office in Beirut announced on Monday a new initiative for the archive digitilization of Lebanon's only public television channel, Télé-Liban's. This initiative, the “Documentary Heritage Emergency Intervention for Télé-Liban Archives,” will take place with the support of Switzerland-based NGO "Aliph Foundation," as part of a wider technical support package offered by UNESCO leading to the preparation of the nomination file of the TeleLiban archives that can be submitted to the UNESCO Memory of the World international registry, according to state-run National News Agency (NNA).
Founded in 1959, Télé-Liban is Lebanon's only public television channel and the first television network established in the Arab world on a state level. In 2010, work began on modernizing the Télé-Liban archive and transferring it to updated equipment.
UNESCO's 'Memory of the World'
Makary's adviser for Francophone Affairs, Elissar Geagea, told L'Orient Today on Monday that the "ministry is preparing a file to submit the archive application to the Memory of the World program and listing all the possible themes that could be included in the application.
As part of the initiative which is funded by Aliph, UNESCO will be intervening in the digitalization of the archives. According to Elissar, the donation will support the team handling the archives, enabling them to put in extra hours to finish quicker and will also provide two machines to speed up the process.
She added that UNESCO and Aliph's support lasts for one year and the team will need to keep working alone after this period.
Lebanon has been seeking UNESCO recognition for the archives of Télé-Liban. In December 2023, Lebanon's caretaker Information Minister Ziad Makary told AFP that the country would apply to have the "full archives of Télé-Liban added to the UN cultural body's Memory of the World international registry.
Memory of the World is a UNESCO global program that aims to facilitate the preservation of the world's documentary heritage, particularly in areas affected by conflict and/or natural disasters, to enable universal access to documentary heritage worldwide, and to promote public awareness of the importance of documentary heritage among the wider public.
Lebanon already counts two entries on the Memory of the World Register — commemorative stelae spanning more than three millennia at a site north of Beirut, and the Phoenician alphabet, which the UN body's website describes as "the prototype for all alphabets in the world."
In 2022, an agreement was signed between the Ministry of Information, the management of Télé-Liban, the French Embassy in Beirut and the National Audiovisual Institute (INA) to launch a project called “safeguarding, digitization and promotion of the media heritage." This project, financed by France at the cost of half a million euros, enabled the start of the inventory and digitization of the data of TeleLiban, the NNA and another body linked to the Ministry of Information.
