L’aphasie, une subite perte de la parole, ne se retrouve sous le feu des projecteurs que lorsqu’elle touche des personnalités médiatiques. Pourtant, ce trouble, qui entraîne non seulement de grandes difficultés de communication, mais aussi une grande détresse psychique, affecte des centaines de milliers de personnes en France.

En janvier dernier a eu lieu la première « évacuation médicale » de l’histoire de la Nasa. Quatre astronautes de la Station spatiale internationale (ISS) ont été ramenés sur Terre en urgence. Ce n’est toutefois que le 27 mars que l’agence spatiale états-unienne a donné plus de détails sur l’incident à l’origine de ce rapatriement exceptionnel.

Le public a alors appris que, le 7 janvier dernier, un membre de l’équipage, l’astronaute Mike Fincke, a expérimenté un épisode d’aphasie. Cet ancien colonel de l’US Air Force âgé de 59 ans s’est subitement retrouvé incapable de parler, alors qu’il était en train de prendre son repas.

En France, on estime que plus de 300 000 personnes souffrent d’aphasie. Pourtant, cette affection reste peu connue du grand public. Rien d’étonnant à cela, puisque ce sujet fait rarement la une des médias, sauf lorsqu’une célébrité en est victime, comme ce fut le cas pour Jean-Paul Belmondo et Sharon Stone au début des années 2000, ou Bruce Willis en 2022. Voici ce qu’il faut savoir de ce trouble.

Quand le langage se perd

L’aphasie est une déficience acquise du langage. Elle résulte le plus souvent d’un accident vasculaire cérébral (AVC), mais peut également survenir à la suite d’un traumatisme crânien, d’une tumeur cérébrale, d’une infection ou d’une maladie neurodégénérative.

Ce trouble se manifeste par des difficultés d’expression ou de compréhension du langage oral ou écrit. Mike Fincke, l’astronaute de l’ISS, a rapidement retrouvé ses capacités à parler. Malheureusement, ce n’est pas le cas de la majeure partie des personnes aphasiques, lesquelles vivent en permanence avec cette affection.

L’aphasie est reconnue par l’Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS) comme un « handicap de communication ». Elle entraîne en effet des limitations importantes en matière de communication, qui conduisent également à des restrictions durables de participation sociale, familiale, professionnelle et même citoyenne.

Des capacités cognitives préservées

Globalement, chez les personnes aphasiques, les pensées, les sentiments, « l’intelligence » et les capacités cognitives utilisées dans la vie quotidienne ne sont pas altérées. De nombreux travaux ont montré que les processus cognitifs fondamentaux peuvent demeurer préservés malgré des atteintes sévères du langage.

Les personnes aphasiques savent ce qu’elles veulent dire, formulent des intentions de communication claires et conservent leur capacité à comprendre le monde et à prendre des décisions. Elles sont capables d’évaluation, de jugement, de discernement, de décision et gardent de manière générale leurs aptitudes à effectuer des choix fondés sur des préférences, à planifier des actions, à élaborer des solutions pour des situations problématiques du quotidien.

Ces patients rencontrent cependant des difficultés parfois majeures pour exprimer leurs pensées et interagir avec autrui. Ce problème constitue une source de frustration et de souffrance intenses et persistantes non seulement pour elles, mais également pour leur entourage.

Un point important à garder à l’esprit est que les conséquences de l’aphasie vont au-delà de problèmes pratiques de communication. Les personnes qui en souffrent développent souvent des troubles psychologiques majeurs. Si l’on considère l’ensemble des maladies et des handicaps, l’aphasie est celle qui est liée aux souffrances psychologiques et sociales les plus fortes, davantage encore que les handicaps lourds, comme la tétraplégie, ou des maladies fortement angoissantes, comme le cancer.

En témoigne le taux important de suicides, de troubles dépressifs et anxieux ainsi que de stress délétère chez les personnes qui souffrent d’aphasie. En outre, leurs aidants, souvent démunis, se retrouvent eux-mêmes fréquemment en forte détresse psychologique.

Une détresse sévère et insuffisamment prise en charge

Dans les mois qui suivent un AVC, quasiment toutes les personnes aphasiques souffrent d’une détresse psychologique élevée. Celle-ci résulte d’un fort sentiment de solitude et d’une faible satisfaction sociale. Par ailleurs, les trois quarts d’entre elles présentent des symptômes de dépression.

Cette situation ne s’améliore guère avec le temps. En effet, un an après l’AVC, plus de 60 % des patients sont encore concernés. Sur la durée, environ une personne sur deux continue de présenter des symptômes dépressifs. Et deux ans après l’AVC, une personne aphasique sur trois souffre d’une dépression avérée.

Par ailleurs, environ 44 % des personnes aphasiques développent d’importants symptômes anxieux et beaucoup sont en plus soumis à un fort stress chronique associé à une détresse émotionnelle. Plus inquiétant encore, le risque de souffrance psychologique reste élevé très longtemps et persiste toujours dix-huit ans après l’accident vasculaire.

Ce handicap de communication contraint de nombreux individus à développer des stratégies d’évitement : limiter les contacts téléphoniques, abandonner des loisirs impliquant des échanges verbaux ou des discussions avec les autres, comme des repas entre amis. La participation sociale diminue dans un grand nombre de cas. Les relations avec les amis se raréfient, limitant alors les contacts à la famille proche, à la condition que celle-ci ne les délaisse pas à son tour… L’individu est souvent isolé socialement, parfois marginalisé.

Il ressent dès lors une « solitude existentielle » liée à la difficulté à participer pleinement aux échanges de la vie quotidienne. L’identité individuelle et sociale, tout comme l’image de soi, s’altèrent également. Il est difficile pour la personne aphasique de parler d’elle, de ses idées, de se confier, de s’affirmer, de se défendre, c’est-à-dire de développer ces comportements essentiels à l’équilibre mental et au lien social.

La difficulté à parler peut en outre dégrader le sentiment d’autonomie, de compétence et l’estime de soi. Ce mouvement est alimenté par de fréquentes expériences sociales déclenchant des malentendus et des dévalorisations, possibles sources d’anxiété sociale. De plus, certains des rôles sociaux antérieurs à l’aphasie (professionnels, associatifs, etc.) sont souvent profondément modifiés ou abandonnés, ce qui prive la personne de fonctions socialement valorisées et de repères identitaires majeurs.

Des erreurs de jugement aux conséquences considérables

Largement méconnu du grand public et de certains professionnels de santé insuffisamment formés, ce handicap invisible est mal compris socialement, ce qui conduit fréquemment à des interprétations erronées.

Nombreux sont les expériences vécues et témoignages rapportés par les cadres de la Fédération nationale des aphasiques de France, révélant des situations aussi choquantes qu’intolérables au regard des droits humains. C’est, par exemple, le cas de cet homme aphasique qui s’est retrouvé placé en cellule de dégrisement par des représentants des forces de l’ordre qui pensaient, à tort, qu’il était ivre.

Aberrante aussi, la situation de cette femme aphasique qui, à la suite d’une expertise judiciaire, a été jugée comme n’étant plus en possession de ses capacités intellectuelles. Le psychologue, désigné « expert judiciaire », ne connaissait pas l’aphasie… Après s’être entretenu avec elle, il a estimé, de manière erronée, qu’il était impossible qu’elle ait pu prendre elle-même des décisions concernant ses achats et ses dépenses, ce qui a conduit à accuser son aidant familial d’avoir agi à sa place. Les proches de cette femme ainsi que les médecins qui la suivaient ont alors dû rapidement se mobiliser pour faire innocenter son aidant, injustement accusé.

Ces situations révèlent combien la confusion entre troubles du langage et altération des capacités intellectuelles peut conduire à des jugements erronés, avec des conséquences parfois graves, au point de dénier les droits humains fondamentaux. La méconnaissance de l’aphasie contribue non seulement à la mise à l’écart des personnes qui en sont victimes, mais aussi à leur « infantilisation », voire au développement d’attitudes agressives à leur égard.

Ce déficit de sensibilisation renforce leur stigmatisation sociale, leur isolement relationnel, et donc leur mal-être. Les problèmes psychologiques et sociaux liés à l’aphasie sont aujourd’hui largement documentés, et les recherches dépeignent un tableau particulièrement alarmant.

Quelles solutions ?

Malgré l’ampleur de ces difficultés et la souffrance ressentie, l’accès aux soins psychologiques demeure fortement restreint. Les psychothérapies classiquement pratiquées par les psychologues et les psychiatres reposent essentiellement sur le langage verbal, ce qui les rend peu accessibles aux personnes aphasiques. Leur souffrance est donc rarement prise en compte.

C’est d’autant plus problématique que les politiques publiques ignorent l’aphasie, en dépit de son coût économique considérable, estimé pour la France à plus d’un milliard d’euros annuels, en intégrant les dépenses de soins, les pertes de productivité et l’aide informelle apportée par les proches aidants.

Heureusement, des recherches scientifiques récentes montrent que des solutions existent pour venir en aide aux personnes aphasiques. Par exemple, il existe des psychothérapies non centrées sur le langage dont l’efficacité est scientifiquement documentée. Cependant, ces dernières ne sont pas connues en France, car les personnels soignants sont insuffisamment formés aux troubles du langage en général, et à ce handicap de la communication en particulier.

Dès lors, des personnes aphasiques et leurs aidants ont pris eux-mêmes les choses en main, via le tissu associatif, dans une logique « d’empowerment collectif ».

Ainsi, la Fédération nationale des aphasiques de France (FNAF), qui se mobilise depuis des années pour améliorer la reconnaissance, la visibilité et l’accompagnement des personnes aphasiques dans notre pays, s’apprête à lancer bénévolement un plan de grande ampleur pour contribuer à agir pour la santé mentale et le bien-être des personnes aphasiques, en proposant des formations gratuites aux psychiatres, aux psychologues et aux orthophonistes de l’Hexagone.

Au niveau international, l’Association internationale aphasie (AIA) cherche à mettre en place une journée internationale de l’aphasie. La FNAF a également demandé qu’une telle journée soit reconnue par l’État en France et, plus particulièrement, par le ministère de la santé, qui est chargé des personnes en situation de handicap.

Pour prendre en charge un problème d’aphasie, la Nasa n’a pas hésité à rapatrier ses astronautes depuis l’espace. Reste maintenant aux pouvoirs publics français à montrer qu’ils ont eux aussi « les pieds sur terre », en soutenant a minima les actions associatives visant à mieux faire connaître l’aphasie et à améliorer l’accompagnement des personnes qui en sont victimes.

Didier Courbet est membre du conseil d’administration et du conseil scientifique de la Fédération Nationale des Aphasiques de France (FNAF).

The familiar silhouette of bike and scooter delivery workers has become part of Paris’ urban landscape. For many city dwellers who rely on them to deliver meals to their door, these precarious workers remain largely “invisible” in surveys and public statistics.

Yet, the availability of quality data about online platforms’ delivery drivers is a major issue. Legally, the transposition into French law of the European Directive (EU) 2024/2831 on the legal framework around platform work (which aims to provide better protection to delivery couriers), expected before December 2 2026, makes it essential to have a better understanding of this population in order to shed light on regulatory choices.

Where occupational health is concerned, an expert appraisal by Anses (March 2025) exposes an alarming situation, and underlines the lack of available data for understanding the health status of these gig workers and implementing appropriate public policies.

It is in this context that France’s Santé-Course project was launched. Led by an interdisciplinary research team from the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) and the Institut national d’études démographiques (INED), associations working with delivery people (Association de mobilisation et d’accompagnement des livreurs, AMAL; Collectif pour l’insertion et l’émancipation des livreurs, Ciel; Maison des livreurs de Bordeaux; Maison des couriers de Paris; Médecins du monde) and a peer group made up of couriers or former couriers, this project focused on documenting working conditions as well as delivery workers’ physical and mental health, based on a survey conducted among more than 1,000 of them in Paris and Bordeaux.

The study also examines exposure to occupational risks, police checks and cases of discrimination. Hereafter, we turn attention to the profiles of these workers and their working conditions, but the full results are available here.

What does platform work consist of ?

The rise of digital work platforms in France dates back about fifteen years and results from the conjunction of two series of factors: the adoption of new legal norms (notably the Novelli law of 2008 establishing self-employment status), on the one hand, and the generalisation of information and communication technologies as well as the democratisation of their use, on the other. The first point has gradually made the labour market more flexible and paved the way for massive employment of self-employed workers who are taken on by these platforms, while the second one has provided the latter with the conditions for their large-scale deployment.

À lire aussi : Requalifier ou réguler ? Les controverses du dialogue social des travailleurs des plates-formes

In the food delivery sector, digital platforms play a role as intermediaries between restaurant owners and customers, and between restaurateurs and deliverers. Their operations are based on matching algorithms, pricing, and disconnection that allow them to manage a vast network statutorily independent workforce, without having to resort to traditional company management methods.

Delivery drivers’ self-employed status places them outside the occupational health and safety regulatory framework that is applicable to employees. Their situation is similar to a return to task-based work, understood as project-based contractual work between clients and those who carry out the work.

As a result, social security contributions, which grant workers social protection and the legal obligations related to protecting workers, are transferred from the client to the self-employed worker. This puts delivery contractors in a highly precarious situation and makes them economically dependent on the platforms, which control access to deliveries and the terms of their remuneration.

A population that tends to be off the survey radar

Investigating platform delivery workers involves several methodological obstacles, the main one being admin-related: none of the company directories listing businesses located in France (Sirene, Sirus or Sine), usually used as sampling frames to draw samples from annual business surveys, allows reliable and exhaustive identification of platform deliverers. This makes it, therefore, difficult to know precisely their total number and their geographical distribution in France, thus making any approach by traditional sampling impossible.

Another problem is posed by the phenomenon of account leasing, which allows delivery drivers to carry out their activities under a third party’s account. This phenomenon also undermines the use of data from the platforms themselves, which lacks transparency (see the Anses March 2025 report).

As a result, only a direct canvassing protocol carried out in public places or community spaces is able to produce reliable data. This is how the Santé-Course project team managed : to meet delivery people at their pick-up destinations in Paris and Bordeaux.

The two French cities were selected because a significant part of these workers are concentrated there and they are home to partner associations of the Santé-Course project. In order to fully represent the diversity of situations experienced by delivery workers and, thus, obtain results that best reflect the reality of the entire population studied, an initial mapping survey of meeting points and the number of delivery people visiting them at different times of the day was carried out, which then served as a basis for the deployment of survey interviewers.

The survey was conducted during the first half of 2025, among delivery drivers over 18 years old, who had made at least one delivery via a digital platform in the month before the survey and were able to give informed consent. A total of 519 and 485 delivery people were interviewed in Paris and Bordeaux, respectively.

Nearly 1 in 2 delivery people spent an entire day without eating in the last twelve months

The results paint a remarkably homogeneous socio-demographic picture on several dimensions. The delivery workers are almost exclusively men (98.9%), immigrants (97.8%) and relatively young – their median age is 30 years old.

Their level of education, by contrast, is heterogeneous : while one quarter did not go beyond primary level education, nearly one in five went on to higher education, with significant differences between Paris (28.3%) and Bordeaux (9.6%).

Most of them recently arrived in France (median since 2020) and are mainly from West Africa and South Asia in Paris, from West Africa and North Africa in Bordeaux. Their administrative status is extremely fragile : nearly two thirds of them do not hold a residence permit.

This administrative hardship is coupled with material deprivation. The majority of the workers do not have a place to call their own : in Paris flat shares and lodging with people they know are the dominant trend, while communal supported housing and collective accommodation are more common in Bordeaux.

Even more worrying, nearly 18 % report living in unstable housing conditions (emergency accommodation, squats or welfare hotels). Food insecurity is just as significant : nearly one in two delivery people in Paris (48%) and more than one in three in Bordeaux (36.7%) report having spent at least a full day without eating, due to lack of money, over the past twelve months.

Nearly 73.5 % work under a third-party account

Those who were surveyed have been in business for some time: three quarters had never worked for a delivery platform before 2021, and more than one third of Parisian delivery workers started in 2024 or 2025.

Two platforms, Uber Eats and Deliveroo, largely dominate the market, but the simultaneous use of delivery services with several apps (or “multi-apping”) remains a very small minority, affecting less than 2% of them.

Economic dependence on this work is massive: 91% declare that delivery constitutes the bulk of their income, and about 95% do not engage in any other paid activity or are completing training alongside. Dependence on delivery work also appears to be largely constraine: nine out of ten deliverymen without a residence permit say they would cease or drastically reduce this type of work if they regularised their undocumented status.

Finally, the phenomenon of account rentals is massive: three quarters of delivery people work under the account of a third person, with a proportion reaching 81% in Paris. This phenomenon, which stems from the administrative precariousness of delivery people, many of whom are undocumented, considerably clouds the statistics produced by the platforms and highlights the need for surveys conducted directly with workers on the ground.

On average, 63-hour working weeks at a gross hourly rate of 5.83 euros

The delivery workers get an average gross monthly wage of 1,480 euros, or 880 euros after tax once all work-related charges are deducted. (including equipment and fuel expenses, insurance costs, taxes and, for three quarters of them, the rental cost of an account, which averages 528 euros per month and absorbs more than a third of gross income on its own).

The average gross hourly rate is a meagre 5.83 euros. This is well under France’s minimum wage (11.88 euros at the time of the survey) for significant volumes of work : on average 63 hours per week, six to seven days a week, ten months a year, with even more hours for those who rent an account. At this rate, they clock up 497 miles per month – such mileage is likely to be underestimated due to the omission of certain routes in the platform data.

This overview paints a picture of the “working poor”, a population forced to work extremely hard to earn an income after tax that remains well below the poverty line (set at 1,288 euros net per month for a single person).

The studies that will be conducted by our team over the coming months aim to shed light on the extent to which this situation affects the health of delivery workers.

More than half of the delivery drivers surveyed have already had at least one accident as a result of their work, and 44.8% of them believe that their health status has deteriorated compared to when they started working in the delivery industry.

This project received financing from l’Agence nationale de la recherche, l’Institut Convergences Migrations, la Ville de Paris, l’Inserm and l’Institut Paris Public Health at l’Université Paris Cité.

A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.

131 sites and museums have suffered damage or been destroyed during the US and Israeli war against Iran between February 28 and April 8. Amid uncertainty over what will happen next as peace talks failed during the two-week conditional ceasefire, it is an opportune time to take stock of the state of Iranian cultural heritage.

With its vast territory and strategic position in West Asia, Iran has long been one of the principal centres of human activity and cultural development.

As one of the world’s oldest centres of civilisation, Iran has preserved an exceptionally rich archaeological and historical landscape shaped over several millennia. This heritage reflects a long sequence of cultural traditions, from the Palaeolithic (prehistoric) times through the Elamite kingdom (2700 BCE and 539 BCE), the Median dynasty (c. 700 to 550 BCE), the Achaemenid (559 to 330 BCE), the Parthian (247 BCE to 224 CE) and Sasanian (224 to 651 CE) empires and into the Islamic periods.

This continuity is visible in the country’s archaeological sites, historic cities, monuments, and museum collections. It is estimated that Iran contains several hundred thousand archaeological sites, although only a small proportion have been formally registered on the national heritage list since the beginnings of state heritage protection in the early twentieth century.

The international significance of this heritage is underscored by the inscription of 29 Iranian properties on the UNESCO World Heritage List, comprising 27 cultural and two natural sites. Last month, the UN cultural agency weighed in, voicing concern over the protection of Iran’s national treasures and sites of “cultural significance”, such as the Qajar-era Golestan Palace, following airstrikes. In a recent statement, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) condemned any destruction – whether intentional or incidental – of cultural and natural heritage, deploring the “serious implications for cultural continuity” and the “risk of irreversible loss”, more broadly across the region as a result of the conflict.

What’s the damage?

An emerging official inventory of cultural damage recorded by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts of Iran shows that more than 131 archaeological sites, museums, and historical monuments (Figure 1.) in Iran have been damaged across 17 provinces and 26 cities.

The highest concentration of damage has been recorded in Tehran, where 61 sites were affected. It should be noted, however, that these figures are based on city-level assessment and do not include archaeological sites situated outside urban areas. In addition, historic urban fabrics are listed separately. The inventory recorded up to March 29 reveals a grave and highly uneven impact on Iran’s heritage, with destruction concentrated in some of the country’s most important historic and monument-rich cities.

The 1954 Hague Convention states that damage to any nation’s cultural property is a loss to the heritage of all humanity, which is why it requires international protection. Protecting cultural heritage is also tied to protecting human rights, including cultural rights, identity, memory, and human dignity.

As a result, intentional attacks on cultural heritage during armed conflict are not only morally unacceptable they could also violate international law and constitute war crimes, as confirmed by the International Criminal Court in the Al Mahdi case. This protection is further strengthened by UN Security Council Resolution 2347 of 2017, which emphasises the importance of safeguarding cultural heritage in conflict situations.

Tehran and Isfahan: the worst hit

What emerges from the inventory is not a scattered pattern of isolated incidents. It is a concentrated “geography of damage”, falling most heavily on provinces that hold some of Iran’s richest cultural assets, above all Tehran and Isfahan.

These are not marginal places in the historical map of Iran. They are among the country’s principal repositories of architectural memory, museum collections, 15th to 19th-century royal compounds, religious monuments, and civic heritage.

The most significantly damaged monuments in Tehran include Golestan Palace, Tehran’s Historic Arg, the Historic Grand Bazaar of Tehran, Marble Palace, the Historic Shahrbani Building, the Former Senate Building, Sepahsalar Mosque, and the Farahabad Palace Museum.

In Isfahan Province, damage has been reported at the Naqsh-e Jahan Square complex, the Chehel Sotoun Palace, the Abbasi Friday Mosque, etc.

The provincial distribution is among the most revealing aspects of the inventory. Tehran alone accounts for 61 counted sites, representing 46.6 percent of the total. Isfahan follows with 23 sites, or 17.6 percent. Together, these two provinces contain 84 damaged entries, equivalent to 64.1 percent of the inventory. When Khuzestan and Kurdistan are added, the top four provinces account for 108 sites, or 82.4 percent of all counted entries.

This means the damage pattern is not spatially even. It is clustered in provinces, where museums, palace complexes, historic neighbourhoods, old institutions or schools, and monumental architecture are densely concentrated.

The hypothesis of a strategically targeted assault

The typological profile of the damaged heritage is equally telling. The largest single group consists of historical houses, mansions, and residences totalling 33 entries. These are followed by civic and institutional buildings, such as schools, with 16 entries, and famous historical mosques, with 12.

The inventory also identifies historical forts, mills, and baths (hammam). The report additionally records 10 palaces or royal complex entries dating back to the 15th-19th centuries CE, indicating that the damage reaches deeply into architectural forms associated with old districts of the war-affected cities.

The document states that 50 museum units refer to museum components embedded within larger complexes, palace compounds, and multi-part heritage sites.

The cultural loss is therefore both architectural and institutional, affecting not only structures but also the curatorial and interpretive frameworks housed within them. According to Science, cultural institutions are taking measures to protect its moveable heritage, including boxing up museum items for safekeeping and installing the Blue Shield logo designed to indicate protected heritage on more than 100 cultural monuments.

The source also names 7 historic urban fabrics separately, suggesting that the true scope of impact extends beyond single monuments to wider urban heritage zones across Tehran, Isfahan, Sanandaj, Kermanshah, Qom, Khansar, and Tabriz. Old parts of the cities function as “layered cultural organisms”.

When an urban fabric is damaged, what is threatened is not only a set of buildings, but a continuity of streets, spatial memory, social practice, and architectural identity and art. Some of these fabrics were used for several hundred years and are a testimony of old traditions, artefact production, and Persian culture and identity.

If future surveys and analyses of Iranian sites are carried out, we will see that many sites outside the urban centres have been damaged. This damage has not been limited to buildings and museums, but has also affected archives of ancient manuscripts held in collections and places of worship such as mosques, churches and synagogues.

The bombing of the Cultural Heritage Office in Khorramabad city makes the deliberate nature of this destruction even clearer. These intentional acts of destruction are not limited to cultural heritage, but also extend to essential infrastructure, such as the unfinished Bridge in Karaj, the Pasteur Institute, and universities such as Shahid-Beheshti, Sharif and Elm-o Sanat (Science and technology).

What is dangerous here, as we see, is a portrait of cultural loss at multiple scales, from individual structures to complex heritage environments.

The chronological range of the damaged sites is striking. It extends from Kuh-e Khawaja in Sistan, one of south-eastern Iran’s most important archaeological sites, with remains dating to the Parthian, Sasanian, and early Islamic periods, to Siraf in Bushehr, the famous late antiquity and early medieval port city on the Persian Gulf, and to the tomb of Baba Taher in Hamedan, the celebrated 11th-century Persian poet.

The damage was not confined to historical monuments alone, but also reached the modern building of the Iranian Cultural Heritage office.

The targeting of cultural heritage in Iran, the historical memory and enduring identity of one of the world’s longest-lasting civilisations and an irreplaceable part of the heritage of humanity, was not incidental but systematic. Such acts must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.

They represent an assault not only on monuments, museums, and archaeological sites, but also on the cultural legacy, historical consciousness, and collective memory of humanity itself.

The right to remedy and the law on war reparations

Under international law, the law of reparations for war damage stipulates that a State responsible for an internationally wrongful act must make full reparation for any damage, whether material or moral.

This destruction must never be repeated. Urgent and immediate measures are now required to ensure the protection, documentation, stabilisation, and restoration of Iran’s damaged heritage.

These efforts must be undertaken without delay and supported at international level through coordinated action by cultural institutions, professional bodies, and relevant global organisations.

A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

Parsa Ghasemi ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.