UNESCO names Sefrou's Cherry Festival a part of Intangible Cultural Heritage

Morocco's  Cherry Festival in Sefrou has been declared a part of intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO.
Here is some info from the UNESCO website and here is a link to a detailed site on the festival.
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Sixteen new elements inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

The Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, meeting at UNESCO Headquarters until 7 December, inscribed new elements on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The new elements are from Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Ecuador, France, Hungary, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Mali, Morocco, Oman, Republic of Korea.

The following new elements were inscribed during today’s afternoon session: 

Cherry festival in Sefrou, Morocco

For three days in June each year, the local population of Sefrou celebrates the natural and cultural beauty of the region, symbolized by the cherry fruit and that year’s newly chosen Cherry Queen. The highlight of the festival is a parade with performing troupes, rural and urban music, majorettes and bands, and floats featuring local producers. The cherry festival provides an opportunity for the entire city to present its activities and achievements.

Rabat, Morocco named UNESCO World Heritage SIte

UNESCO has just announced on its website that Rabat, Morocco  has been named a World Heritage Site along side such places as the Church of the Nativity and the Rock Islands Southern Lagoon in Palau. 
While understanding the important role  historic Rabat had in Moroccan history and in the history of the Western Mediterranean,  one wonders if the UNESCO people  have seen the city  since the recent strike by garbage collectors.  The mounds of rotting trash are quite a sight in themselves.
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Friday, June 29, 2012

 

New sites have been inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List: Birthplace of Jesus: the Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem (Palestine); Site of Human Evolution at Mount Carmel: The Nahal Me’arot/Wadi el-Mughara Caves (Israel), Rock Islands Southern Lagoon (Palau), and The Cultural Landscape of Bali: the Subak System as a Manifestation of the Tri Hita Karana Philosophy (Indonesia), Rabat, modern capital and historic City: a shared heritage (Morocco). 

Rabat, modern capital and historic City (Morocco): a shared heritage, on Atlantic coast in the northwest of the country, is the product of a fertile exchange between the Arabo-Muslim past and Western modernism. The inscribed city encompasses the new town conceived and built under the French Protectorate from 1912 to the 1930s, including royal and administrative areas, residential and commercial developments and the Jardins d’Essais botanical and pleasure gardens. It also encompasses older parts of the city dating back to the he 12^th century. The new town is one of the largest and most ambitious modern urban projects built in Africa in the 20^th century and probably the most complete. The older parts include Hassan Mosque (started in 1184) and the Almohad ramparts and gates, the only surviving parts of the project for a great capital city of the Almohad caliphate as well as remains from the Moorish, or Andalusian, principality of the 17^th century.