The initiative to put the Chornobyl Zone on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The idea belongs to Sergii Mirnyi. He was the first to notice that the Chornobyl Zone meets UNESCO's criteria. This event changed the lives of millions of people around the world - his own included - and influenced the course of world history. We were often told it was impossible. But you do what you have to, and come what may.

The first to support us was the Ukrainian National Committee of ICOMOS, the International Council on Monuments and Sites. It happened on the anniversary of the accident; Serhii Parashyn, Sergii Mirnyi and Oleksandr Vasianovych presented the case.

A year later we took the people who had the power to decide into the Zone. Officials from ministries and local communities, ICOMOS, scientists and journalists toured all the sites worth nominating. Olena Serdiuk and Mykola Yakovyna of ICOMOS suggested starting with the most tedious and most important task - a detailed description of every site.

Then came a petition to the President. In it we listed what should be nominated: the arch of the New Safe Confinement, Prypiat, the unit control room, the decontamination point, the liquidators' camps, Chornobyl-2. The petition collected 237 votes - too few to be considered.

We took it as a signal, not a defeat. People have other priorities today, and the true weight of Chornobyl still has to be explained to them. That is what we have been doing all these years. So we took another road - through the ministries. Sooner or later the Zone's sites will make it onto the UNESCO list. The sooner the better: they will be better preserved.