Decision 39 COM 7B.50

Historic Cairo (Egypt) (C 89)

The World Heritage Committee,

1. Having examined Document WHC-15/39.COM/7B,
2. Recalling Decisions 36 COM 7B.51, and 37 COM 7B.49, adopted at its 36th (Saint-Petersburg, 2012) and 37th (Phnom Penh, 2013) sessions respectively,
3. Notes with great concern the rapid and irreversible degradation of the Historic Cairo urban fabric which will make it very difficult for the State Party to sustain the attributes of the property’s Outstanding Universal Value (OUV);
4. Acknowledges the establishment by the State Party of a Ministerial Committee chaired by the Prime Minister to oversee the management of Historic Cairo, and commends it for adopting the boundaries and buffer zone of the property as proposed by the UNESCO Urban Regeneration of Historic Cairo Project (URHC) and requested by the World Heritage Committee at its 37th session (Phnom Penh, 2013);
5. Urges the State Party to introduce stricter controls, particularly on demolition and development in order to stabilise the current situation of the urban fabric, in parallel with appropriate awareness-raising actions;
6. Also urges the State Party to consider a large scale urban revitalisation project that addresses the social, economic and environmental problems affecting the property in a holistic manner, and to hold a technical workshop to define the aims, objectives, implementation mechanism and provisional timeframe of such a project;
7. Requests that a Technical Unit formed of a highly-qualified multidisciplinary team be created, to manage the property, establish its integrated management plan, and take forward the URHC;
8. Reiterates its request to the State Party to submit to the World Heritage Centre the revised draft of the retrospective Statement of OUV for the property;
9. Also requests the State Party to submit to the World Heritage Centre, by 1 December 2016, an updated report, including a 1-page executive summary, on the state of conservation of the property and the implementation of the above, for examination by the World Heritage Committee at its 41st session in 2017.