The World Heritage Committee, holding its 34th session chaired by João Luiz da Silva Ferreira, the Minister of Culture of Brazil, has inscribed the site of Bagrati Cathedral and Gelati Monastery (Georgia) on the List of World Heritage in Danger. The Committee expressed its serious concern about irreversible interventions carried out on the site as part of a major reconstruction ...

Thirty-nine nominations from 33 countries will be considered for inscription on UNESCO's World Heritage List during the meeting of the World Heritage Committee underway in Brasilia. Three of the countries - Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Tajikistan - have no properties inscribed on the World Heritage List to date. The Director-General of UNESCO Irina Bokova and Brazil's Minister of Culture ...

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova and the Minister of Culture of Brazil, João Luiz da Silva Ferreira today signed an agreement establishing a regional heritage management training centre in Rio de Janeiro. The new centre will help Portuguese and Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia to implement the the World Heritage Convention. This is the sixth such ...

Within the framework of the Emergency International Request submitted by Haiti after the devastating 12 January 2010 earthquake, the World Heritage Centre - Latin America and the Caribbean Unit (WHC/LAC) organized a Technical Mission from 11-18 July 2010 in close cooperation with the Institut de Sauvegarde du Patrimoine National (ISPAN) and the UNESCO Haiti Office. The Mission's objectives ...

A new project for the conservation and management of Lumbini, the Birthplace of Lord Buddha, one of the UNESCO World Heritage properties in Nepal has been launched on 16 July 2010 in Kathmandu with the signing of the Plan of Operation by the Government of Nepal and UNESCO. The project will be coordinated by the UNESCO Kathmandu office in close collaboration with the World Heritage Centre and ...

The UNESCO World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies to the World Heritage Committee, ICCROM, ICOMOS and IUCN are launching the first title within the World Heritage Resource Manuals series. It focuses on one specific approach to the principles, methodology and process for managing disaster risks at cultural and natural World Heritage properties. So far, this manual, which has been ...

The Operational Guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention are now available in Portuguese. The Operational Guidelines define specific criteria for the inscription of sites on the World Heritage List as well as for the provision of international assistance under the World Heritage Fund. They were revised in 2007 by the World Heritage Committee at its 31st Session in ...

The United Nations Development Programme has launched the new edition of "Picture this", an international photo contest. Through the photo contest this year, UNDP hopes to bring much needed attention to the quickly approaching deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals in order to motivate people and governments in developed and developing countries to redouble their ...

On 10 March 2010, the Government of Equatorial Guinea officially deposited with the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, its instrument of ratification, becoming the 187th State Party to adopt the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The World Heritage Convention entered into force for this State Party on 10 June ...

From 30 June to 4 July 2010, the International Academy for Nature Conservation, Isle of Vilm, Germany, hosted an expert workshop that set the basis for scaling-up Marine World Heritage. The workshop was jointly organized by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the IUCN-World Commission on Protected Areas and ...

The World Heritage Committee will consider requests for the inscription of new sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List when it meets for its 34th session in Brasilia (Brazil), from 25 July to 3 August. During this year’s session - to be chaired by João Luiz Ferreira, the Brazilian Minister of Culture and President of the World Heritage Committee - 35 States Parties to the ...

Comoé National Park in Côte d'Ivoire lies in a region particularly affected by the Ivorian civil war, which lasted for five years until 2007. A World Heritage site since 1983, it was added to the In Danger list in 2003. During the conflict, park management authorities in Comoé were effectively forced to abandon their operations, so there were few, if any, deterrents to ...

UNESCO today received a petition of signed by 125,000 people around the world protesting against the re-opening of a paper and pulp mill on the shores of Lake Baikal, a World Heritage site in the Russian Federation. The petition was presented to UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Culture, Francesco Bandarin, by Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), who agreed to bring it to ...

The World Heritage Centre has recently published a new booklet entitled "World Heritage in the Congo Basin". This publication is intended for both biodiversity specialists and the general public. It provides detailed information on two important initiatives undertaken by the World Heritage Centre for the preservation of natural heritage in Central Africa. The first initiative, ...

A new website launched by Wetlands International, BirdLife International and the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) reveals major gaps in the protection of many critical sites used by migratory waterbirds across Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia.  The new 'Critical Site Network (CSN)' Tool (www.wingsoverwetlands.org/csntool) provides comprehensive ...

Aranjuez, the only Spanish site declared a Cultural Landscape in UNESCO´s World Heritage List, is hosting the 2nd World Heritage Ibero-American Youth Forum from 20 to June 30, 2010. The event comes in the wake of the 1st Ibero-American Youth Forum on World Heritage, held in Seville in June 2009, during the 33rd session of the World Heritage Committee. This event gathers together young ...

World Heritage site managers of 22 States Parties have been meeting in Yaoundé, Cameroon, since 21 June, 2010, to advance in the preparation of periodic reports in French and Portuguese-speaking African countries.The three-day sub-regional meeting, organized by the World Heritage Centre and the UNESCO Office in Yaoundé, was inaugurated on Monday 21 June 2010 by the Minister of ...

The UNESCO World Heritage Centre has launched an international storyboard competition for the creation of the next episode of the animated series Patrimonito's World Heritage Adventures. The competition invites young people to express their ideas in the form of a storyboard for the Patrimonito's World Heritage Adventures animated series. In the coming days, 187 National Commissions - every ...

The African World Heritage Fund (AWHF) strives towards the effective conservation and protection of Africa's natural and cultural heritage. AWHF is for all African Member states who have signed the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention in support of these goals. The AWHF is the first regional funding initiative within the framework of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. The AWHF was ...

Since the 33rd session of the World Heritage Committee (Seville, 2009), the World Heritage Centre and IUCN have received a large number of letters from individuals who are concerned about the state of conservation of the the World Heritage property Lake Baikal (Russian Federation), and in particular about the re-opening of the Baikalsk Paper and Pulp Mill (BPPM) and its likely impacts on the ...