News

The second Transboundary Platform Meeting of the project “Towards strengthened governance of the shared transboundary natural and cultural heritage of the Lake Ohrid region” will take place on 2 October 2015 in Ohrid, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. This initiative is part of a total of six meetings that aim to support the Albanian and Macedonian governments in their efforts to ...

Mechtild Rössler has been appointed Director of the Division for Heritage and the UNESCO World Heritage Centre. An expert in both cultural and natural heritage and the history of planning, Ms Rössler was appointed in 2013 to the post of Deputy Director of the World Heritage Centre. Since 2014, as Deputy Director of the Division for Heritage, her tasks included overseeing teams of the ...

Last month, the Marine World Heritage Programme traveled to Norway to facilitate an exchange between the West Norwegian Fjords - Geirangerfjord and Nærøyfjord and Glacier Bay National Park. These two marine World Heritage sites share a challenge and an opportunity: both are popular cruise ship destinations and are threatened by pollution from tourism traffic. In Glacier Bay, a competitive ...

Illegal fishing threatens 30% of Marine World Heritage sites, and resources for monitoring and enforcement are always a challenge. Thanks to long-time World Heritage partner Jaeger-LeCoultre, Cocos Island National Park’s efforts to fight illegal fishing recently got a major boost. The Swiss watch manufacture donated 30,000 euros, raised through the auction of diving watches inspired by World ...

Following the 39th session of the World Heritage Committee and in view of the 10th anniversary of UNESCO/African Union launching of the African World Heritage Fund (AWHF), the World Heritage Centre brought together African heritage experts to reflect on the implementation of the World Heritage Convention in the Africa region at a two and half day workshop held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris ...

The UNESCO World Heritage Centre is pleased to announce the Call for Participants for the First Youth Regional Forum for the World Heritage in Asia. The UNESCO World Heritage Centre and Cambodian National Commission for UNESCO will organize the forum from 25 November to 3 December 2015 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. We welcome the participation of all interested young future experts. The forum ...

The thirteenth Episode of the Patrimonito cartoon films on the theme of World Heritage and Biodiversity is now available. The plot is set in the World Heritage site of the Sundarbans National Park located in India. The Sundarbans contains the world’s largest area of mangrove forests and is home to numerous rare and endangered species, including tigers, mammals, birds and reptiles. In this ...

The World Heritage Centre congratulates the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) for the establishment of a Corps with the aim of securing national parks. On 15 June 2015 the DRC published decree n° 15/012 on the establishment of a Corps in charge of securing national parks (Corps en charge de la sécurisation des Parcs Nationaux, or CorPPN) and related nature reserves. The CorPPN will ...

The City of Brussels recently hosted a workshop entitled "Inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List: New perspectives for local development", which took place on 8 September 2015 at Brussels City Hall in the World Heritage site of La Grand-Place, Brussels (Belgium). The workshop focused on issues specific to site management for properties inscribed on the World Heritage List. Expert ...

UNESCO World Heritage Centre and UNESCO New Delhi Office, in close collaboration with the Department of Culture of the Royal Government of Bhutan, held the 2015 Bhutan Workshop and Forum on Cultural Landscape and Sustaining its Significance (22 July to 7 August 2015). This activity was financially supported by the NGO Oriental Cultural Heritage Sites Protection Alliance (Paris, France) and ...

The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, expressed profound dismay as she condemned the destruction of the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, one of the most important 1st century CE religious monuments in the Middle East, a construction unique in its design. “The destruction of Palmyra constitutes an intolerable crime against civilization but 4,500 years of history will never be erased,” the ...

The Director-General of UNESCO firmly condemns the destruction of the ancient temple of Baalshamin, an iconic part of the Syrian site of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage site. “The systematic destruction of cultural symbols embodying Syrian cultural diversity reveals the true intent of such attacks, which is to deprive the Syrian people of its knowledge, its identity and history. One week ...

The Syrian cultural heritage community suffered two immense blows within one week with the murder of archaeologist Khaled Assad in Palmyra and the killing of the Assistant Director of laboratories at the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums Qasem Abdullah Yehiya. “I am both saddened and outraged to learn of the brutal murder of Khaled Asaad, who oversaw antiquities at the UNESCO ...

The Director-General of UNESCO strongly condemns the destruction of the Mar Elian monastery located in the Syrian town of al-Qaryatayn. The monastery is a major pilgrimage site for Syria’s Christian community, with yearly festivities in honor of Saint Elian drawing thousands of visitors. “The intentional targeting and systematic destruction of the cultural heritage of Syria is reaching ...

World Heritage marine sites are only as effective as their compliance programs, and marine protected areas around the world struggle to combat illegal fishing. With limited resources available for surveillance and compliance, it is vital to have good systems in place to identify hotspots and track violations. In the four Marine World Heritage sites that make up Eastern Tropical Pacific ...

On the occasion of International Youth Day, over ten Action Camps will be carried on in the framework of the World Heritage Volunteers 2015 campaign. Most of these Action Camps are  led youth from all around the world. This year, the theme of International Youth Day is Youth Civic Engagement. World Heritage Volunteers (WHV) campaign for 2015 seeks to mobilize and involve young people and ...

Job Vacancy: Deputy Director of the World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and the Pacific Region under the auspices of UNESCO, Shanghai Center The World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and the Pacific Region under the auspices of UNESCO, Shanghai Center (WHITRAP Shanghai) announces the vacancy of the position of Deputy Director, from 1 August ...

Over the last several months,the World Heritage Centre has been receiving numerous messages from citizens and NGOs expressing their concern regarding the A303 tunnel project, located within the boundaries of the World Heritage property “Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites”, and the adverse impact it may have on the landscape, archaeological remains, and hydrogeology and ecology of the ...

UNESCO and Iraq today signed an agreement for the Conservation and Management of the World Heritage site of Samarra Archaeological City, which will start with the restauration of the Great Mosque and Al-Malwiyah Minaret. The site has been on UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger since 2007. The agreement was signed at UNESCO’s Headquarters in Paris by Ahmed Abdullah Abed Abed, Iraqi ...

European Union and UNESCO initiative: "Towards strengthened governance of the shared transboundary natural and cultural heritage of the Lake Ohrid Region" IUCN Regional Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECARO) is seeking to contract a consultant to develop and implement an integrated capacity-building programme with particular emphasis on management effectiveness, transboundary ...