News

“Our hearts are broken”Audrey Azoulay “We are filled with emotion and our hearts are broken,” said UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay as she witnessed the devastating fire tear through the historic cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris this evening. The cathedral is part of the 1991 World Heritage inscription, Paris, Banks of the Seine, which also includes bridges, quays and the banks of the ...

WHITRAP announces the online publication of the Proceedings of the Expert Meeting “The Implementation of UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape Recommendation” held in Shanghai, China, from 26th to 28th March 2018. Urban living is increasingly becoming the most common mode of habitation. Urban areas are coping with the pressure resulting from increasing population, uncontrolled development, ...

On 26 and 27 March 2019, World Heritage Site Managers of the Arab States region came together in Cairo, Egypt for a workshop in the framework of the Third Cycle of Periodic Reporting which currently being implemented in the region. The World Heritage Centre, in close cooperation with the Arab Regional Centre for World Heritage (ARC-WH) and the UNESCO Office in Cairo, organized the ...

Launched in September 2018, UNESCO’s World Heritage Journeys website (VisitEUWorldHeritage.com), produced in collaboration with National Geographic, is a finalist for a Webby Award—the Internet’s most coveted award. As a Webby Nominee, VisitEUWorldHeritage.com has been chosen by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences as one of the five best in the world in the category of ...

World Heritage Youth Fora are among the flagship activities of the World Heritage Education Programme, serving as a platform for bringing young professionals and heritage experts together to foster intercultural learning and exchange, to debate about common concerns and to discover new roles for themselves in heritage conservation. In this context, and as an integral part of the 43rd session ...

The World Heritage Centre is determined to support Solomon Islands and Australia in exploring all options to hold the responsible company, owners and insurers to account. The Director of the World Heritage Centre wrote a letter to both the shipping and charter firm South Express Ltd, the owner of the MV Solomon Trader, and the insurance firm Korea Protection and Indemnity Club (Korea P&I ...

In response to the fires in Mount Kenya National Park in early March, the Kenyan authorities - Mount Kenya Trust - submitted a grant application to the Rapid Response Facility (RRF) and obtained the maximum amount of US$30,000. This support will make it possible to finance hours of helicopter flights to monitor the Park's risk areas and intervene with water bombers in the event of new fire ...

UNESCO Sub-regional Conference on World Heritage Global Strategy in the context of South Asia met in Kolkata (21-22 February 2019) released the Kolkata Recommendation as a strategy for future implementation of the World Heritage Global Strategy in the Sub-region. The Sub-regional Conference, attended by approximately 55 governmental officials, experts from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, ...

World Heritage is the official publication from the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, dedicated to presenting detailed feature articles about the most outstanding cultural and natural sites around the world. World Heritage is a quarterly magazine published since 1996 in English, French and Spanish. Explore recent issues or subscribe today. We would be very grateful if you would spend a few ...

On 26 and 27 February 2019, World Heritage Focal Points of the Arab States region came together at UNESCO Headquarters (Paris, France) for a workshop in the framework of the Third Cycle of Periodic Reporting exercise which is currently being implemented in the region. The workshop, hosted by the World Heritage Centre in close cooperation with the Arab Regional Centre for World Heritage ...

This Women’s Day we celebrate our female World Heritage site managers: heroines protecting our most outstanding places. Women play a crucial role in conservation - they are the rangers protecting Virunga National Park (Democratic Republic of the Congo), the first site in the region to have female rangers. They safeguard marine World Heritage sites such as Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park ...

Together for heritage! The European Young Heritage Professionals Forum will take place from 20 to 24 May 2019 in Zadar, Croatia to explore potential synergies and challenges of working on tangible and intangible cultural heritage in the European context. The Forum will enable participants to enhance project management and communication skills by working on their own heritage projects with ...

A new IUCN SOS – Save Our Species Call for Proposals is now open. Financed in partnership with the European Commission’s DG DEVCO, this call is focused on African Wildlife. It prioritises five species of carnivores, namely lions, leopards, cheetahs, African wild dogs and Ethiopian wolves. A limited proportion of the funding will be earmarked for additional threatened species. These include ...

For more than a week, devastating fires have raged in Mount Kenya National Park, inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1997 and a part of the Mount Kenya Biosphere Reserve since 1978. According to the Kenya National Parks Service (KWS), these fires have already destroyed more than 80,000 hectares of forest and grassland, which represents almost half the area of the World Heritage site. ...

An oil spill has occurred near East Rennell, the only natural World Heritage site in the Pacific that is on the Danger List. Experts from Australia are currently working with the national authorities to ascertain the status of the situation and advice on possible mitigation measures to be taken. On 4 February 2019, the bulk carrier MV Solomon Trader ran aground in Kangava Bay, Rennell ...

The theme of this year’s World Wildlife Day aligns with Sustainable Development Goal 14: life below water. It is also the first World Wildlife Day highlighting marine biodiversity. World Heritage marine sites are home to the world’s most exceptional species on earth such as the Bengal tiger, marine iguanas, and the Coelacanth, the world’s oldest fish.Despite this rich wildlife, our sites ...

On behalf of the World Heritage Centre, Director Ms Mechtild Rössler expresses her solidarity with the efforts currently being undertaken by national authorities in Colombia to curb increasing security challenges in the country’s national parks, some of which are classified as natural World Heritage properties. In the light of these increasing and dramatic pressures, Parques Nacionales ...

The first regional meeting on "Transboundary Cooperation for effective management of World Heritage Sites in Africa" was held from 11 to 15 February 2019 in the city of Man (Côte d'Ivoire), located at 100 km from the Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve, the first African transboundary property inscribed on the World Heritage List. Funded by the Netherlands Funds-in-Trust, the main objective of ...

An oil spill has reportedly occurred in East Rennell, Solomon Islands on Tuesday, 19 February when a bulk carrier ran aground at Kangava Bay, just outside of the World Heritage property. East Rennell was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1998 and is the largest raised coral atoll in the world. The site includes Lake Tegano, a brackish lake containing many rugged limestone islets which ...

Launched in July 2017 with financial support from the Netherlands Funds-in-Trust, the “Communities and reinforcement of the management of the Royal Palaces of Abomey World Heritage Site” project, has been successfully concluded with a three-day cultural celebration event, from 27 to 29 December 2018. These ‘Cultural Days’ which responded to the theme “Let’s open our Palaces!”, were organized ...