1. Introduction

It is my privilege and a pleasure to address you on behalf of UNESCO 's World Heritage Centre at this seventeenth session of the World Heritage Committee. Before submitting to you the report of the Secretary of the World Heritage Committee, which highlights some of the points presented in greater detail in the working documents prepared for this meeting, allow me first to welcome the delegations from the 21 States Party to the Convention, seven of them newly (re)elected to the Committee. My heartiest welcome is addressed also to the representatives of other States Parties, attending as observers, and to the experts from the three advisory bodies to the Committee, namely ICCROM, ICOMOS and the IUCN, and the observers from several other international organizations which cooperate with us in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention.

May I use this opportunity also to thank most warmly, on behalf of my colleagues and personally, to our generous hosts, the Government of Colombia and, more specifically the Instituto Colombiano de Cultura (COLCULTURA), who have made it possible for the Committee to meet in this wonderful city, Cartagena. Their organizational eagerness and overall friendliness will indeed be remembered.

I should also like to thank most sincerely the outgoing President of the Committee! Mr Robert Milne, whose personal committment and efficiency have been of great help to the World Heritage Centre in these past twelve months. Our thanks, of course, are addressed also to the members of the outgoing Bureau for the excellent work they have done during their mandate.

My heartiest congratulations, naturally, are addressed to the new Chairperson, and the new Bureau. On behalf of UNESCO's World Heritage Centre, I wish to assure you that you can count on our full support in the important and, sometimes, difficult tasks ahead of you.

Last, but certainly not least, may I welcome the two new States Parties, namely, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic, which have joined the Convention since our last meeting in Santa Fe.

Before reviewing as briefly as possible the activities that have been undertaken since the sixteenth session, I am pleased to inform you that the ninth General Assembly of the States Parties to the Convention took place at UNESCO, on 29th and 30th

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October 1993, during the General Conference of UNESCO. The meeting was chaired by Ambassador Leventis of Cyprus. At the end of nine ballots, the following states were elected to the Committee:

Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Niger and the United States of America. May I warmly congratulate the new members.

The General Assembly, however, also decided that the procedure for election, as presently in force, was no longer adequate as it was too time consuming; it therefore asked the Secretariat to study possible amendments to the rules, including ways to assure an equitable representation of the various regions of the world.

The General Assembly furthermore examined the state of accounts of the World Heritage Fund. It felt that the budget presentation could be improved, and in that respect, it took note with satisfaction that the World Heritage Committee would study this matter. The Committee's Chairman presented to the General Assembly the Committee's report to UNESCO's General Conference, whereupon the Assembly expressed its wish that more time should be devoted in the future to discussions of substantive nature.

Lastly, the Assembly decided to launch an appeal in favour of safeguarding the heritage threatened by war and civil unrest, and it urged all States Parties to strengthen public awareness through education programmes and the mass media.

2. Activities undertaken since the sixteenth session

As stated in my introductory remarks, the full record of the past twelve months is given in the working documents which you have received for this meeting. Let me therefore highlight here only some of the points which may require particular attention on your part.

The finalization of the Report of the sixteenth session of the Committee (which, I hope, you have all received) demanded more than usual effort and time, given the fact that its 80-odd pages attempted to reflect as accurately as possible the very rich debate of the Santa Fe meeting. As I indicated in my report to the Bureau (June 1993) perhaps the most important part of this report is its Annex II: the Strategic Orientations, as defined and adopted by the Committee.

In order to put into practice the Strategic Orientations, the Centre has been working on the modification of the Operational Guidelines and several propositions for amendments were submitted to the Bureau at its June session. Two States Parties had made specific proposals in this regard, which were discussed with all other proposals by the Bureau. The Committee is invited to examine these proposed amendments under Item 14 of the provisional agenda, and to take a decision. Allow me, however, to point out that the main modifications concern:

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* the role of the Committee regarding the monitoring of World Heritage properties and its power to implement direct action in emergency cases; the Committee's final decision regarding monitoring will have to take into consideration the discussions which you will have during this session under Item 7 of the agenda;

* the time-table foreseen for the evaluation of new nominations: it is proposed that the Bureau meets in September rather than in June in order to allow more time to the Advisory Bodies for their evaluations;

* the allocation of technical assistance during the year: it is proposed that the Chairperson of the Committee or the Bureau can decide about funds up to only 20% of the total budget allocated by the Committee for technical assistance.

At its sixteenth session, as you will recall, the Committee adopted revised cultural criteria of the Operational Guidelines in order to include the protection of outstanding cultural landscapes. Immediately thereafter, the Centre invited all States Parties to submit by 15 August 1993 tentative lists including cultural landscapes. Although more than 30 States Parties responded to the request, only 14 of them submitted new tentative lists, and of these only 9 States Parties included cultural landscapes, while 9 others notified the Centre that they are in the process of preparing tentative lists in light of the recent revisions of the cultural criteria.

Furthermore, the Centre convened an international expert meeting on the questions concerning cultural landscapes, tentative lists and related issues, which took place in Templin (Germany) last October. The meeting discussed three categories of cultural landscapes and addressed specific legal, management, socio-economic and conservation issues, related particularly to living cultural landscapes. A more detailed report is given in document 002/9. Let me just point out that there is general hope that the results of this meeting will form the basis for future identification and assessment of cultural landscapes of outstanding universal value. The Committee may therefore wish to adopt recommendations for further action by the World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies.

After the seventeenth session of the Bureau, the Secretariat proceeded with an analysis of the tentative lists that have been submitted by States Parties over the years. The results of this analysis show:

* of the 136 States Parties, only 60 (44%) have presented, in one form or another, tentative lists. Almost 50% of these tentative lists include cultural properties only. The States Parties which have not submitted a tentative list are listed in Table C of the working document 002/7 prepared for this session.

* Of the 60 tentative lists on file, 31 (i.e., 23% of the total number of States Parties) provide the information as

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requested in Article 11 of the World Heritage Convention and/or paragraphs 7 and 8 of the Operational Guidelines. The States Parties concerned are listed in Table A of the afore-mentioned working document.

In order to improve this situation and to establish meaningful and useful tentative lists, the Secretariat requests the Committee to consider several proposals stated in document 002/7, page 3, of which I wish to emphasize particularly the following:

"During the next two-year period the highest priority will be given to the establishment and/or revision of tentative lists in accordance with the stipulations in the Operational Guidelines paras. 7 and 8. Active collaboration with the States Parties will be sought and preparatory assistance will be provided when necessary and upon request by the State Party concerned."

The main results of the sixteenth session of the Committee were reflected also in the first issue of The World Heritage Newsletter (I hope that you have all received it) which has been distributed in 9,000 copies (English and French) and has had an undeniable success. A generous grant from the Norwegian Ministry of Environment has made it possible to continue producing the Newsletter. Its third issue has just appeared, and is being distributed at this session. As indicated in the working document on promotional activities, the Committee may wish to express its gratitude to the Government of Norway for this support.

As requested by the Committee at its sixteenth session, the Centre convened an expert meeting on the concept and framework for systematic monitoring of natural, cultural and mixed World Heritage sites. A detailed report, including specific proposals for the implementation of a systematic monitoring programme are presented in working document 002/4. May I simply point out that one of the main conclusions of this expert meeting is that continuous monitoring of the state of conservation of a site is an integral part of the conservation and management process, and that the States Parties are responsible for its implementation. Periodic reporting in collaboration with an independent expert or agency is recommended, however, in order to update the baseline information on the site, to set future conservation and management objectives and to be able to report to the Committee. Such a systematic monitoring and reporting will not only improve site management, but is also likely to facilitate decision-making by the Committee, and to enhance World Heritage policies and assistance.

In order to implement such a monitoring programme, the World Heritage Centre will have to cooperate closely with appropriate institutions, but it will also have to have adequate human, technical and financial resources of its own. The creation of reliable baseline information, including a high- quality data base on World Heritage sites is in this sense of utmost importance.

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The Centre continued to work with the States Parties and the Advisory Bodies on the implementation of international assistance in the form of emergency assistance, technical assistance and training. During this past year the Committee, upon request from the States Parties, provided international assistance amounting to US$ 977,095, of which some US$ 70,780 were spent for preparatory assistance, US$ 129,500 for emergency assistance, US$ 245,565 for training activities, US$ 376,350 for technical cooperation and US$ 155,000 for promotional activities. A more detailed report on this is in the working documents.

Training courses were carried out in cooperation with the School of African Wildlife Management (Mweka), Tanzania; the School for Training Wildlife Specialists (Garoua) Cameroon; the programme at CATIE, Costa Rica and the University of Montpellier. A training workshop was held at Mt. Huangshan (China) from 10 October to 5 November of this year, which brought together natural World Heritage site managers from five Chinese World Heritage sites and protected area managers. Other training courses were held in Saudi Arabia, France and Mali. Generally speaking, one can say that our training programme has been reasonable and consistent. On the basis of the above, the Secretariat suggests that further exchange be promoted between site managers in different regions of the world to further the dialogue and enhance future cooperation between World Heritage sites.

I should also like to point out that technical assistance continues to provide catalytic funds for critical sites. As afore-mentioned, an amount of US$ 129,500 was spent this year on emergency assistance for four cultural and two natural sites. A proposal for the revision of the Operational Guidelines was prepared by Prof. Patrick Boylan in order to improve emergency action and disaster preparedness. Moreover, at the recently held 27th session of UNESCO' s General Conference, the majority of the delegates underlined the need to create a flexible structure for emergency action that would permit rapid and effective intervention and preliminary safeguarding assistance in the event of natural or man-made disasters.

This being said, I should nonetheless wish to add, that adequate links between our monitoring programmes and the assistance programmes are yet to be established. By linking these two our performance should improve considerably.

For several years now, the Committee has been stressing the importance of preparing a global study on the World Heritage List and thematic studies of the different types of cultural properties which could be proposed for inscription, including those that are poorly represented or, in some cases, not represented at all. The study, it was stipulated, should be both retrospective and forward-looking. With this in mind, as you know, the Committee decided last year to establish a working group composed of experts from France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Tunisia, the United States of America and other interested States Parties, which was requested to prepare a

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report, jointly with ICOMOS, ICCROM and the World Heritage Centre, that was to be submitted to the Bureau at its seventeenth session, last June. In July 1993, ICOMOS organized in Colombo, (Sri Lanka) a working group of six experts whose task it was to prepare a methodological framework, the results of which are to be presented at this session. It should be said, however, that the expert consultations organized by the Secretariat show that there is as yet no conceptual or methodological concensus in the scientific community on this matter.

In addition to the above, ICOMOS carried out two parallel thematic studies, one on the industrial heritage and the other on twentieth century architecture. A preliminary report concerning these will be presented to the Committee at this session. Taking all this into account, the Committee may wish to ask the Secretariat to organize in 1994, jointly with ICOMOS and ICCROM, an expert meeting to discuss the various approaches in order to define a possible common methodological approach.

Promotional activities carried out in the past twelve months focused on consolidating the progress made during the celebration of the 20th anniversary in 1992, and on preparing a more comprehensive information-promotion-education and marketing strategy to be implemented as of 1994. A report of past actions and an outline of future activities are given in document 002/6. Quite briefly, may I just point out that in addition to the success we have had with the Newsletter (mentioned already at the beginning of my presentation), we have been cooperating on several promising audiovisual projects, notably the Independent Image series, and a number of special events, particularly the information campaign in Denmark and the World Heritage awareness building activities of the Federation of UNESCO Clubs of Japan.

Most recently, the expert seminar on tourism management in natural and mixed World Heritage sites, organized from 22 to 26 November in Dakar, Senegal, jointly with UNEP and the WTO, proved to be a successful undertaking.

As regards future activities in promotion and education we attach particular importance to developing a top quality data- base on the Convention's structure and functioning, to be achieved through systematic monitoring and in cooperation with our Advisory Bodies and other concerned institutions. Likewise, support to on-site promotional activities will be a priority, with particular stress on strengthening local, national and regional potential. Lastly, as requested by the Committee, special attention will be given to developing appropriate educational materials to be used in schools and extra-curricula activities for World Heritage awareness-building among children and young people. Two States Parties, namely Norway and the United States, have already taken the initiative of preparing and testing pedagogic materials for World Heritage awareness-building in some of their highschools, and we look forward to learning from their experience in the coming year. Moreover, the Centre proposes to organize, jointly with UNESCO' s Associated Schools Project, the UNESCO Clubs, the Norwegian Commission for UNESCO

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and other partners, a Young People's World Heritage Forum, which would take place in Bergen, Norway, in June 1995, within the framework of the Second General Assembly of the World Heritage Cities. This event could also be considered as a contribution to the fiftieth anniversary of both the United Nations and UNESCO, and the celebration of 1995 as the International Year of Tolerance. An explanation of this proposal will be made available to you in written form during the session.

Organization of World Heritage Cities

From 6 to 8 September 1993, Fez, Morocco, was the scat of a major event for all the partners involved in safeguarding world heritage: the Constitutional General Assembly of the Organization of World Heritage Cities. The meeting was held under the auspices of His Majesty King Hassan II, and was generously hosted by the Government of Morocco, the regional authorities and the City of Fez. Five hundred participants attended the opening session of the meeting which included delegates from 56 cities inscribed on the World Heritage List, 34 of which were represented by their mayor or the president of the municipal council, a large number of municipal technical advisers and representatives of UNDP, the World Bank, ICOMOS, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, the African Development Bank, Habitat, etc. The meeting was preceded by an international coloquium on the financing of activities to promote World Heritage Cities.

This important initiative provided the platform to regroup under the umbrella of one specialized NGO, the persons responsible for these cities which are linked by common characteristics and problems, in order to share available information and experience thereby increasing the efficiency of their management and the better conservation of their heritage. The Director-General of UNESCO, in his declaration, underlined the importance of increasing public awareness in favour of the heritage! and emphasized that the cities and their Organization would constitute a privileged framework. The objectives of this new NGO, as well as further information on the Fez meeting, are presented in The World Heritage Newsletter, Nos. 2 and 3. In June 1995, the city of Bergen (Norway) will host the Second General Assembly of this new and important partner to the Convention.

Budget

At its sixteenth session, the World Heritage Committee adopted several important decisions and recommendations concerning the budget. They were examined in detail by the World Heritage Centre and the UNESCO Comptroller as well as by the representatives of the advisory bodies.

The budgetary situation of the Fund has improved and resources for 1994 will be more than in previous years. It is therefore recommended that the Committee establish a budget of US$2,860,000 for 1994, as proposed in the financial documents. However, it is necessary that the States Parties should, where

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appropriate, settle their outstanding dues as, for the period 1981-1993, the amount of outstanding obligatory contributions is 1,134 million US dollars, that is to say about half the annual budget approved for 1993. In this respect, it would be advisable for the Committee to strongly insist that States Parties pay their outstanding financial obligations with regard to the Fund without further delays.

Furthermore, in conformity with the Financial Rules of the Fund, Art. 5.1, it is proposed that a Reserve Fund be created "to meet requests for assistance resulting from natural calamities or catastrophes". The Committee could request the Director- General to allocate to this Fund the sum of US$1 million from the World Heritage Fund, (Art. 5.1 of the Financial Rules).

It is also proposed to the Committee not to limit the budget for 1994 to a given amount, and to approve a provisional budget for 1995. In this way, consideration may be given to the future fund requirements: after consultations with the advisory bodies the Centre therefore proposes that the Committee should from now on approve a two-year budget. This will improve the continuity of efforts and provide a more solid basis for programme planning and availability of funds.

Efforts will also be made to obtain multilateral assistance, for example for natural properties with GEF, which is holding a meeting in Cartagena at this very moment. Particular thanks are extended to the States Parties who specially contributed to the efforts for the safeguarding of heritage, as in the case of Angkor.

The UNESCO World Heritage Centre (WHC)

As you are aware, the World Heritage Centre was created by the Director-General of UNESCO eighteen months ago. Its principal missions are:

• the preparation of statutory meetings of the Convention and the implementation of their decisions;
• the promotion of the Convention in States Parties throughout the world;
• the establishment of a permanent dialogue with States Parties concerning conservation;
• the organization and development of systematic monitoring of the state of conservation of properties;
• the profitable use of the technical competence of the Sectors of UNESCO and the implementation of technical cooperation in close cooperation with them;

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• encouragement of intellectual cooperation, especially by means of global thematic studies, with all partners concerned.

The need for cooperation and the involvement of all the Sectors within UNESCO has been symbolized and facilitated by the establishment of the Steering Committee of the World Heritage Centre, which is presided over by the Director-General himself.

This desire for concertation is also reflected by numerous consultation meetings with the Sectors over the past months as well as with the advisory bodies, and also meetings concerning other Conventions such as the Hague Convention and the Biodiversity Convention.

The situation of the World Heritage Centre with regard to personnel is, unfortunately very critical, to implement all these tasks. Happily, the Centre has been assisted in its tasks by three professionals seconded from States Parties, and in this respect I wish to thank Canada, Germany, Italy and the United States of America for their generous support. But two of these professionals will be leaving in a few weeks. The Centre therefore invites States Parties to continue to second to the Centre high-level professional staff, and, even though UNESCO is assisting as best it can, it is still necessary, even more than before, that the Committee continues to support the Centre with temporary assistance, indispensable in acquiring qualified services necessary to carry out the Centre 's action.

Future perspectives

1994 and 1995 will be decisive years for the advancement of the Convention in several domains: the promotion of the Convention in States Parties, by giving it a decentralized form; the perfection and diffusion throughout the world of educational material adapted to public awareness activities; and also the setting-up of "automonitoring" by States Parties and site managers allowing them to establish a kind of preventive monitoring.

The "Operational Guidelines" still require revision, in particular to create emergency assistance procedures to provide heritage assistance in cases of armed conflict or natural catastrophes, the development of systematic monitoring, ensure the conservation of natural landscapes of universal value, provide world heritage conservation with the necessary institutional framework thus permitting, and at the same time increasing the number of partners, to further augment the scope of international solidarity. This solidarity should apply more particularly to Eastern and Central European countries which are in a transitional period.

It appears to me that our ultimate objective should not only be to increase the centralized facilities of the Centre, but also to permit it to set-up throughout the world as many "little centres" as there are World Heritage properties: it is only

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through such a universal effort and in the field that the values of the Convention can be widely diffused, which seems more than ever necessary at this time when, added to the "ordinary" degradations which heritage undergoes, war, throughout the world, in destroying it, is also destroying humankind's culture.