Regional workshop on Tentative Listing for East African countries

A Regional workshop on Tentative Listing for East African Countries will take place in Juba, South Sudan from 3 - 5 September 2012. The workshop is organized jointly by Ministry of Culture Youth and Sports, South Sudan in partnership with the African World Heritage Fund and UNESCO Juba Office with generous support from the Government of Netherlands through the Netherlands National Commission for UNESCO.

The workshop will gather participants from the East African countries including Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Seychelles, Southern Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda and with the aim of assisting the State Parties concerned to update and identify the most significant cultural and natural sites of international importance for possible nomination in the near future. Countries with no Tentative Lists will also be assisted to start the process of preparing their Lists. The workshop will also introduce to the participants the concepts and practice of preparing World Heritage Tentative Lists and strengthen network and encourage dialogue among experts, which will in turn promote the implementation of the World Heritage Convention in the East Africa region.

The African World Heritage Fund in collaboration with UNESCO has been involved in supporting the Tentative Listing exercise in Africa. Similar workshops took place in Kano, Nigeria in May 2009, which brought together participants from the West Africa region and in Cairo, Egypt, in March 2010 targeting participants from North Africa. An event in Libreville, Gabon in December 2010 brought together participants from the Central Africa region.

The Heritage experts from the East African region as well as ICOMOS and UNESCO will also use the occasion to explore and identify capacity needs of South Sudan in terms of heritage management.