News

In response to the call to empower African experts working for World Heritage, UNESCO in partnership with the African World Heritage Fund (AWHF), ICCROM, ICOMOS and IUCN launched the Mentorship Programme for African World Heritage Professionals on 16 February 2022 through an online event. This Mentorship Programme is developed to better capacitate African World Heritage professionals through ...

UNESCO and ICCROM held an online ceremony to mark the launch of their joint initiative “Improving Management Effectiveness of World Heritage in Africa” with representatives from UNESCO World Heritage, ICCROM, IUCN, the Ambassadors of Japan, Norway, South Africa and Switzerland, and other participants. This event marks the end of the first set of activities (from 6 December 2021 to 24 January ...

From 27 to 30 March 2022, UNESCO undertook a pilot environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling campaign in the Gulf of Porto: Calanche of Piana, Gulf of Girolata, Scandola Reserve World Heritage site (France), to prepare the global roll-out of its citizen science eDNA initiative. Youth aged 7 to 11 years old from the school in Ota-Porto nearby the World Heritage area collected eDNA samples and ...

On 8 and 10 February 2022, attacks involving improvised explosive devices resulted in the death of four rangers, two drivers, one instructor and one soldier, with 12 other individuals hospitalised with critical injuries in the W National Park in Benin, one of the components of the W-Arly-Pendjari Complex (Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger) inscribed on the World Heritage List. The UNESCO Rapid ...

UNESCO, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) will undertake a joint Advisory mission to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a component of the World Heritage site "Paris, banks of the Seine", from 28 to 29 March 2022, in order to assess the works in progress following ...

Further to recent reports and inquiries, regarding the displacement of the Maasai people in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area World Heritage property, UNESCO wishes to recall that neither the World Heritage Committee – the intergovernmental body of 21 elected States governing the Convention – nor UNESCO Secretariat have at any time asked for the displacement of the Maasai people.  UNESCO ...

The Secretariats of the world’s eight major biodiversity-related Conventions, including the World Heritage Convention, call for an inclusive post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework to halt nature loss and deliver on the governments’ vision of living in harmony with nature by 2050. Failure to act would hamper the planet’s capacity to provide food, water and other benefits to people and make it ...

UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre and IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) will undertake a mission to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef from 21 to 30 March 2022 to assess its state of conservation and a long-term sustainability plan for its protection. The mission is at the invitation of Australia and in response to the request made by the World Heritage Committee at its most ...

In the framework of the Third Cycle of the Periodic Reporting Exercise in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), which started in September 2021, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre has organized two workshops (one in English and one in Spanish) for World Heritage site managers in the region. These meetings, held respectively on 8 March (English) and 10 March (Spanish) 2022 online on the Zoom ...

UNESCO and the Government of Malawi have joined forces with an NGO Ripple Africa to support conservation of the exceptional fish biodiversity in Lake Malawi National Park World Heritage site. The project which was initiated thanks to Norway’s financial contribution to the World Heritage Fund focuses on supporting sustainable co-management of the fish resources as a key livelihood and heritage ...

Today is World Wildlife Day with the theme, “Recovering key species for ecosystem restoration.” The 1972 World Heritage Convention makes an important contribution to protect species by giving an international protection status to areas and ecosystems which harbor the most remarkable species. The transnational mangrove ecosystem of the Sundarbans (Bangladesh) and the Sundarbans National ...

Since the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine, UNESCO has taken action within the framework of its mandate, in particular to protect culture. A new progress report was released on Tuesday. “We must safeguard the cultural heritage in Ukraine, as a testimony of the past but also as a catalyst for peace and cohesion for the future, which the international community has a duty to protect and ...

Following the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Resolution on Aggression against Ukraine, and in light of the devastating escalation of violence, UNESCO is deeply concerned by developments in Ukraine and is working to assess damage across its spheres of competence (notably education, culture, heritage and information) and to implement emergency support actions. The UNGA ...

Monitoring World Heritage site closures In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, many governments have taken measures to restrict movements of people and access to certain areas. This includes the closure of natural and cultural World Heritage sites in the 167 countries they are located in. Please consider the following when reviewing the statistics: The World Heritage Convention has been ...

The 2021 UNESCO Marine World Heritage Annual Overview, made public today, summarises a year of conservation successes for marine World Heritage, but also underscores the urgent need for greater action to protect sites from the rapidly increasing threat of climate change. Consistent with its mandate, the work of the UNESCO World Heritage Marine Programme concentrates on building resilience ...

On 23 February 2022, an online Kick-Off Expert Meeting launched the UNESCO/Japan Funds-in-Trust (JFiT) project “Support Silk Roads World Heritage Nomination(s) process” (Phase III). This event was co-organised by the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and the International Institute for Central Asian Studies (IICAS), and brought together representatives of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, IICAS ...

The UNESCO World Heritage Centre and ICCROM launch a Call for Expressions of Interest for the Evaluation of the UNESCO World Heritage Capacity-Building Strategy (WHCBS) For the 10th Anniversary of the adoption of the World Heritage Capacity-Building Strategy (2011-2021), the World Heritage Committee, at its extended 44th session (Fuzhou/online, 2021), requested an evaluation of the WHCBS. In ...

UNESCO expresses its deep regret at the passing of Abdoul Aziz Guissé, Director of Cultural Heritage of Senegal, in Dakar on 3 February 2022.    "I would like to pay tribute to the memory of Abdoul Aziz Guissé and to the immense contribution he made to the safeguarding of african heritage," said Ernesto Ottone R., UNESCO's Assistant Director-General for Culture. "His unwavering dedication ...

Resilience and Re-mobilization towards World Heritage. The UNESCO World Heritage Centre is pleased to announce the Call for Projects for the World Heritage Volunteers (WHV) Campaign 2022 ‘Resilience and Re-mobilization towards World Heritage’. In the wake of the pandemic which has highlighted the importance of carrying out community development hand-in-hand with World Heritage conservation, ...

In response to recent large-scale outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in wild birds, the Secretariat of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) convened the Scientific Task Force on Avian Influenza and Wild Birds. Via a press release on 25 January 2022, the Task Force ...