News

In October 2015, a joint UNESCO/ICOMOS/RAMSAR reactive monitoring mission will take place to the World Heritage site "Venice and its lagoon”(Italy), as requested by the World Heritage Committee to assess current conditions at the property. The World Heritage property of Venice and its lagoon was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1987. The UNESCO World Heritage Centre closely follows ...

Biodiversity and sustainable development are inextricably linked. Biodiversity, at the level of ecosystems, species and genes, forms the foundation of the Earth’s life support systems and provides the services that underpin human lives and prosperity. Our social and economic well-being depends on biodiversity, as does our future. World leaders are now gathered at United Nations Headquarters ...

Sustainable planning and management of tourism is one of the most pressing challenges facing the World Heritage Convention today and is the focus of the UNESCO World Heritage and Sustainable Tourism Programme. The workshop on “Protecting World Heritage: Disaster Risk Management and Sustainable Tourism Planning” in Romania will set the basis for the development of a value-based management ...

The UNESCO Heritage Division and its World Heritage Centre is very pleased to participate in World Tourism Day, especially given the collaboration of the World Heritage Convention with the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), in efforts to develop sustainable tourism. World Heritage sites are the most outstanding cultural and natural places in the world, so they are often among the most ...

New York, 26 September — The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, today welcomed transfer of an alleged extremist to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to be tried for destroying religious and historical monuments in Mali. "I commend Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and the authorities of Mali and Niger for transferring the first suspect to the ICC accused of the war crime of ...

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 ...