News

A joint international expert mission to the World Heritage property of Great Barrier Reef by the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (WHC), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is taking place from 5 to 14 March 2012. The World Heritage Committee, at its 35th session in June 2011 (Paris) examined the state of conservation of Great Barrier Reef (Australia), inscribed on the ...

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, two young Indian men, Aniketh MJ and Sulesh Kumar, are planning to visit India’s 28 World Heritage sites over a span of 3 months starting March 5th, 2012, travelling mainly by bus and train. With this trip they would like to create a bond between the current generation of Indians and the wonderful ...

UNESCO and Collins are delighted to announce the publication of The World’s Heritage (2nd Edition) – the definitive, best-selling guide to all 936 UNESCO World Heritage sites. This is the first book to describe all the sites on the List fully, including the most recent additions to the List in 2011. Only the world's most spectacular and extraordinary sites make it onto UNESCO's ...

To mark the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the UNESCOWorld Heritage Convention, Dentsu, EVERGREEN Digital Contents and NTT DOCOMO, in collaboration with the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, have launched a special cartoon film featuring the friendship between “Patrimonito”, the mascot of the World Heritage Education programme, and “Docomodake”, the mascot of NTT ...

Expert Working Group meeting held in Tokyo, releases recommendations for Safeguarding World Heritage property of the Bamiyan Valley, Afghanistan Following their meeting in UNESCO Headquarters in March 2011, a group of Afghan and international experts working on the safeguarding of Bamiyan (Afghanistan), as well as representatives of the Afghan and Japanese governments and UNESCO,  have ...

It is rare for a Director-General to present a certificate of World Heritage in person, but the temples, gardens and archaeological site of Hiraizumi, inscribed on the List in 2011, marked an exception. Located in north-east Japan, the 12th-century site, representing the Buddhist Pure Land gained its world heritage status three months after the earthquake and tsunami devastated the ...

Panasonic Corporation held yesterday, 8 February, the award ceremony of "Eco Picture Diary Global Contest" which the company has been promoting with the aim to raise awareness of environmental issues and eco actions for the young generation, with the final nomination of national finalists attending the ceremony at UNESCO headquarters. The "Eco-Picture Diary Contest" is a program developed ...

The Retezat Massif has received a Rapid Response Facility (RRF) grant to undertake urgent snow-tracking surveys in response to a road-building threat through the Carpathian Mountains. This protected area is on Romania’s World Heritage tentative list, and is known for its plant diversity, endemism and rich fauna, including the Eurasian eagle-owl, the gray wolf and the brown bear. The ...

The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, launched the 40th anniversary celebration of the World Heritage Convention in a ceremony at UNESCO Headquarters on 30 January. It was the first of a series of events States Parties to the 1972 Convention are organizing around the world over the coming year, and ending with a final event in November 2012 in Kyoto, Japan. The launch featured a ...

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention, one of UNESCO's most successful programmes and one of the most powerful tools for heritage preservation. Almost universally adopted, with 188 signatory countries, the Convention is unique in that it combines the protection of cultural and natural heritage in one instrument. Since its adoption by the General Conference of ...

On November 16, 1972, the international community took a historic step towards safeguarding core, irreplaceable elements of our global heritage when the General Conference of UNESCO adopted the World Heritage Convention. Since then, more than 188 countries have ratified the Convention, and more than 936 separate sites around the world have been designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. As ...

From 7 to 9 November 2011, experts from the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) undertook an advisory mission to examine development projects affecting the World Heritage site "Cathedral, Alcázar and Archivo de Indias in Sevilla", inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1987. At its three last sessions, the World Heritage Committee discussed the state of ...

The Côte d’Ivoire component of the transboundary Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve, inscribed onto the list of World Heritage in Danger, has been awarded a Rapid Response Facility (RRF) small grant to help re-establish the presence of the protected area authority.  Recent civil strife in this country had led to the abandonment of site management offices in the area.  The ...

The UNESCO World Heritage Centre and Panasonic have released an online version of the 2012 World Heritage Calendar in five languages. It is available as a website, or as a downloadable stand-alone application or wallpaper. As the year 2012 is the 40th anniversary of the adoption of the World Heritage Convention, the calendar is expected to raise even more interest than the very popular 2011 ...