News

The government of Montenegro, Serbia and Montenegro, has cancelled a project to build a dam that would flood part of the Tara River Canyon in the buffering UNESCO Biosphere Reserve next to Durmitor National Park, a World Heritage site inscribed in 1980. The decision comes as the result of meetings that UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura had with the Presidents of Serbia and Montenegro ...

Major archaeological vestiges have been discovered at the World Heritage site of Aksum (Ethiopia) by the experts UNESCO sent to Aksum (Ethiopia) to survey the World Heritage Site last week. They were sent to prepare for the elevation of the Aksum Obelisk at its original location. The last segment of the 160-tonne 24.6-metre high stele arrived at the airport of Aksum this morning. It had been ...

The first of three parts of the Aksum obelisk arrived in Ethiopia by airplane on April 19. The two other pieces of the obelisk, which has been in Rome since 1937, will be sent to Aksum (a World Heritage site) in the following days. Following a mission of UNESCO experts who conducted a field evaluation, UNESCO is to draw up the project for the installation of the obelisk and the enhancement ...

China has signed an agreement to join UNESCO in the Open Initiative on the Use of Space Technology in Support of the World Heritage Convention. The signing - by Guo Huadong, Deputy Secretary-General of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Director of its Joint Laboratory for Remote Sensing Archaeology, and Marcio Barbosa, Deputy Director-General of UNESCO – took place at Organization ...

The President of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, the Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura and the World Bank's Vice President for Europe, Jean-François Rischard, will open a conference and an exhibition at UNESCO Headquarters celebrating the cultural heritage of Mauritania and its ancient cities of Ouadane, Chinguetti, Tichitt and Oualata, on April 11 ...

Accurate and detailed maps of inaccessible zones in Central Africa that will allow authorities to monitor the habitat of the region's threatened mountain gorillas, have been produced for the first time by the European Space Agency (ESA) and UNESCO. The results of this joint project, known as BEGo (Build Environment for Gorillas), will be presented at a meeting on April 7 at ESA headquarters ...

The State of World Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region (2003) is now available as publication number 12 in the World Heritage Paper Series. This publication is composed of: a paper version, providing an overview of the results of this first cycle of Periodic Reporting for the Asia-Pacific Region; and a CD-Rom which includes a synthesis of country and site-specific Periodic Reports of the ...

On 16 February 2005, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago officially deposited with the Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, its instrument of ratification, becoming the 180th State Party to adopt the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The World Heritage Convention will enter into force for this State Party on 16 May ...

At the request of the Ethiopian and Italian governments, UNESCO will send an evaluation team to Aksum, in northern Ethiopia, to prepare the return of its celebrated obelisk. The obelisk has been in Rome since 1937. UNESCO will draw up the re-installation project for the obelisk and the development of the site, which will be funded by Italy. The obelisk has been cut into three sections to ...

On 7 January 2005, the Government of Sierra Leone officially deposited with the Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, its instrument of ratification, becoming the 179th State Party to adopt the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and natural Heritage. This Convention, first adopted in November 1972, seeks to encourage the identification, protection and ...

Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, and Frederick D. Gregory, Deputy Administrator of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), today signed a cooperation agreement at NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C. According to the agreement, UNESCO will benefit from NASA’s expertise in the earth sciences and space technology to strengthen its work ...

The Director-General, Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, paid his first official visit to St Lucia from 13 to 15 February 2005. It was the first official visit of a UNESCO Director-General to the country. He was accompanied by Mr Gilbert Chagoury, Permanent Delegate of St Lucia to UNESCO. During his visit, the Director-General met with the highest authorities in the country. In particular, he held ...

The World Heritage Centre participated in the United Nations World Conference on Disaster Reduction, held in Kobe, Japan, from the 18th to the 22nd of January, 2005. This meeting was especially timely in light of the recent earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean region, and also coincided with the 10th anniversary of Kobe’s devastating 1995 earthquake. As part of the broader Kobe ...

The World Heritage Centre is pleased to inform you that the Revised Operational Guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention are now available on the following Web address: https://whc.unesco.org/en/guidelines. As decided by the Committee at its 7th Extraordinary session, the revised Operational Guidelines have entered into force on 2 February 2005, on the understanding ...

On 31 January 2005, the Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia sentenced retired General Pavle Strugar of the Yugoslav Peoples’ Army to eight years in prison for war crimes perpetrated in 1991. He has been found guilty of war crimes against the civilian population and, under Article 3(d) of the Tribunal’s Statute, of the destruction of and wilful ...

The Curonian Spit, an elongated sand-dune peninsula straddling the border of Lithuania and the Russian Federation, will not be inscribed on UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger. The decision follows an agreement between the two countries to undertake an environmental assessment of the impact of oil exploration and production in the Baltic Sea, 22 kilometres from the World Heritage site. ...

UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura today opened the first meeting of a Committee of Experts on the Cultural Heritage of the Old City of Jerusalem, a site inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1981 by virtue of its outstanding cultural value. The opening session was held in the presence of the Permanent Delegates of UNESCO’s Member States and Norway’s Minister of Culture and ...

The decisions taken by the World Heritage Committee during its 7th Extraordinary Session, held in Paris from 6 to 11 December 2004, can now be consulted online ( whc04-7extcom-17e.pdf). During this important meeting, the Committee examined, among other things, the relations between the World Heritage Convention and other UNESCO conventions relating to heritage and considered proposals for the ...

The conservation community mourns the loss of several staff members of the Gunung Leuser National Park, one of the three national parks within the Tropical Rainforest of Sumatra World Heritage site. According to most recent information, the Tropical Rainforest of Sumatra and the Ujung Kulon National Park have not sustained important damage during the recent tsunami disaster. The ...

The Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, has offered UNESCO’s support to the countries devastated by the earthquake off the coast of Sumatra and the ensuing tsunami. Mr Matsuura said that "UNESCO stands ready" to assist the national authorities within its fields of competence and "give whatever support it can to the United Nations Emergency Relief ...