News

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

The Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, will name the internationally renowned painter, Countess Setsuko Klossowska de Rola, UNESCO Artist for Peace, in a ceremony at Organization Headquarters on January 7 (12.30 p.m.). Countess Klossowska de Rola is being named Artist for Peace for her role in promoting the World Heritage Education Project", which was launched by UNESCO in ...