Historic Centre of Shakhrisyabz

• Management systems/management plan (Lack of a comprehensive conservation and management plan)
• Management activities
• Housing; Commercial development (Major interventions carried out, including demolition and re-building activities)
• Legal framework (Need to reinforce the national legal framework)
• Human resources (inadequate)
• Financial resources (inadequate)

• Large-scale urban development projects carried out without informing the Committee or commissioning the necessary heritage impact assessments
• Demolition and rebuilding of traditional housing areas
• Irreversible changes to the original appearance of a large area within the historic centre
• Significant alteration of the setting of monuments and the overall historical town planning structure and its archaeological layers
• Absence of conservation and Management Plan

Not yet drafted

Not yet identified

Not yet identified

Total amount provided: 2016: USD 30,670 from the UNESCO/Netherlands Funds-in-Trust project for the Application of the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on Historic Urban landscape (HUL Recommendation) at the World Heritage properties in Uzbekistan; 2019: USD 43,115 from the UNESCO/Netherlands Funds-in-Trust for building capacity in the conservation and management of World Heritage properties in Uzbekistan.

On 27 January 2020, the State Party submitted a state of conservation report and an update was received by the World Heritage Centre on 30 January 2021. Both reports are available at http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/885/documents and provide the following information regarding the State Party’s actions in response to earlier decisions of the Committee:

• A number of legal tools (Presidential Decree, Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers, amendment to the Law of the Republic of Uzbekistan) were adopted in 2018-2019 to reinforce heritage preservation, notably by halting all construction at the property, pending the adoption of a clear policy for the property’s rehabilitation;
• A map showing the proposal to restore the traditional setting of the streets and houses in several areas in the property was submitted as part of the State Party’s report;
• An assessment of the impact of past actions on heritage is underway, as recommended by the Joint World Heritage Centre/ICOMOS High-Level Reactive Monitoring mission of January 2019;
• A study on a possible modification of the property’s boundaries is under preparation. The State Party has contracted independent experts to assess the potential for a significant boundary modification or a new nomination that might justify the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV), and their conclusions will be taken into account when defining potential new boundaries for the property;
• A working group and an Action Plan for the implementation of the Decision 43 COM 7A.44 were set up in 2020 in order to carry out all necessary studies to further explore the two options suggested by the 2019 High-Level Mission, although the State Party indicated its preliminary preference for the second option, namely the exploration of the key elements of the Timurid urbanism within the Historic Centre. The Terms of Reference for this study, to be completed by December 2021, have been established;
• In the 2021 update, the State Party reports that a detailed urban restoration plan is under development, aiming at the recovering of the settings of the monuments in the central area and the rehabilitation of the existing urban fabric;
• A design proposal was developed for restoration work yet to be conducted and is in the process of being approved, possibly for implementation in cooperation with the Russian Institute of Urban and Investment Development (‘GipRoGor’, Russian Federation);
• The report of 2020 succinctly lists conservation activities at a number of historic monuments, carried out mainly in 2015-2016;
• Lighting equipment installed on the property was reassessed and reduced;
• Attraction sites and the children’s playground located in the east of Ak-Saray were removed and reinstalled outside of the inscribed area;
• The revision of the Management Plan in the framework of a substantial revision of the management system for the property is to be completed by December 2022, and the establishment of an Integrated Conservation and Management Plan by December 2024 in taking into consideration the Historic Urban Landscape Recommendation (HUL);
• The increase in the occurrence of material failures on tiles and tile falling at the Ak-Saray Palace has been reported, and a national multidisciplinary team has been established to cope with the issues;
• The State Party is establishing an International Advisory Committee (IAC) for cultural World Heritage properties in Uzbekistan. Progress has been made, including liaison with the World Heritage Centre, identification of potential members and budget allocation, with a first meeting expected in 2021 to ensure follow-up of the Committee decisions and previous mission recommendations;

Due to the global situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the State Party did not submit details of proposals for a Significant Boundary Modification that might have the potential to justify the OUV by the deadline set by the Committee at its 43rd session (Baku, 2019). 

At its 41st session (Krakow, 2017), the Committee noted with concern the conclusions of the December 2016 Reactive Monitoring mission that “as the monumental buildings have now been disengaged from their urban surroundings, the heart of the Temurid town planning has been lost and, as the traditional dwelling houses in the core of the medieval town have been destroyed, the key attributes of the OUV have been damaged to such an extent, and for the most part irreversible, that property can no longer convey the OUV for which it was inscribed”, and hence that recovering sufficient attributes to justify the OUV identified at the time of inscription seemed impossible (Decision 41 COM 7A.57). The Committee was tasked with considering whether the property had “deteriorated to such an extent that it has lost the attributes of the OUV defined at the time of inscription and should therefore, in accordance with Paragraph 192 of the Operational Guidelines, be deleted from the World Heritage List”. It nevertheless decided to recommend that the State Party should explore whether a significant boundary modification, based on some of the monuments and the remaining urban areas, might have the potential to justify OUV.

The 2019 High-level Reactive Monitoring mission proposed two possible options that the State Party might wish to explore: 1) focusing on the monuments representing the Temurid period, or 2) exploring the key elements of the Temurid urbanism within the Historic Centre. However, the 2019 mission did not have the necessary documentation to allow a thorough assessment of whether OUV might be justified for either of these options and suggested that much more work would be needed by the State Party in the form of research, documentation, and conservation, including plans for a possible reversal of recent conservation work in the case of the monuments, before it might be possible to assess whether or not either of these options might have the potential to justify OUV.

In Decision 43 COM 7A.44, the Committee accepted the mission’s recommendations and decided ‘to allow the State Party two years to explore possible options for a significant boundary modification or a new nomination, and at the end of this period, to consider once again whether the property should be retained on the World Heritage List for a further period to allow time, if by then a clear direction of travel has been articulated, or to delete the property altogether’. The Decision also made it clear that, in exploring either option, the State Party ‘should undertake further research and documentation and develop a restoration plan, in order to provide sufficient details to allow assessment of the potential for each option to justify OUV, before any work is undertaken on a significant boundary modification in compliance with Paragraphs 165 and 166 of the Operational Guidelines or on a new nomination’, and it further encouraged the State Party to ‘request upstream support in relation to the potential for a significant boundary modification or a new nomination to justify OUV’.

The creation of a working group and an Action Plan to explore the two options is noted, as are the completion date of December 2021 for the studies and the State Party’s preference for the second option. The State Party indicates that it will explore the two options in depth and will take into account the complexity of the site and its critical condition. The State Party also notes that there is a strong will at the local level to work in collaboration with the World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies. In its 2020 report, it indicated that the way forward being explored could include a plan for the ‘restoration of the traditional setting of the streets in the historic period’, the restoration of traditional houses, and the development of new (restored) traditional houses in the empty space created by recent demolition. It is also reported that a detailed urban restoration plan aiming to recover the settings of the monuments in the central area and the rehabilitation of the remaining urban fabric is under development.

The State Party acknowledges that exploration of the second option would need to be based on detailed documentation of what survives of the urban grain, research on its evolution, and analysis of the specificities of vernacular building traditions in order to allow an assessment of what might be recovered and its feasibility. Before any work is undertaken to implement this second option or on other large-scale restoration projects, full details of the research and analysis of this option should be submitted to the World Heritage Centre, together with the implications of this option in terms of restoration, for review by the Advisory Bodies and consideration by the Committee. If the Committee were to then consider such an option to be potentially feasible, the next step would be for the State Party to prepare and submit a Significant Boundary Modification or a new Nomination, which would also need to consider in detail an overall urban restoration plan that aligned with the need to upgrade infrastructure and living conditions in order to ensure a living city, and the development of new protection, conservation and management systems for the property in line with the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL).

The current position is that no option or potential way forward for the property has been outlined or proposed within the timeline set by the Committee. The State Party has indicated that the constraints posed by the COVID-19 pandemic have disrupted its timetable and has requested an extension from the Committee. Given the proposals now in place to explore the second option in association with international experts by the end of December 2021, and the willingness expressed by the State Party to collaborate with the World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies in this process, it is recommended that the Committee extend the deadline by one year and request the State Party to submit a report on the feasibility of the preferred option for consideration at its 45th session in 2022.

Given the crucial importance of the assessment work being undertaken and the sensitivities in relation to authenticity and integrity of some of the possibilities being discussed, e.g. those related to any potential reconstruction, it is recommended that the Committee reiterate its encouragement that the State Party seek upstream advice from ICOMOS. The State Party reports that it is contracting individual ICOMOS experts who will determine the boundaries of a possible modification. In that regard, it should be clarified that individual experts cannot provide formal upstream advice on behalf of ICOMOS International.

In relation to other aspects of the property, the adoption of several new legal instruments is expected to reinforce the protection of the property. Following the introduction of the new laws, all construction activities have been stopped, which is to be welcomed. As the Committee requested all further work to be halted, clarity is needed on whether restoration and demolition have also been halted. The report indicates that this may not be the case, as it is stated that after re-housing residents, three locally protected, 19th-century traditional houses were torn down after ‘measuring, study and preparation of the passports’, apparently with the intention to build new ‘traditional houses’ of a similar design. There is clearly a need to upgrade dwellings, to enlarge some and install new services. The issue is how this is done in a way that allows good examples of traditional buildings to survive, rather than be demolished, and sensitive new additions to be constructed – but not as multiple copies of a 19^th century model. An overall approach to this issue needs to be defined and agreed before any further work is undertaken. Work on demolition and restoration of traditional houses also needs to be halted until such an agreed approach is in place.

As the state of conservation of the tiles at the Ak-Saray complex remain a great concern, the State Party established a multidisciplinary team to propose ways forward to tackle the issue. The requested information concerning the Ak-Saray Palace tiles and the strategy for their conservation remains to be submitted to the World Heritage Centre for review by the Advisory Bodies.

The World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies are fully aware that the property now faces a highly complex situation. It remains essential that the phases identified by the Committee to assess potential ways forward are respected. This means that before any work is undertaken on restoration, rebuilding or further demolition, the State Party should first submit an outline of their preferred option, based on (a) research and documentation; (b) a detailed analysis of what survives in comparison with what existed before recent demolitions; (c) a comprehensive and detailed historical analysis of the evolution of the town over time, including the development of its Timurid urban planning; (d) conservation assessments of what remains; and (e) a proposed restoration plan. The outline of the preferred option should set out clear justifications for restoring or conserving elements, particularly in relation to the mahallas, as well as demonstrating how a completed project might have the potential to justify OUV. If such an outline of the preferred option is submitted for discussion at the 45th session, the Committee would consider one of the two ways forward that were set out in 2019:

• ‘if a clear direction of travel has been articulated,’ the State Party could progress with the development of a Significant Boundary Modification or a new Nomination dossier and undertake work towards this, including completing the revised Management Plan and strengthening the protection and management systems, in compliance with Paragraphs 165 and 166 of the Operational Guidelines, or of a new Nomination;
• if the research and assessments do not indicate a potential to demonstrate OUV, then the Committee has agreed that the property should be removed from the World Heritage List altogether.

Meanwhile, until these matters are considered at the 45th session and a way forward has been agreed, there is a need to retain a complete moratorium in place at the property for restoration and reconstruction as well as development.

Finally, the Committee may wish to encourage the State Party to pursue the establishment and operation of an International Advisory Committee (IAC) for all cultural World Heritage properties in Uzbekistan, which can advise on the conservation of the property and implementation of Committee decisions and mission recommendations.