4th Annual Coordination Meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage-related Category 2 Institutes and Centres

The fourth annual coordination meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage-related Category 2 Institutes and Centres (C2Cs) took place in Shanghai, China, from 23 to 25 May 2014. The World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and the Pacific region (WHITRAP) hosted the meeting with support from Tongji University and the Shanghai Tongji Urban Planning and Design Institute.

The meeting followed Resolution 17 GA 9, adopted by the General Assembly of States Parties to the World Heritage Convention in 2009; as well as recommendations from the first annual meeting hosted by the Ministry of Culture of the Kingdom of Bahrain (Manama, 19–20 December 2010), the second meeting hosted by the Research Centre on the Economics of Culture and World Heritage Studies (Turin Centre) and IULM University (Milan 21–23 January 2012), and the third meeting hosted by the Nordic World Heritage Foundation (Oslo 3–5 March 2013).

In addition to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and three Advisory Bodies (ICCROM, ICOMOS and IUCN), eight World Heritage-related C2Cs were represented at the meeting, include:

• Nordic World Heritage Foundation (NWHF, Norway) – 2003
• African World Heritage Fund (AWHF, South Africa) – 2007
• World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and the Pacific Region (WHITRAP) – 2007
• Arab Regional Centre for World Heritage (ARC-WH, Bahrain) – 2009
• Regional World Heritage Institute in Zacatecas (Mexico) – 2009
• International Centre for Rock Art and the World Heritage Convention (Spain) – 2011
• International Research Centre on the Economics of Culture and World Heritage Studies (ITRECH, Italy) – 2011
• International Centre on Space Technologies for Natural and Cultural Heritage (HIST, China) – 2011

The meeting invited also experts commissioned by UNESCO for the external evaluation of WHITRAP to share their views on the evaluation. Together with the inputs from NWHF and WHITRAP, a special session on the preparation for the external evaluation was organized to share experience among concerned C2Cs.