Legal Framework

According to Article 5(d) of the World Heritage Convention, the States Parties are required to:”[…] take the appropriate legal, scientific, technical, administrative and financial measures necessary for the identification, protection, conservation, presentation and rehabilitation of this heritage ...”. The World Heritage Operational Guidelines (paragraph 97) further states that ”All properties inscribed on the World Heritage List must have adequate long-term legislative, regulatory, institutional and/or traditional protection and management to ensure their safeguarding.” The Operational Guidelines also emphasize that the legal framework must be implemented and enforced.

In the World Heritage Resource Manual ‘Managing Natural World Heritage’ (UNESCO 2013), a wide definition of legal framework is utilised: ”Legal frameworks for managing cultural heritage might be formalized in legislation specifically drawn up for heritage or they may be a by-product of general legislation that is being used for heritage purposes (and so are less easily defined). Some legal frameworks might have retained an informal, unwritten status, either wholly or in part. They might result from recent expressions of a community-led consensus or be a survival of word-of-mouth practices passed on from generation to generation […] Many legal frameworks have a variety of origins and operate at different levels of a management system (e.g. the state constitution, national laws, local by-laws, property-specific agreements and compliance with cultural heritage conventions and charters)".