The UNESCO World Heritage Centre, in close cooperation with the UNESCO Offices in Almaty and Tashkent, and in active partnership with the Uzbekistan authorities, and the International Institute for Central Asian Studies (IICAS), a UNESCO category II Centre based in Samarkand, Uzbekistan will organize a two-day expert meeting of the Coordination of the Silk Roads World Heritage Serial and Transnational Nomination. This meeting is supported by two donor countries with their generous financial contributions made to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre through the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO), and with the broader UNESCO Japanese Funds-in-Trust specially funded project on 'Support for documentation standards and procedures of the Silk Roads World Heritage Serial and Transnational Nomination in Central Asia’.

The meeting will act as a catalyst to bring together about 35 participants from the entire Central Asian region and neighboring China, including experts on the national level from the State Parties of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The meeting will also have the honor to welcome a host of widely recognized international regional experts to further help the direction and content outcomes of the meeting.

The Ashgabat Agreement previously adopted in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, in May 2011 will be the guiding principle to the priority work of the transnational heritage corridors for the first phase of the Silk Road nomination process; these two corridors are to made, the first in China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and second Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. This process will be further assisted by the finalizing of the ICOMOS Thematic Study, which in turn will allow for the establishment of an over Silk Roads serial nomination framework, to ensure all the necessary guidance on serial trans-boundary nominations arising from the International World Heritage expert meeting on serial nominations and properties in Ittingen, Switzerland, February, 2010 are met. Finally, it is hoped to achieve during this expert meeting, to agree upon the detailed work plan in consideration of the first phase Silk Roads World Heritage Serial and Transnational nomination submission deadline of 1 February 2013.