Remnants of an often hidden past, memorial sites, monuments and places linked to the slave trade and slavery bear tangible witness to that history and provide a memorial itinerary in the regions and countries marked by that tragedy.

In addition to their educational role in informing new generations of that painful past, these memorial places and sites also serve to establish memorial tourism activities relating to the slave route.

Initiated in April 1995 in Accra (Ghana), this initiative is designed to encourage Member States to inventory, protect and promote these memorial sites and places and to include them in national and regional tourism itineraries.

The project encourages countries that wish to nominate sites of major importance to the collective memory and to the history of humanity for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The Slave Route Project has contributed to inventories such as:

• 15 World Heritage properties inscribed for criteria directly linked to slavery and the slave routes
• 28 World Heritage properties historically linked to slavery and the slave routes but which were not inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List for these criteria
• 38 sites not inscribed on the World Heritage List but they have been included by various State Parties to the World Heritage Convention on their Tentative Lists (A Tentative List is an inventory of those properties which each State Party intends to consider for nomination.)