Junhi Han

Junhi Han has been working at the World Heritage Centre since November 2006 as Programme Specialist at the Asia and Pacific Desk. Her main task is to advise the State Parties in Central and South Asian, as well as Mekong River countries in their implementation of the World Heritage Convention. This includes a close monitoring state of conservation of the World Heritage properties in the Region and reporting to the World Heritage Committee. On the other hand, she coordinates and implements (have implemented) a number of UNESCO flagship projects, notably Safeguarding the Bamiyan Budha Niches, Emergency Conservation of Endangered Monuments in Jam and Herat[1] (Afghanistan), and the Bayon Temple projects at Angkor (Cambodia). The Project Safeguarding of Koguryo Tombs and Mural Paintings in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea that she initiated a decade ago has grown up to one of the UNESCO’s flagship projects. Her most recent initiative in the Region is a pilot project World Heritage for Local Community and Sustainable Development, launched in three World Heritage properties in South Asia notably in Makli (Pakistan).

 Prior to joining the World Heritage Centre, she worked in the Division of Cultural Heritage of UNESCO, which was the main body for all UNESCO’s operational projects in the field of cultural heritage. Her major achievements during this period is, among others, the launching of the Post-Campaign Strategy for Moenjodaro (Pakistan). The project Preservation of the Frozen Tombs of the Altai Mountains[2], which she developed and implemented in the Russian Altai, is the first UNESCO project that brought attention of international community into the nomadic peoples that inhabited the Eurasian Steppe in the first millennium BCE and their rich archaeological heritage lying scattered in the Eurasian Steppe. She served as coordinator of the Joint UNESCO-UNV Programme “United Nations Volunteers for Cultural Heritage.

 A curator by training with M.A. in Museum Studies in France, notably from the Ecole nationale du Louvre in parallel with curricula in the Institute of Art and Archaeology, Paris I Pantheon, she has made several publications and authored a number of articles in various journals related to heritage. She is a member of ICOMOS since 2008. 

[1] « From the past and for the future: safeguarding the cultural heritage of Afghanistan: Jam and Herat » unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002330/233042e.pdf

 [2] « Preservation of the Frozen Tombs of the Altai Mountains » : whc.unesco.org/en/news/433/