Decision : 37 COM 7B.37
Historic Town of Grand-Bassam (Côte d'Ivoire) (C 1322rev)
The World Heritage Committee,
1. Having examined Document WHC-13/37.COM/7B,
2. Recalling Decision 36 COM 8B.17 adopted at the 36th session (Saint-Petersburg, 2012),
3. Takes note of the information provided by the State Party, in particular the boundaries of the property and its buffer zone;
4. Notes with satisfaction the inscription of all the outstanding monuments and sites of the property on the National Heritage List, the establishment of the local Management Committee, the institutionalisation of the Heritage Centre, an improved functioning of the Building Permits Commission and the implementation of different restoration programmes for the outstanding monuments and houses of the property;
5. Encourages the State Party to pursue its efforts for the improved knowledge of the property (cadastral inventory) and further to continue its efforts to strengthen the protection of the property through the Building Permits Commission, the conservation of the property and its monitoring as concerns the privately owned buildings and tree-lined areas, daily management (illegal habitations, waste and pollution) and the surveillance of natural threats (closure of the lagoon and its consequences, coastal erosion);
6. Requests the State Party to:
a) Provide a global map showing the boundary of the property and its new buffer zone,
b) Indicate the human resources of the local Management Committee and the Heritage Centre responsible for the management of the property,
c) Confirm that the notifications of the Heritage Centre and/or the local Management Committee of the property, for the attention of the Building Permits Commission are, in fact, suspensive and not simply consultative, as indicated in some of the documents provided at the time of inscription,
d) Implement a policy to assist in the conservation of private immovable property at both the technical level (practical conservation guide) and financial (combined public/private assistance),
e) Implement a plantation and green spaces programme that respects the authenticity of the property in this domain, and carry out the necessary prior studies,
f) Define more diversified and precise monitoring indicators for conservation, to be applied to both monuments and houses, public squares and plantations. They must cover all the constitutive components of the property, both public and private;
7. Also requests the State Party to submit to the World Heritage Centre by 1 February 2015 , a report on the state of conservation of the property providing information on the implementation of the above-mentioned points, for examination by the World Heritage Committee at its 39th session in 2015.
Decisions Report2013 Historic Town of Grand-Bassam
