Altering the route of the Transgabonese highway near the Ecosystem and Relict Cultural Landscape of Lopé-Okanda will better protect the World Heritage site. The Transgabonese highway project, which is to cross five provinces of Gabon to link Libreville (West) and Franceville (East) by expressway, foresees the rehabilitation and upgrading of various roads. The World Heritage Committee had ...

Monitoring World Heritage site closures Introduction to the global map on the closure of World Heritage sites due to Covid-19 and analysis. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, many governments have taken measures to restrict movements of people and access to certain areas. This includes the closure of natural and cultural World Heritage sites in the 167 countries they are located in. ...

On the 1st of October, the second online World Heritage Nomination workshop, for Anglophone and Francophone countries, was officially closed by the Director of the World Heritage Centre. The training examined the challenges and strengths of nomination dossiers for 12 countries from the African Region, namely Benin, Cameroon, Côte-d’Ivoire, Gabon, Mali, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia ...

Migratory birds are part of our shared natural World Heritage. They depend on critical breeding, staging and wintering sites along major flyways which often span several continents. Two of the world’s largest migratory bird stop-over areas, Wadden Sea and Banc d’Arguin National Park were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2009 and 1989 respectively. This World Migratory Bird Day, we ...

The UNESCO World Heritage Centre has received numerous emails with third-party information regarding the construction of a concrete road passing through the World Heritage property “Sinharaja Forest Reserve” (Sri Lanka), which could negatively affect the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of this property. The road development was reportedly under temporary suspension, but work appears to have ...

As part of an ongoing UNESCO World Heritage Fund International Assistance project  “Capacity building and implementation of the World Heritage Convention in South Sudan”, UNESCO Juba Office in close collaboration with the South Sudan Ministry of Culture, Museums and National Heritage organized a three-day training workshop aimed at strengthening capacities of World Heritage stakeholders under ...

International experts from the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO) led an online meeting on the theme "Safeguarding the cultural heritage of Comoros" for government stakeholders in Comoros on 29 September 2020. The meeting was organized in close collaboration with the Direction General for Arts and Culture of Comoros and reinforced existing UNESCO ...

Global strategy needed in ‘watershed’ moment to steer away from unsustainable tourism, stress experts at UNESCO debate. The online debate ‘Culture, Tourism and COVID-19: Recovery, Resiliency and Rejuvenation’ took place on 28 September and highlighted the devastating impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry and the crippling effect it is having on many World Heritage sites, intangible ...

The Director of the World Heritage Centre, Dr Mechtild Rössler, launches the Third Cycle of Periodic Reporting in the region of Asia and the Pacific via a video message addressed to the National Focal Points One of the two main monitoring mechanisms within the framework of the 1972 World Heritage Convention, alongside Reactive Monitoring, the Periodic Reporting exercise is a statutory ...

The ‘Culture, Tourism and COVID-19: Recovery, Resiliency and Rejuvenation’ global debate takes place on 28 September, 2020, 13.30-15.00 CET. The debate is organized by UNESCO, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property ...

The Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention set forth the procedures for the protection and conservation of World Heritage properties, the inscription of properties on the World Heritage List and the List of World Heritage in Danger, the granting of International Assistance under the World Heritage Fund, and the mobilization of national and international ...

In the framework of the new communication strategy with the African World Heritage Fund (AWHF), the World Heritage Centre (WHC), the Africa and Arab State units, and the AWHF held an online quarterly meeting on 22 September 2020. The AWHF presented its Work plan for the 16 activities (from now until the beginning of 2021) including Online Nomination Training for African Countries, Training ...

UNESCO will host the last of three ResiliArt online debates dedicated to Lebanon, ResiliArt Lebanon: Bridging the Past and Future through Built Heritage, on 24 September, from 6 pm to 7.30 pm (CET). It will bring together experts and actors in the field of built heritage to discuss the impact of the 4 August blast on the architectural and urban heritage of Beirut, and ways to implement a ...

The Director-General of UNESCO, Ms. Audrey Azoulay, strongly condemned the killing of two employees of the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) on 17 September 2020 at the Adusa post of the entrance to the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, a property inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  "In a global context already weakened by a health ...

‘Le Pôle international francophone de formation et d’échanges des gestionnaires de sites patrimoniaux’ is offering training for French speaking site managers in 2021. The Call for applications is open until 30 October 2020. The 8th edition of intensive international training for site managers "Building together the future of heritage sites: developing and implementing sustainable management" ...

World Cleanup Day harnesses the power of people around the world to cooperate and collaborate to clean our environment, including UNESCO World Heritage sites. This effort involves all levels of society – from citizens to business, to government to reduce the harmful effects of pollution in communities all over the world. Pollution is a global problem requiring a global solution, even in the ...

The African World Heritage Fund (AWHF) is coordinating the Modern Heritage of Africa (MoHoA) Programme in collaboration with the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), to define, identify, ...

Unprecedented fires are blazing through the Pantanal, threatening numerous endangered species and the highly valuable ecosystem. The Rapid Response Facility, a joint initiative of UNESCO and Fauna and Flora International (FFI), is supporting firefighting activity in the Pantanal Biosphere Reserve to prevent fires from spreading into the Pantanal Conservation Area World Heritage site. The ...

Two World Heritage properties in Madagascar - Tsingy de Bemaraha Integrated Nature Reserve and the Belo-sur-Mer Kirindy-Mitea Biosphere Reserve - received financial support for COVID-19 recovery and emergency response from the programme #SOSAfricanHeritage funded by the German Commission for UNESCO. The grants follow submission of two project proposals by Madagascar National Parks ...

Three participants from Ethiopia, together with 16 other representatives from Anglophone Africa, are taking part in an online World Heritage Nomination Workshop for Advanced Dossiers under the framework of the World Heritage Nomination Capacity Building Programme from 10 to 17 September 2020. The  online workshop, which was organized by the African World Heritage Fund (AWHF), International ...