Meeting for the Preparation the Draft Third Cycle Action Plan for the Arab States Region

On 20 and 21 July 2020, World Heritage Focal Points and Site Managers from 19 countries of the Arab States region, Advisory Bodies to the World Heritage Convention, the Arab Regional Centre for World Heritage (ARC-WH), World Heritage experts, UNESCO Field Offices, and the World Heritage Centre (WHC) participated in a virtual meeting.

The meeting, organized within the framework of the Third Cycle for Periodic Reporting on the application of the World Heritage Convention, aimed at presenting the outcomes of the Periodic Reporting questionnaires and initiate a discussion towards the elaboration of a six-year Action Plan for the region.

Over the course of the 2-day meeting, heritage experts, ARC-WH and the WHC presented the outcomes of the report, specific themes for the elaboration of the Action Plan, its monitoring indicators and the way forward for the presentation of the final document to the World Heritage Committee at its 44th session.

Participants from the 19 countries of the region expressed their views on the reports outcomes and highlighted priorities related to management systems and plans, risk preparedness and recovery, sustainable tourism strategies, policies for Heritage and Environmental Impact Assessments, the integration of sustainable development in the governance for World Heritage, synergies with other UNESCO Conventions and mechanisms, gender and youth engagement, community participation, regional and international cooperation and capacity building.

The meeting, originally foreseen to take place in March 2020 in Bahrain, was cancelled due to the global COVID-19 outbreak. This online meeting was organised by the World Heritage Centre, in close cooperation with the Arab Regional Centre for World Heritage (ARC-WH).

Periodic Reporting is one of the core conservation monitoring mechanisms of the World Heritage Convention. Every six years, the States Parties are invited to submit to the World Heritage Committee a Periodic Report on the application of the World Heritage Convention in their territory (https://whc.unesco.org/en/periodicreporting/).