Sub-Regional Meeting on the Nomination of the West Tien-Shan as Transboundary Natural Heritage Site

The UNESCO World Heritage Centre, in collaboration with the UNESCO Almaty office, are organising a "Sub-Regional Meeting on the Nomination of the West Tien-Shan as Transboundary Natural Heritage Site" in Almaty on 18 and 19 July 2007 with the participation of invited experts and officials from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.  

The Sub-Regional Meeting will contribute to defining the nomination strategy and the modalities for West Tien-Shan as a Natural World Heritage site. The relevant authorities will be provided with guidance on how to prepare the nomination file. Ultimately, the meeting will contribute to accelerating the nomination of Central Asian sites on the List, and thus to improving the geographical balance of the World Heritage List, one of the key objectives of the Budapest Declaration, as well as of the World Heritage Committee's Global Strategy for a Balanced, Representative and Credible World Heritage List.

More specifically, the Sub-regional Meeting should achieve the following results:

• Provision of explanations for better understanding by the State Parties of the Outstanding Universal Value of West Tien-Shan;
• Elaboration of a strategy for the West Tien-Shan trans-boundary nomination process;
• Provision of guidelines for the preparation of the West Tien-Shan nomination file.