UNESCO's World Heritage Initiatives
Perhaps the most well-known aspect of UNESCO’s work is in the realm of culture. The point of UNESCO’s work with culture is to focus on an ideal of human solidarity and peace built through human cultural achievements. For UNESCO, sites are universally exceptional, belong to all people, and should be protected as such. UNESCO’s world heritage protection program arose following the construction of the Aswan High Dam on the Nile. The construction of the dam threatened to flood the Nile plains and potentially destroy the ancient Abu Simbel temples. Following this threat, the international community, led by Egypt and Sudan, began clamoring for international safeguarding of cultural heritage sites and international assistance in salvaging sites. In the wake of this international movement, UNESCO began to draft the Convention on World Heritage.
In 1972, the Convention on World Heritage was proposed and ratified. The Convention sets out the framework for the World Heritage List, World Heritage Fund, and lays out the duties of the signatory states. By signing onto the World Heritage Convention, a state gains a number of benefits. First, it gains the prestige of being a member and the ability to list sites on the World Heritage List. This can increase awareness of cultural heritage as well as tourism in the country, helping states economically. Additionally, states gain the benefit of a UNESCO developed and approved management plan for their inscribed World Heritage Sites. However, the biggest benefit is access to benefits of the World Heritage Fund.
The World Heritage Fund is made up of the required contributions by the states party to the convention and from voluntary and private donations. Every year, there is around $4 million of funding available to states that are in need of extra assistance to protect or rebuild their sites. The World Heritage Fund also boasts a program called the Rapid Response Facility, which acts in times of crisis to protect World Heritage Sites by quickly and efficiently allocating already existing funds.
The World Heritage Convention and World Heritage Fund govern two lists of world heritage sites. The first and most prominent is the List of World Heritage Sites. Since the signing of the World Heritage Convention in 1972, there have been 1092 sites across 167 state parties inscribed to the list. This was helped by the Global Strategy, which was signed in 1994. This strategy aims to ensure that the sites inscribed to the World Heritage List accurately reflect the cultural diversity of the world. Additionally, there was a heavy skewing of cultural sites to natural sites, so the Global strategy sought to remedy this discrepancy as well.
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A site is eligible to be inscribed on the World Heritage List if it meets at least one of the ten criteria set out by UNESCO in addition to being considered of “outstanding universal value.” These criteria are outlined in the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, which help the World Heritage Committee govern and manage the sites that they choose to inscribe. The Committee also has the ability to update the selection criteria as they see fit and as the concept of world heritage changes. The ten criteria can be roughly split between six that reflect criteria for cultural sites and four that reflect criteria for natural sites. Additionally, the World Heritage Committee notes that sites can be cross-listed as cultural and natural sites, and refers to these as cultural landscapes. In determining a site’s adherence to criteria, the Committee also takes into account the management and protection of the site as it currently stands.
When a state becomes party to the World Heritage Convention, it must ensure timely and accurate implementation of the tenets of the convention, especially if the state is home to sites that are inscribed on the World Heritage List. In order to remain a member in good standing with the World Heritage Convention, states party must provide reports to UNESCO about the implementation of the convention tenets in periodic reports. Along with the periodic reports, the states must provide reports on the state of conservation of any World Heritage Sites within their borders. These state of conservation reports are used to build a database on the World Heritage Sites and the statistics surrounding them. The reports measure and monitor threats to the sites and even specify the types of threats each site faces.
The World Heritage Convention of 1972 also created the List of World Heritage in Danger. This list is used to inform the rest of the global community that a country may need assistance in protecting its heritage sites. Additionally, by placing a site on the list, it allows the governing bodies of UNESCO to give immediate assistance to these sites. The point of placing a site on the list is to give it the resources needed to ensure that it maintains the criteria that it demonstrated to be inscribed on the list in the first place. Often times though, having a site placed on the list is seen as dishonorable, and states will balk at having their sites placed on the list, even though it may be what is necessary to save the site from being removed from the list or completely destroyed. Some reasons that sites may be inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger are: war and armed conflict, natural disasters, pollution, increased and uncontrolled tourism, and urbanization, to name a few. Inscribing a site on this list can give a state the monetary assistance needed to combat these threats and create a management plan to work contrast to these threatening events.
So, why cultural heritage? UNESCO focuses on cultural and natural heritage because it provides humans with “sources of life and inspiration.” For UNESCO, cultural heritage belongs to everyone and no one at the same time, which makes it worth saving and promoting. UNESCO’s overall mission is to foster peace first in the minds of people. For UNESCO, and for many that dedicate resources to UNESCO’s mission, culture provides a means with which to stabilize a region and promote peace in an area. When it comes to sites that are in danger, especially those threatened by war and armed conflict, it is more important than ever to protect those sites because of their significance in the minds of the people that are affected. By providing a means to protect and rebuild these sites, UNESCO gives the people of a region a part of their identity back. For UNESCO, a lot of the work done in the sector of heritage protection is for the benefit of building a more peaceful world, where culture is shared among humans, and differences in culture are respected and even revered.