Keywords

1 Introduction

UNESCO’s flagship program is the World Heritage Convention. International attention and recognition, as well as solidarity and international cooperation, for the protection of monuments and nature and endangered heritage were the guiding principles leading to the ratification of the World Heritage Convention by UNESCO’s General Conference in 1972. The World Heritage list became its figurehead, and the World Heritage Committee is its key forum. The development and composition of both of them are yardsticks for the credibility of the convention based on the universal claim to represent the global community as well as to protect and conserve the natural and cultural heritage worldwide for future generations. In a time of disregard for cultural diversity and the deliberate destruction of cultural properties in armed conflicts, the vision of the unifying power of common heritage underlying the convention’s idea is needed more than ever.

2 Committee and Political Attention

The World Heritage list as well as the number of States Parties to the Convention, which reached the universal ratification rate of 194 in 2020, have been constantly on the increase over the last five decades. While the World Heritage list is still growing and subject to constant observation, the number and the distribution of mandates on the Committee were not in focus for a long time. This changed radically in 2013; the General Assembly of the World Heritage Convention ended in a great uproar. One year after the 40th anniversary of the Convention, none of the African States Parties running for the Committee had been elected. Senegal was the only remaining Committee member representing the African continent for the following two years. By contrast, Asia/Pacific went out of this election as the strongest regional group with four newly elected States Parties and a total of seven Committee members. The African States Parties were deeply indignant about the result, and an immediate change in the electoral mode was demanded.

Without delay, a working group was set up whose proposals formed the basis for the adoption of amended rules of procedure at the extraordinary General Assembly in the following year (UNESCO, 2014). The election system was completely converted. Prior to this, only two places on the Committee were reserved, one for a State Party without a World Heritage site and one for a State Party that has never served as a member of the Committee; today, only 4 seats are not reserved. In order to achieve a balance in the geographical distribution of seats or mandates, 17 seats are assigned to the electoral groups as follows: 2 seats for group I (Western European and North American States), 2 seats for group II (Eastern European States), 2 seats for group III (Latin-American and Caribbean States), 3 seats for group IV (Asian and Pacific States), 4 seats for group V(a) (African States), 2 seats for group V(b) (Arab States). An additional seat has to be allocated for Group III and Group IV on a rotational basis. Moreover, it is recommended to consider the election of at least one State Party which has never served as a member of the World Heritage Committee.

The changes take effect only gradually. Seven years after the change of the electoral mode, group I still has the most mandates and years on the World Heritage Committee. This is also due to the fact that a mandate lasted 6 years during the first three decades of the convention and was not limited to 4 years as it is today. It was only decided in 2014 that there must be a seven-year gap between two mandates of a state party.

The service on the Committee within the electoral groups is as unbalanced as the distribution of mandates between the regional groups. In all electoral groups, there are States Parties running regularly. In group I, it is France with a total of 25 years on the Committee, the Russian Federation with 12 years in group II, Brazil with 27 years in group III, Australia also with 27 years in group IV, Senegal with 19 years in group Va and Egypt with 23 years in group Vb. Among the top twelve States Parties serving on the Committee between 20 and 27 years, 3 are from group I, none of group II, 3 from group III, 3 from group IV, none from group 5a and 3 from group 5b (UNESCO, 2021).

Membership in the Committee obviously depends crucially on political attention and implementation of the Convention, stipulating in Article 5 that each State Party shall “…adopt a general policy which aims to give the cultural and natural heritage a function in the life of the community and to integrate the protection of that heritage into comprehensive planning programmes” (UNESCO, 1972a).

3 Commitment and Preconditions

The Recommendation concerning the Protection, at National Level, of the Cultural and Natural Heritage, which was adopted by the General Assembly of UNESCO on the same day as the World Heritage Convention on 16 November 1972, provides a comprehensive framework and operational methodology for implementing the Convention as an integral part of the national heritage protection system (UNESCO, 1972b). In seven chapters, it provides definitions of cultural and natural heritage and the basics for a national policy, general principles, the organization of services, protective measures, educational and cultural action and international cooperation. It has never been evaluated whether and, if so, how this recommendation has been applied to strengthen the implementation of the World Heritage Convention as an international treaty relying on the commitment of its States Parties.

However, it can be assumed that those States Parties that shaped the way in which the Convention worked in the first two decades after ratification had such a national heritage protection system and enough human and financial resources at their disposal. This applies in particular to those European States Parties, which were very active right from the beginning. In the 1970s, the political awareness of heritage protection was promoted not only by the ratification process of the 1972 Convention but also through the launch of the European Heritage Year of the Council of Europe in 1975. The result was the amendment of many monument protection acts, the strengthening of governing structures and the development of new policies; much of this has been included in the Recommendation concerning the Protection, at National Level, of the Cultural and Natural Heritage.

The States Parties that are well represented on the Committee established their governing structures in the nineteenth century at a time when the legacy of the local communities in colonized nations was being robbed. How profoundly the deprivation of their cultural assets has affected the development of heritage policies and protection structures in the regions concerned, to this day, can only be imagined. It has not been investigated how colonial looting of heritage interrupted established protection and preservation mechanisms as well as traditional management and skills.

A significant light has been shed on this topic by the debate on the Luf boat from New Guinea, which came to Germany under dubious circumstances (Götz, 2021) in the colonial era and is one of the most prominent exhibits of the ethnological collections in the recently opened Humboldt Forum. According to a video message from Roselyn Stanley and Stanley Inum, descendants of one of the boat builders, a New Guinean delegation wants to come to Berlin to study the traditional shipbuilding of the almost exterminated indigenous people of Luf Island and to learn how to reconstruct such a boat from the original preserved cultural asset (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2021). The Humboldt Forum very much welcomed the mission and promised to support the project; at the same time, it was very pleased that restitution claims were not being made (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, n.d.). What is completely disregarded in the discussion is the fact that colonial looting means not only the deprivation of cultural properties but also the destruction of intangible heritage and the historical context. The traditional men’s house on Luf Island, also used as a boathouse, would have had the potential to convey outstanding universal value and could have been inscribed on the World Heritage list. As an exhibit in Berlin, it has lost its integrity and essential attributes of authenticity.

The losses and breaks caused by colonization still have an impact on the awareness of and the access to heritage, as well as on the possibility to build on conservation policies that have evolved over time, on political attention and, last but not least, on active participation in the implementation of the Convention. In Africa, for instance, the weakness of governance structures is still one of the main challenges. As of October 2021, 95 of the 194 States Parties have never served on the World Heritage Committee, including 26 (55.32%) of the African States Parties. Although all African states have ratified the World Heritage Convention, the prestigious World Heritage Committee met only once in Africa, in Durban in 2005.

4 Concepts and Strategies

The prerequisites for the implementation of the Convention and the commitment of the States Parties could not have been more different. In particular, the European States Parties benefit from the advantages afforded by an established heritage protection system and human and financial resources, as well as long periods of peace and economic prosperity. From the outset, they made extensive use of the right to nominate sites enshrined in the Convention. This has led to an unmistakable Eurocentrism of the World Heritage list with 545 World Heritage sites in Europe and North America; that is a share of 47.23% of the 1154 World Heritage sites. Africa, as the continent with the largest number of states, has 98 World Heritage Sites, a share of only 8.49%. In addition to this geographical imbalance and the rapidly increasing number of World Heritage sites, the accumulation of sites in comparable categories is still a problem. Natural heritage continues to be completely underrepresented, with only 218 properties.

In 1994, the World Heritage Committee adopted the Global Strategy to counteract this development that was already evident at the time. If the quantitative trends and the geographical balance of the World Heritage list are applied as the only benchmark, the Global Strategy has failed. But the approach was much broader, even if the starting point was to achieve a representative, balanced and credible World Heritage list. As strategic objectives, the 5 Cs, namely credibility, conservation, capacity-building, communication and communities, stand for the provision of a comprehensive framework and operational methodology for implementing the Convention and a better reflection of the founding ideas of the World Heritage program.

Measures to strengthen the credibility (C 1) of the World Heritage list became apparent even before 1994. The conceptual approach of the World Heritage list started to shift from “best of the best” to “representative of the best” (Cameron, 2005) already in the 1980s. Instead of identifying icons, the categorization of registered and potential World Heritage sites and thematic studies came to the fore in order to achieve a universal and representative list. In addition, the introduction of “cultural landscape” as a new category emphasizes that the World Heritage Convention is a dynamic concept and reacts to the fact that the understanding of “heritage” is changing. Finally, in 2004 the analysis of the World Heritage list and Tentative Lists of ICOMOS and IUCN and follow-up action plans were presented to strengthen the credibility of the list. As a result, gaps in the World Heritage were closed, unfortunately, primarily in Europe.

As mentioned at the beginning, effective conservation (C 2) of World Heritage properties, as well as cultural and natural heritage at a national level, is one of the founding ideas. The comprehensive framework and operational methodology developed for this strategic objective include the mandatory introduction of the statement of Outstanding Universal Value and management plans (2005), as integrated planning and action concepts that set goals and measures for the protection, conservation, use and development of World Heritage sites, as well as policy papers, for example, on Climate Change (2005) and Sustainable Development (2015). Last but not least, UNESCO’s General Assembly adopted the Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (2011) to address the need to better integrate and frame urban heritage conservation strategies within the larger goals of overall sustainable development to facilitate the implementation of the Convention and supporting policies.

Due to the different prerequisites for the implementation of the Convention, especially concerning human resources and education and training opportunities, the development of effective Capacity-building (C 3) in States Parties is essential. In 2006, the African World Heritage Fund (AWHF), one of the most-targeted initiatives, was launched by the African Union member states that signed the World Heritage Convention. As the first regional coordinating and funding body under the auspices of UNESCO, it pursues the training of heritage experts and site managers to strengthen the identification of potential World Heritage sites in Africa and the preservation and conservation of listed sites, as well as effective and sustainable management. The work of the trust is emphatically accompanied and supported by ICCROM, ICOMOS and IUCN as advisory bodies of the Convention.

The AWHF demonstrates the importance of public awareness and political attention, in particular, for the involvement and support for the World Heritage Convention through Communication (C 4) on all levels. Without any doubt, its founding was a follow up of the action plans presented by ICOMOS and IUCN concerning the gaps on the World Heritage list two years earlier in 2004. Even more than the Global Strategy itself, the sober communication of the figures obviously alerted the African Union member states of the World Heritage Convention to the need for action and governing structures. However, no thought was given to adding a 6th C to the Global Strategy to clearly address the unbalanced commitment on the political level, which is essential for giving “cultural and natural heritage a function in the life of the community” according to article 5 of the Convention. That might have earlier led to the insight that the election of the members of the World Heritage Committee on the basis of the composition of the electoral groups of UNESCO is crucial for a credible World Heritage program.

In 2007, at the initiative of New Zealand, the fifth and probably last C was added to the Global Strategy to enhance the role of Communities (C 5) in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention. In particular, New Zealand wanted to emphasize the rights and role as well as involvement of indigenous people in protection, conservation and management. The urgent need for political adherence to C 5 became clear during the 44th Committee meeting in 2021: the decision-making in favour of the inscription of the Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex went surprisingly smoothly with only one veto, despite human rights violations against the Karen indigenous people brought forward by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and IUCN’s recommendation to defer the dossier as in the previous year. Such decisions jeopardize the credibility of the World Heritage Convention far more than an unbalanced World Heritage list. This case again makes clear how important a sixth C would be, namely the non-negotiable commitment of all Committee members and States Parties to the World Heritage Convention as a vision for peace, respect and reconciliation.

5 Conflicts and Challenges

If only the quantitative development of the World Heritage list is used as a yardstick, then the Global Strategy has failed. This would also reduce the importance of the World Heritage programme to the World Heritage list. The Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention are indeed very much focused on the nomination process, but the concept is much broader. Due to the holistic approach related to nature and culture protection, it was realized at an early stage that the impacts of climate change and the need for sustainable development are not only a matter of environmental and nature protection but also essential for the preservation of cultural heritage. The Policy Document on the Impacts of Climate Change on World Heritage Sites adopted by the General Assembly in 2007 (UNESCO, 2007) and the Policy on the Integration of a Sustainable Development Perspective into the Processes of the World Heritage Convention adopted by the General Assembly in 2015 (UNESCO, 2015) became standard-setting instruments. The initiatives and projects addressing the rise of violent extremism and the destruction of cultural heritage were similarly groundbreaking and led to the further development of monument conservation principles. These and many other initiatives within the framework of the implementation of the World Heritage Convention mean that culture is now an integral part of international politics, as confirmed by the Rome Declaration of the G20 Ministers of Culture in July 2021 (G20 Research Group, 2021), addressing all challenges which have been tackled by the World Heritage Committee since the beginning of the 2000s.

194 States Parties and 1154 World Heritage sites identify the World Heritage Convention as one of UNESCO’s most successful programs. No other Convention has such a high rate of ratification and such a high level of awareness. The World Heritage program can be regarded as a great success, not only quantitatively but also conceptually and politically. Based on the principle of equality of all cultures and societies, it combines the protection of the world’s cultural and natural heritage; regardless of state borders, the preservation of these unique properties should be secured by international cooperation and assistance. Even if the members of the Committee do not always advocate for the conservation principles of the Convention, the annual World Heritage Committee meeting has become the heritage forum for the global community and has proven to be a viable platform for the safeguarding of heritage. For the future viability of the World Heritage programme, the involvement of civil society is more important than ever.