UNESCO World Heritage…what is it exactly…?

What is it exactly, you might ask… I am sure you have heard about it, here and there, but what is the deal exactly? From where it came from.  Well, my friend, you are in great luck today, because today we are going to find out exactly what Is UNESCO World Heritage program, and what that really means to all of us, living all over the world.  So, without a further ado, let us learn some things.

Well, we must take a trip to the, and learn the history a bit, leading to creation of that list and the whole institution.

First thing first.

What UNESCO stands for?

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is designed to promote world peace and security through international cooperation in education, the sciences, and culture. It has 193 member states and 11 associate members, as well as partners in the nongovernmental, intergovernmental, and private sector. The main Headquartered is in Paris, France. UNESCO has 53 regional field offices and 199 national commissions that accelerate its global authority.

UNESCO was founded in 1945 as the successor to the League of Nations’ International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.  UNESCO’s founding mission (shaped by the events of the Second World War) is to increase peace, natural development, and human rights by assisting partnership and dialogue between nations. It practices this goal via five major program areas: education, natural sciences, social/human sciences, culture, and communication/information. UNESCO sponsors projects that improve literacy, provide technical training and education, advance science, protect independent media and press freedom, preserve regional and cultural history, and promote cultural diversity.

UNESCO’s actions have increased over the years to include support in the translating and spreading the world literature, beginning international cooperation agreements to secure World Heritage Sites of cultural and natural importance, defending human rights, bridging the worldwide digital divide, and creating wide-ranging knowledge societies through information and communication.

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MEMBERS

The 193 UNESCO member states, as of January 2019, with the date on which they became members. For the full list of members, and the dates of their joining the UNESCO, please go to : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_UNESCO

World Heritage List

It is a list of cultural and natural heritage sites of “Exceptional Worldwide Value” for mankind, created and kept by the United Nations UNESCO specialized organization.

The list was established in Paris on November 16, 1972, which becomes an official law on December 17, 1975. By January 2017, the Convention was accepted or approved by 193 countries.

The World Heritage Committee that is includes 21 representatives, meets once a year. During those annual sessions, the committee decides if:  to enter a site on the list, place sites on the list of world heritage in danger or deletion from these lists. Nominations can be entered only from amongst the objects previously placed on the national Tentative List (national list of sites which a state party to the Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage intends to consider for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List). They can be submitted by individual countries.  Every nomination has only one chance. If the application for addition of a given object on the list is not accepted, it may be resubmitted only in extraordinary situations: new discoveries, new scientific information about it or other criteria that were not presented in the first application.

The list includes, based on the data from 2019, 1,121 sites in 165 Countries. 869 of them are cultural heritage sites; 213 of them are natural heritage sites; and 39 of them are mixed heritage sites (Natural and Cultural together).

Name of the Region	Description	Natural	Cultural	Natural and Cultural	All together
Africa	Africa (without Arab countries)	38	53	5	96
Arab countries	All Arab countries	5	78	3	86
Asia and Pacific	Asia (excluding Arab countries, Russia, and Israel),	67	189	12	268
Europe e and North America	Europe (including Russia and Israel) and North America	65	453	11	529
Latin America (South) and Caribbean	Latin America (South)	38	96	8	142
Together		213	869	39	1121

MAIN CRITERIA

• monuments: works of architecture, monumental sculpture or painting, elements and structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, grottos, and groupings of these elements, of exceptional universal value from the point of view of history, art, or science.

• complexes: separate or combined structures which, because of their architecture, uniformity, or combination with the landscape, are of exceptional universal value from the point of view of history, art, or science.

• historic sites: works of man or common works of man and nature, as well as zones and archaeological sites of Outstanding Universal Value from a historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological point of view

• natural monuments formed by physical and biological formations, or groupings of such formations, of Outstanding Universal Value from an aesthetic or scientific point of view.

• geological and physiographic formations and zones with clearly defined borders, constituting the habitat of endangered species of animals and plants, of exceptional universal value from the point of view of science or their conservation.

• natural places or zones with clearly defined boundaries, which are of exceptional universal value from the point of view of science, preserving natural beauty.

So, now when we have refreshed the history, I would believe that we are ready, for an amazing journey through all the continents, in a search for the most stunning places, which are an undeniable value for all of us, no matter where we live.