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Abstract
Why have deliberations over World Heritage sites become such a volatile arena for the performance of international tensions, new political alliances and challenges to global cooperation? Across UN platforms, the failures of multilateralism are increasingly evident. We suggest that decision-making within the World Heritage Committee is no different given that politicisation is now rife throughout their deliberations. Specifically we ask how have multipolarity and fragmentation developed within United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) World Heritage programme, an organisation dedicated to peace building, tolerance and mutual understanding and international co-operation? This paper examines trends from the last decade of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee meetings, specifically the nominations of properties for inscription on the World Heritage List. Our findings suggest that the recommendations presented by UNESCO’s Advisory Bodies are increasingly at odds with the final decisions adopted by the World Heritage Committee. The process by which evaluations are formulated by these experts is also being questioned, opening up larger debates about the validity and transparency of the evaluation criteria and process. We go on to outline the regional and geopolitical trends at work in the Committee and to question whether site inscription is affected by a State Party’s presence on the Committee. While once considered the realm of European States Parties and their particular style of properties, our analysis reveals that the demographics of the Committee in the last decade have gradually shifted. Finally, this leads us to question whether the older style polarisation of ‘the West and the Rest’ remains the most salient divide today.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our colleagues at the World Heritage Center, ICOMOS, ICCROM and the IUCN as well as the many national delegations who have taken time to meet with us. Kyle Lee-Crossett and Nick Brown at Stanford University undertook meticulous work on the data coding for this paper. Gertjan Plets and Kristal Buckley provided valuable feedback on the earlier drafts. We also thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on this paper.
Notes
1. UNESCO defines Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) as cultural and/or natural significance that is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity. Statements of Outstanding Universal Value are made up of several elements: a brief description of the property, a Statement of Significance, a Statement of Authenticity, a Statement of Integrity and a section describing how the World Heritage Site (WHS) is protected and managed.
2. ICCROM was set up in 1959 as an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to the conservation of cultural heritage and is only involved in State of Conservation reporting in a limited manner. ICOMOS was founded in 1965 and provides evaluations of cultural properties, including cultural landscapes proposed for inscription on the World Heritage List. The IUCN was established in 1948 and provides technical evaluations of natural heritage properties and mixed properties and, through its worldwide network of specialists, reports on the State of Conservation of listed properties. Both ICOMOS and the IUCN are international, non-governmental organisations.
3. WHC-10/34.COM/5A INF, 16. The IUCN is vastly better resourced: it is supported by 1200 member organisations including more than 200 government and 900 non-government organisations and some 11,000 voluntary scientists. The IUCN’s work is supported by over 1000 staff in 45 offices and hundreds of partners in public, NGO and private sectors around the world.
4. Officially the term has been set at six years; however, there has been a voluntary self-imposed limitation to four years. This decision was intended to give more countries the chance to participate. In reality, an examination of Committee members over the years reveals that a group of no more than 15–20 countries constantly rotates on and off of the Committee (Meskell Citation2012).
6. The List can no longer be critiqued solely for its prioritisation of European churches and palaces. In 2013, newly inscribed sites included two Polish salt mines, Chinese rice terraces, a Canadian whaling station and a Fijian port town. In 2012, it included the slag heaps of Nord-Pas de Calais, the Cultural Landscape of Bali, mercury mines in Slovenia and Spain and Bassari landscapes in Senegal.
7. Site referral occurs when some minor additional information is needed from a State Party to supplement the original nomination. This can be provided in a short period of time and does not need to be assessed by sending a new expert mission to the property. Deferral entails additional information from, or actions needed by, the State Party that is major. This would lead to a substantial revision of the nomination and thus a new or substantially revised nomination dossier, and would need to be assessed by sending a new mission to the property.
8. According to paragraph 151 of the Operational Guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention (2013), ICOMOS and IUCN make their recommendations under three categories. Properties can be: recommended for inscription (I); recommended for referral (R); recommended for deferral (D); not recommended for inscription (N). See http://whc.unesco.org/archive/opguide13-en.pdf.
10. Those numbers indicates the times States Parties put forward nomination files for World Heritage Listing in the period 2003–2013, regardless of Advisory Body recommendation or Committee Decision.
11. 17 nominations were proposed in the last 11 years, and 16 were inscribed.
13. WHC-2000/CONF.204/inf6e, 203–206. http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2000/whc-00-conf204-inf6e.pdf.
14. WHC-2000/CONF.204/2, 48. http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2000/whc-00-conf204-2e.pdf.
15. CONF 204 X.C.3. http://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/2510.
16. WHC-01/CONF.208/4, 43, http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2001/whc-01-conf208-4e.pdf.
19. According to the Operational Guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention 2013, ‘If the Committee decides that a property should not be inscribed on the World Heritage List, the nomination may not again be presented to the Committee except in exceptional circumstances’. (para 158, 40). Thus if the Committee would have endorsed ICOMOS recommendation, Bolgar could not have been proposed again for inscription. However, it is important to note that there is a specific provision that limits this prohibition in the case of ‘exceptional circumstances’. Those ‘include new discoveries, new scientific information about the property, or different criteria not presented in the original nomination. In these cases, a new nomination shall be submitted’ (para 158, 40). See Operational Guidelines 2013, paragraph 158, 40. http://whc.unesco.org/archive/opguide13-en.pdf.
22. WHC-13/37.COM/INF.8B.4. http://whc.unesco.org/en/sessions/37COM/documents/.
23. There have only been two other cases in which the Committee overturned an ICOMOS recommendation of Non Inscription to a Referral. Both cases occurred during the 36th session of the Committee in 2012 in St. Petersburg, Russia. One was the nomination of the Hill Forts of Rajasthan in India, later inscribed in 2013. The second one was the Russian Kremlins, which has not being brought back to the Committee at the time of writing.
24. Criterion (vi) requires that properties proposed for World Heritage Listing should ‘be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance’. Moreover, it is also noted ‘The Committee considers that this criterion should preferably be used in conjunction with other criteria’. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/criteria/. The application and wording of criterion vi have been subject to numerous Committee discussions related to its wording and application over the years. For a comprehensive examination of the relevant issues see: whc.unesco.org/document/115937 and Labadi (Citation2013). See 37 COM 8B.43 (http://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/5173).