A Strategic Approach to the Nomination of Archaeological Sites to the World Heritage List.

  • Author: Willem J.H. Willems
  • Topic: Heritage studies
  • Related Congress: 13th Congress, Dakar

On 27-29 April 2010, the UNESCO World Heritage Center and the UNESCO Bangkok Office organized an Expert meeting on “Upstream Processes to Nominations: Creative Approaches in the Nomination Process”, in Phuket, Thailand. The meeting was intended to stimulate creative approaches to reduce the number of properties that experience significant problems in the nomination process. As noted in the minutes of this meeting: “States Parties spend considerable time and money developing nominations which may be delayed or unsuccessful. The Advisory Bodies … are constrained in their ability to help by the adequacy of resources, and some World Heritage processes could better facilitate opportunities for them to render assistance.” In the eighteen months, the ICOMOS the International Scientific Committee for Archaeological Heritage Management (ICAHM) has reorganized to better participate in the “upstream process.” An important aspect of this effort is to broaden ICAHM membership in order to assure input from appropriate experts, and to stimulate discussion and scholarly research in support of this process. This paper will describe some the ways that we would like to pursue this, and also provide infromation about how to improve the probability that a nomination to the World Heritage List will be successful.


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