We help to preserve our World Heritage
We support UNESCO in obtaining complete and accurate information about the situation of World Heritage sites. We help local people to protect their sites and to derive an adequate benefit from them. And we alert the public about threats to the common heritage of humanity.
With over 190 groups and individuals worldwide, the World Heritage Watch network ensures that the world heritage is not sacrificed to political compromises and economic interests. We support UNESCO in getting complete and correct information about the situation of the sites. And we help local people to protect their sites and to benefit from them appropriately.
Some countries do not have the capacities to maintain their properties; for them we want to organize support. Others show little interest in their protection; they will be reminded of their obligations to the world community. In many places citizens are committed to the preservation of their sites since they are part of their history and their immediate personal environment. Above all, it is them whom we want to strengthen in their struggle against ignorance, neglect and destruction. We are guided by the idea that no country can develop without cultural heritage and without an intact nature.
Many of the people who work for the world heritage live near remote nature reserves or in developing countries. Others are excluded from meaningful decision-making. Often they do not have the possibilty to make themselves heard. It is their voices that we want to strengthen in the public, with UNESCO, and with their governments.
Civil society worldwide must demand the protection of the sites
World Heritage Watch objectives are:
World Heritage Watch
Our goals for 2022
are to achieve full participation rights of civil society in the implementation of the convention, to make all processes transparent and, if not to solve the pressing problems of the convention, to put forward strategies for their solution. These include pushing back geopolitical interests, avoiding a banalization of the world heritage list due to too many nominations, adopting and enforcing strict guidelines for site boundaries and buffer zones, securing the funding of World Heritage Sites, banning pesticides in World Heritage Sites and making World Heritage Sites motors of sustainable development. We will take advantage of the 50th anniversary as a rare opportunity to realize the basic idea of the convention – that the world heritage is the common heritage of all humanity, for which all humanity shares a common responsibility.