World Heritage Committee

The World Heritage Committee ( English World Heritage Committee , French Comité du patrimoine mondial ) is a committee of UNESCO , based in Paris . It maintains the list of world cultural and natural heritage of humanity . The administration of the list also means that the committee decides at its annual sessions on adding or deleting World Heritage sites or adding World Heritage sites already on the list to the Red List of World Heritage in Danger. Deutsche Mechtild Rössler has been the director of the World Heritage Center in Paris since 2015 .

Sessions

39th meeting in 2015 in Bonn , Germany

The World Heritage Committee meets annually at different locations.

In its first meeting, the World Heritage Committee approved the rules of procedure. The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has met twice in Germany so far, namely in 1995 and 2015. The 2015 conference in Bonn was chaired by Maria Böhmer .

Previous and already determined conference locations (ao = extraordinary meeting):

session	year	date	Conference location
1	1977	June 27th - July 1st	Paris , France
2	1978	September 5th - September 8th	Washington, DC , United States
3	1979	October 22nd - October 26th	Luxor , Egypt
4th	1980	September 1st - September 5th	Paris , France
ao 1	1981	September 10th - September 11th	Paris , France
5	1981	October 26th - October 30th	Sydney , Australia
6th	1982	December 13th - December 17th	Paris , France
7th	1983	December 5th - December 9th	Florence , Italy
8th	1984	October 29th - November 2nd	Buenos Aires , Argentina
9	1985	December 2nd - December 6th	Paris , France
10	1986	November 24th - November 28th	Paris , France
11	1987	December 7th - December 11th	Paris , France
12th	1988	December 5th - December 9th	Brasília , Brazil
13	1989	December 11th - December 15th	Paris , France
14th	1990	December 7th - December 12th	Banff , Canada
15th	1991	December 9th - December 13th	Carthage , Tunisia
16	1992	December 7th - December 14th	Santa Fe , United States
17th	1993	December 6th - December 11th	Cartagena , Colombia
18th	1994	December 12th - December 17th	Phuket , Thailand
19th	1995	December 4th - December 9th	Berlin , Germany
20th	1996	December 2nd - December 7th	Merida , Mexico
ao 2	1997	October 29th	Paris , France
21	1997	December 1st - December 6th	Naples , Italy
22nd	1998	November 30th - December 5th	Kyoto , Japan
ao 3	1999	July 12	Paris , France
ao 4	1999	30th of October	Paris , France
23	1999	November 29th - December 4th	Marrakech , Morocco
24	2000	November 27th - December 2nd	Cairns , Australia
ao 5	2001	12th September	Paris , France
25th	2001	December 11th - December 16th	Helsinki , Finland
26th	2002	June 24th - June 29th	Budapest , Hungary
ao 6	2003	March 17th - March 22nd	Paris , France
27	2003	June 30th - July 5th	Paris , France
28	2004	June 28th - July 7th	Suzhou , People's Republic of China
ao 7	2004	December 6th - December 11th	Paris , France
29	2005	July 10th - July 17th	Durban , South Africa
30th	2006	July 8th - July 16th	Vilnius , Lithuania
31	2007	June 23rd - July 1st	Christchurch , New Zealand
ao 8	2007	October 24th	Paris , France
32	2008	July 2nd - July 10th	Quebec , Canada
33	2009	June 22nd - June 30th	Seville , Spain
ao 9	2010	14th June	Paris , France
34	2010	July 25th - August 3rd	Brasília , Brazil
35	2011	June 19 - June 29	Paris , France
ao 10	2011	November 9th	Paris , France
36	2012	June 25th - July 5th	Saint Petersburg , Russia
37	2013	June 17th - June 27th	Phnom Penh , Cambodia
38	2014	June 15 - June 25	Doha , Qatar
39	2015	June 26th - July 8th	Bonn , Germany
ao 11	2015	November 19th	Paris , France
40	2016	July 10th - July 20th October 24th - October 26th	Istanbul , Turkey Paris , France
41	2017	July 2nd - July 12th	Krakow , Poland
ao 12	2017	15th of November	Paris , France
42	2018	June 24th - July 4th	Manama , Bahrain
43	2019	June 30th - July 10th	Baku , Azerbaijan
ao 13	2019	November 28th	Paris , France
ao 14	2020	November 2	Online meeting
44	2021	July 16 - July 31 (online meeting)	Fuzhou , People's Republic of China

Members

The committee consists of representatives from 21 of the countries that have acceded to the World Heritage Convention:

Egypt  Ethiopia  Australia  Bahrain  Bosnia and Herzegovina  Brazil  People's Republic of China

Guatemala  Kyrgyzstan  Mali  Nigeria  Norway  Oman  Russia

Saudi Arabia  Spain  St. Kitts and Nevis  South Africa  Thailand  Uganda  Hungary

These are elected by the General Assembly for six years each. However, many of the elected members declare their waiver after four years.

Other programs

The following programs of the UNESCO cultural and natural heritage are supervised not by the World Heritage Committee, but by other UNESCO bodies:

• Underwater cultural heritage according to the Convention for the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage
• Intangible cultural heritage in accordance with the Convention for the Conservation of Intangible Cultural Heritage
• World document heritage from the Memory of the World program (book collections, manuscripts, scores, unique pieces, image, sound and film documents)
• Biosphere reserves from the Man and the Biosphere program
• UNESCO Global Geoparks from the International Geoscience and Geoparks program

Web links

Commons : World Heritage Committee  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• World Heritage Center in Paris with information on the World Heritage Committee (English, French)
• Convention for the Protection of the World’s Cultural and Natural Heritage
• The UNESCO World Heritage List
• UNESCO database with extensive descriptions of the individual sites (English, French)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sessions. UNESCO - The World Heritage Committee, accessed March 19, 2018 . 
2. ^ World Heritage Committee Members. UNESCO - The World Heritage Committee, accessed July 7, 2019 .