VENISE, WHICH FUTURE?

• The 1972 UNESCO Convention
• Experience in managing Italian UNESCO World Heritage Sites

The World Heritage Committee is the body delegated by the 1972 UNESCO Convention concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage to take all decisions normally needed for the Convention to perform its functions.
It is an intergovernmental committee composed of 21 members (http://whc.unesco.org/en/comitereglement)  , i.e. representatives from the States. Each member is elected for a maximum period of 6 years by all the States who have signed the Convention to “guarantee equitable representation of the various regions and cultures in the world”.
Membership rotation is encouraged, as it is important that all States belonging to the Convention feel that they are directly involved in its work. Not just personally, but also as part of the International Community that the Committee represents.

Although an intergovernmental body , and therefore political, the Committee is expected to perform analysis tasks of an extremely technical nature. It therefore calls upon the services of various professionals engaged in the study and conservation of cultural and natural heritage.
The Convention itself mentions this technical “soul” of the Committee, when it says that “State members of the Committee shall choose as their representatives persons qualified in the field of the cultural or natural heritage”.
However, unfortunately, this does not completely eliminate the risk that the Committee takes somewhat more political decisions than technical ones in certain cases, being conditioned also by considerations outside the specific object of the Convention.
As a rule, the Committee meets once a year on the territory of one of its members, who acts as chairman for that session. Exceptionally, due a particularly heavy workload, the Committee may also meet a second time in 12 months, this time at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris .

The tasks expected of the Committee are directly indicated in the Convention and specified (especially in terms of the procedure to be followed) in the Operational Guidelines adopted by the Committee and regularly updated.
These concern the establishment, updating and publication of the World Heritage List and the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger; the definition of the criteria on the basis of which a site may be inscribed in the Lists; receipt, consideration and decision concerning applications for international assistance and the use of the financial resources in the World Health Fund set up in line with the Convention.

The procedure the Committee must adopt to update the World Heritage List and the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger is especially important as it lets us understand just how the Convention works.
As for inscription in sites in the World Heritage List, the State concerned must first make an application. Once the site has been entered in the List, all decisions must be taken where at all possible in collaboration with the State in whose territory it is situated.
It is, however, possible for the Committee to take an autonomous decision concerning updating of the Lists with regard to that site. This means that the Committee may (though this is not hoped) enter a site in the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger or decree its cancellation from the World Heritage List, even if opposed by the State in which the site is situated.
This power reflects the fact that management of the Lists corresponds to an international level of protection and so, although the Committee is expected to work in close collaboration with the territorial State, it has recognised autonomous powers of decision.
The Committee decides by the majority vote of its present members with voting rights, provided the majority of those having voting rights are present.

The Committee usually only convenes for one week each year and has a technical/political nature. In order to perform its tasks adequately, it has the constant need to rely on the work of qualified consultants whose prepare in-depth technical dossiers on each issue concerning inscription and the state of conservation of the sites.
It is only on the basis of this reliable and independent information as opposed to that provided by the territorial State that the Committee can, in fact, take its decisions with justification.
This does not, however, exclude the possibility that its decision may not adhere to what has been proposed by the advisory bodies assisting it in its work.

The main advisory bodies are designated directly by the Convention: ICCROM (International Centre for the Study of the preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property), ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) and IUCN (World Conservation Union – formerly the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources).

The amount of work that the Committee is called upon to face grows each year, as there is an increasing number of heritage sites whose state of conservation needs to be followed, as well as the inscription of new sites in the World Heritage Site.
While this proves the great success of the Convention, it is also an important challenge for its credibility.
In fact, the Committee constantly needs to succeed in adequately monitoring the situation of all listed sites in order not to render the Convention and the List pointless tools as not reflecting the actual state of affairs.
In order to avoid this risk and to keep the growing workload within acceptable limits, a maximum number of inscription applications per year has been set, giving priority to those coming from States or geographical areas that are currently poorly represented in the List.

The Committee has been flanked in its work by the World Heritage Centre since 1992.
This is a sort of “ad hoc secretariat” within UNESCO that deals with all matters concerning world heritage. It has proved crucial thanks to its significant input – being a permanent and dedicated structure – in terms of organisation (of the work of the Committee by looking after the documents, as well as organising seminars, conferences and various other initiatives connected to heritage), co-ordination (respect for the plurality of projects concerning world heritage) and, more generally, the everyday management of all aspects concerning the implementation of the Convention.
Despite its fundamental role, the centre has no autonomous decisional powers, but is delegated by the Committee to carry out its functions.
The Committee therefore remains the decision-making “heart” of the Convention, though all the documents and correspondence – formal or otherwise – concerning it is received and “processed” by the Centre.

1800 - 2000 - - rev. 0.1.7