In this article, we reflect on the current socio-political context of the 1972 World Heritage Convention after 50 years rather than its significant achievements and trials throughout its turbulent history. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has already documented and publicized these formative episodes. Instead, we consider the World Heritage milieu today, embedded as it is within a much broader landscape of non-governmental organizations and civil society preservation initiatives than it was five decades ago. Like other United Nations agencies, UNESCO now faces challenges arising from various types of re-spatialization beyond the nation-state that further impact its effectiveness. Those challenges encompass not only the expansive force of globalization but also regionalization and localization, all of which have given rise to a new diplomacy. We discuss the proliferation of competing international agencies and individual donors, then describe the dilemmas facing World Heritage, including the rise of non-state actors and post-conflict remediation in the Middle East, the limited recognition of Indigenous Peoples and their role in decision making, and the persistent failures to remedy the inequitable position of Africa as a priority region.

This article considers the fiftieth anniversary of the 1972 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage Convention in light of climate change, offering a state of the field review of climate responses for World Heritage sites (WHS). Opening with a brief review of UNESCO World Heritage activities around climate change, we then detail the primary impacts and risks that climate change pose for WHS and the reporting and monitoring systems in place to document and track these impacts. Looking forward, we examine the most promising pathways for World Heritage to advance in the domains of climate mitigation, adaptation, climate communication, and climate action.

Fifty years after the ratification of the World Heritage Convention, we have come to learn that there is a huge discrepancy between the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) ideals of protecting heritage sites with outstanding universal values and unmatched realities in situ. I attempt to elucidate what World Heritage ideals of heritage protection are held in iconic sites in Southeast Asia. The studied sites are ancient monumental heritage sites of national importance – namely, Borobudur of Indonesia, Sukhothai and Ayutthaya of Thailand, and Angkor of Cambodia. The authorities in these countries have converted heritage sites into parks for visitors and for capitalization, which has placed authenticity and integrity at stake as well as converting the sites for contestation between the authorities and local communities. In order to solve the dilemma of the World Heritage ideals and their unwanted realities, I explore possible effective approaches for UNESCO and its partners to take into consideration.

This article examines the relationship between the World Heritage Convention and international human rights law. The first part of the article draws on key phrases in Article 1 of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Constitution, which defines its purpose to elaborate on the role of human rights to UNESCO’s mandate and how developments in international human rights law over the last 75 years have been translated into the organization’s policies and programs and the implementation of the World Heritage Convention. The second part details how human rights violations related to World Heritage properties expose significant shortcomings in UNESCO’s fulfillment of its mandate and states’ compliance with international human rights norms. The third part outlines the international responsibility of various actors in respect of serious violations of human rights related to World Heritage properties. The final part identifies possible areas of reform in the operation of the World Heritage Convention that may facilitate its alignment with international human rights law and UNESCO’s adherence to its mandate.

This article examines Indigenous peoples’ experiences with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage Convention against the backdrop of their rights as recognized in the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and reviews the efforts of Indigenous peoples and human rights mechanisms to ensure respect for Indigenous peoples’ rights, cultures, and values in World Heritage sites. Although the Convention’s governing bodies have adopted policy and operational guidelines “encouraging” states parties to respect Indigenous peoples’ rights, many nomination, management, and protection processes of World Heritage sites continue to be marked by an exclusion of Indigenous peoples from decision making, a lack of respect for their relationship to the land, and disregard for their traditional livelihoods and cultural heritage. Human rights violations against Indigenous peoples continue to occur unabated in many sites and are in many ways enabled, and sometimes even driven, by decision making under the Convention. This article argues that there is an unacceptable disconnect between this Convention and the UN human rights system, with significant implications for the Convention’s and UNESCO’s credibility, and that a concerted effort should be made to align this UN Convention with the UNDRIP and the human rights purposes of the UN Charter and the UNESCO Constitution.

Studies on antiquities trafficking have often been overshadowed by research looking at the trafficking of human beings, drugs, and weapons, a fact partly motivated by the arguably higher relevance and greater security implications involved in these other forms of illicit trade. However, the past decade of conflicts in the Middle East has revived an interest in the study of antiquities trafficking networks. 1 The association between the growing size of the illicit antiquities market and conflicts in the region did not go unnoticed by crime scientists and criminologists looking deeper at the relation between the trafficking of antiquities and transnational organized crime. 2

This case note discusses the role of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the protection of cultural heritage. Of particular relevance in this vein is the cultural heritage dimension of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and its interpretation by the ICJ in its provisional measures order of 7 December 2021 in the proceedings on the Application of the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (Armenia v. Azerbaijan). In this order, the ICJ indicated provisional measures to protect the cultural heritage of minorities and their right to equal participation in cultural activities. Looking ahead, the case note briefly elaborates on the potential implications of this order and the proceedings for the broader debate on the human right to cultural heritage.