Organisation of an Online Workshop to Review the Tentative List of Cultural and Natural Sites in Palestine
The Arab Regional Centre for World Heritage (ARC-WH), in cooperation with the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, organised an online workshop to review the Tentative List of cultural and natural sites in Palestine. Several experts, academics and researchers in the field of heritage participated in the workshop, which is the first of a broader programme and consists of follow-up sessions and will include a workshop on site next year.
The Tentative Lists are an essential and mandatory tool for the States Parties to the 1972 World Heritage Convention and includes the sites that the State Party intends to nominate to be inscribed on the World Heritage List to prove their Outstanding Universal Value. These lists contribute to the protection of sites during the process of preparing Nomination files to be included on the World Heritage List.
Currently, Palestine has 14 sites on UNESCO’s Tentative List of sites for potential inscription on the World Heritage List, including two natural sites, um al-Rihan Forest in Jenin Governorate and the coastal wetlands in Wadi Gaza, while the remainder are cultural sites ranging from historic cities to religious sites and urban buildings.
This workshop was organised within the framework of Palestine’s request for technical assistance from ARC-WH, during which ARC-WH provided a capacity-building programme for Palestinian experts in the field of revising the Tentative List. The workshop aimed to train participants to re-evaluate and study the Palestinian list in accordance with international standards and to identify new Palestinian heritage sites of potential Outstanding Universal Value. Moreover, the workshop aimed to develop strategies to support Palestine in publishing an updated and comprehensive list of sites that will be submitted to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre.
