Multilateralism and UNESCO World Heritage: decision-making, States Parties and political processes

Why have deliberations over World Heritage sites become such a volatile arena for the performance of international tensions, new political alliances and challenges to global cooperation? Across UN platforms, the failures of multilateralism are increasingly evident. We suggest that decision-making within the World Heritage Committee is no different given that politicisation is now rife throughout their deliberations. Specifically we ask how have multipolarity and fragmentation developed within United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) World Heritage programme, an organisation dedicated to peace building, tolerance and mutual understanding and international co-operation? This paper examines trends from the last decade of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee meetings, specifically the nominations of properties for inscription on the World Heritage List. Our findings suggest that the recommendations presented by UNESCO’s Advisory Bodies are increasingly at odds with the final decisions adopted by the World Heritage Committee. The process by which evaluations are formulated by these experts is also being questioned, opening up larger debates about the validity and transparency of the evaluation criteria and process. We go on to outline the regional and geopolitical trends at work in the Committee and to question whether site inscription is affected by a State Party’s presence on the Committee. While once considered the realm of European States Parties and their particular style of properties, our analysis reveals that the demographics of the Committee in the last decade have gradually shifted. Finally, this leads us to question whether the older style polarisation of ‘the West and the Rest’ remains the most salient divide today.