Participation in the 21st session of the General Assembly of States Parties to the World Heritage Convention and the 12th extraordinary session of the World Heritage Committee
On November 14th and 15th, 2017, the 21st session of the General Assembly of States Parties to the World Heritage Convention and the 12th extraordinary session of the World Heritage Committee were held at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, France. Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties (TNRICP) dispatched two staff members.
The General Assembly of States Parties to the World Heritage Convention is held biannually during the period of the ordinary session of the General Conference of UNESCO, where the Committee members of the World Heritage Committee are elected. Although the World Heritage Convention sets the term of office for the Committee members to six years, with the aim of expanding the opportunity for many countries to become a Committee member, the Operational Guidelines invite the Committee members to consider voluntarily reducing their term of office to four years and discourage from seeking consecutive terms of office. At this General Assembly, 12 countries retired from the Committee members after serving for four years and, as a result of the secret ballot among the States Parties participating in the session, the countries of Australia, Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, China, Guatemala, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Norway, Saint Christopher-Nevis, Spain, and Uganda were newly elected.
It is the normal practice of the World Heritage Committee sessions to update the World Heritage List and to decide on the site and date for the next World Heritage Committee session. However, at the 41st session of the World Heritage Committee that was held in Krakow of Poland this year, there was no Committee member that officially expressed its interest in hosting the World Heritage Committee session for the next year. Therefore, it was decided that, concurrently with the re-election of Committee member countries at the 21st session of the General Assembly of States Parties to the World Heritage Convention, the 12th extraordinary session of the World Heritage Committee was to be held to invite a country that wishes to be a hosting country and to decide the site and chairman of the Committee session. As a result of adjustment at the extraordinary session, it was decided that the 42nd session of the World Heritage Committee would be held in Manama of Bahrain from June 24th to July 4th, 2018.
TNRICP will continue to collect the latest information on recent trends concerning the World Heritage Convention and to disseminate it widely among parties concerned in Japan.