Online Training for the Periodic Reporting Exercise in Asia and the Pacific: Factors Affecting the Properties
The World Heritage Centre is organising a series of online training sessions to accompany States Parties in Asia and the Pacific as they carry out the Third Cycle of Periodic Reporting.
This session is dedicated to Factors Affecting the Properties and focuses on the following:
- The Periodic Reporting Factors: background and integration with the state of conservation (SOC) review by the World Heritage Committee,
- Factors and their assessment in the questionnaire: location, timeline, impact (Section II, Chapters 4 and 12 of the questionnaire),
- How to categorise factors and indicate how they will be addressed through management mechanisms,
- Lessons learnt from other regions.
Periodic Reporting is one of the two main monitoring mechanisms under the World Heritage Convention and a statutory requirement for all States Parties. It consists of an online self-assessment tool subdivided into two sections: Section I, which concerns the implementation of the World Heritage Convention at the national level; and Section II, which concerns the implementation of the Convention at the level of each World Heritage property. The outcomes of this reporting exercise are then analysed and presented to the World Heritage Committee; they also inform the Action Plan(s) for World Heritage in the region for the next 6-8 years.
As the scheduled in-person meetings to prepare the Third Cycle of Periodic Reporting the region of Asia and the Pacific had to be cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Heritage Centre moved the training entirely online, in the form of short, (bi-)weekly training sessions for National Focal Points in the region of Asia and the Pacific, running between September 2020 and April 2021.
These sessions are organised for National Focal Points for Periodic Reporting in Asia and the Pacific, who automatically receive invitations to the online meetings. They are recorded and made available to the National Focal Points so that they may be shared with Site Managers and other stakeholders involved in the reporting exercise.
The online training sessions and the close follow-up of the Periodic Reporting exercise at the Asia and the Pacific Unit of the World Heritage Centre are made possible thanks to the support of the UNESCO/Republic of Korea Funds-in-Trust made available by the Cultural Heritage Administration of the Republic of Korea.
Decisions (1)
The World Heritage Committee,
- Having examined Document WHC/19/43.COM/10A,
- Recalling Decision 40 COM 10B.1 adopted at its 40th session (Istanbul/UNESCO, 2016),
- Welcomes the progress made in the follow-up of the Second Cycle of Periodic Reporting in the region of Asia and the Pacific;
- Thanks the Governments of Japan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea and the United States of America for their contributions towards supporting follow-up activities to the Second Cycle of Periodic Reporting in the region of Asia and the Pacific;
- Takes note of the progress made on the Silk Roads nomination process, initiated by the Asian States Parties in collaboration with the World Heritage Centre, also notes the strategic shift from nomination to conservation, in view of the region’s growing conservation issues linked to development, and commends the fruitful international cooperation between the national institutions of various States Parties in the region;
- Reiterates its invitation to States Parties in Asia and the Pacific to actively implement the relevant sub-regional Action Plans before the start of the Third Cycle of Periodic Reporting, foreseen in September 2020, and encourages them to intensify their efforts towards the implementation of follow-up activities, to be planned and developed in close collaboration with the World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies, and to seek any additional means necessary to do so;
- Further reminds States Parties, which have not already done so, to submit their Retrospective Statements of Outstanding Universal Value by 1 February 2020 at the latest, as well as clarifications of boundaries by 1 December 2019 at the latest;
- Requests the World Heritage Centre to present a progress report on the implementation of the Action Plan(s) for the Second Cycle of Periodic Reporting for Asia and the Pacific region at its 45th session in 2021.