Almaty Agreement adopted in the Fourth meeting of the Coordinating Committee on the World Heritage Serial Nomination of the Silk Roads

Following the Fourth meeting of the Coordinating Committee on the World Heritage Serial Nomination of the Silk Roads in Almaty, Kazakhstan, 24-25 November 2015, more than 50 representatives and experts from twelve countries together with UNESCO representatives, international experts and representatives of IICC Xi’an (China), Secretariat of Silk Roads Coordination Committee,  today released a list of recommendations for further activities to pave the way forward for the Silk Roads World Heritage Serial and Transnational Nomination.

The aim of the Almaty Meeting was to review and to update the Terms of Reference of the Silk Roads Coordination Committee; to review the State of Conservation on the first inscribed Serial Transnational Nomination “Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang’an – Tianshan Corridor” (China, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan) and the current status of the referred nomination “Silk Roads Penjikent-Samarkand-Poykent Corridor” (Tajikistan and Uzbekistan); to review the progress of the Silk Road World Heritage Nominations processes including the South Asian Silk Roads (Nepal, Bhutan, China and India), the Fergana-Syrdarya Silk Roads Heritage Corridor (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan); as well as other Silk Roads initiatives from Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Turkmenistan. The Meeting also reviewed the results of the UNESCO/Japanese Funds-In-Trust (FIT) project “Support of documentation standards and procedures of the Silk Roads World Heritage Serial and Transnational Nomination in Central Asia”, 2011-2014 as well as the UNESCO Korean-Funds-In-Trust South Asian Silk Road project and to officially launch the UNESCO/Japanese FIT project “Support for the Silk Roads World Heritage Sites in Central Asia” (Phase II, 2015-2018). Finally, the Meeting also discussed potential needs regarding further development of the ICOMOS Silk Roads Thematic Study covering Eastern Asia and Western Asia.

This Almaty meeting was successfully organized by financial contributions from the UNESCO World Heritage Centre Regular Programme, the UNESCO/Japan Funds-in-Trust Central Asian Silk Roads project, the UNESCO/Korea Funds-in-Trust South Asian Silk Roads project, and support from the Government of Kazakhstan. The Silk Roads nomination process now includes the following fourteen countries (Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Pakistan, the Republic of Korea, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) that are members of the Silk Roads Serial Transnational World Heritage Nomination Intergovernmental Coordinating Committee, as well as  Bhutan as an observer.

Almaty Agreement