The Contribution of ICAHM to the Nomination of African Cultural World Heritage Sites on the World Heritage List Through the Africa Initiative Program

Abstract

This chapter focuses on efforts by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) International Scientific Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management (ICAHM) to facilitate the nomination of archaeological sites in Africa to the World Heritage List (WHL). The program recently begun by ICAHM to accomplish this is called the Africa Initiative. In 1994, the World Heritage Committee launched the Global Strategy for a representative, balanced, and credible WHL. The strategy was formulated following five years of study. It found that certain geographic regions of the world were under-represented on the WHL and none more so than sub-Saharan Africa. The reasons for this discrepancy seemed to fall into two broad categories. The first was structural, and this had to do with the process itself. To be inscribed, a site must first be put on a Tentative List for a nominating country. The second was qualitative, which had to do with the manner in which properties were identified and then assessed for inclusion on the Tentative List. Twenty years after the Strategy was announced, sub-Saharan Africa is still the most under-represented region in the world, and some states have no World Heritage Sites at all. ICAHM is especially concerned with this disparity because Africa contains many of the archaeological sites that are tremendously important to human evolution and history. This chapter therefore focuses on how ICAHM would like to assist those African States Parties that have few or no cultural World Heritage Sites on the WHL. The success of the Africa Initiative will advance the overall objectives of the World Heritage Convention, because it depends upon building capacity to better participate in the nomination process and establish the effective management that is a prerequisite to inscription on the WHL.