World Cultural Heritage: Obligations To The International Community As A Whole?

The preamble to the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage 1972 (the ‘World Heritage Convention’), 1 adopted 30 years ago, testifies to the conviction of the States Parties ‘that deterioration or disappearance of any item of the cultural…heritage constitutes a harmful impoverishment of the heritage of all the nations of the world’. 2 It speaks of the recognized ‘importance, for all the peoples of the world, of safeguarding this unique and irreplaceable property, to whatever people it may belong’ 3 and declares ‘that parts of the cultural…heritage…of outstanding interest…need to be preserved as part of the world heritage of mankind as a whole’. 4