The UNESCO imprimatur: creating global (in)significance

Developed over more than half a century to respond to specific international situations, UNESCO’s cultural heritage conventions share a common purpose, namely to identify and protect cultural heritage. This paper examines how five of these conventions define heritage value and thereby establish the threshold for international recognition. Included in the analysis are the UNESCO conventions on protecting cultural property during armed conflict, illicit trafficking of cultural property, world heritage, underwater cultural heritage and intangible cultural heritage. Reflecting the preoccupations and theoretical perspectives of its era, each convention proposes a different kind of heritage value, ranging from outstanding universal value to representative value to no specific value. Implementation of these cultural conventions bestows UNESCO’s imprimatur and international approval for what to remember and what to forget. The paper demonstrates that inadvertently the UNESCO cultural heritage conventions create insignificance by leaving out aspects and dimensions. It asks whether harmonising the various instruments, at least in their implementation, would create synergies for a more holistic range of values.