International Designations

Since 1972 UNESCO has inscribed a list of World Heritage Sites on behalf of the international community. Such sites considered to be of 'places or buildings of outstanding universal value recognised as constituting a world heritage for whose protection it is the duty of the international community as a whole to cooperate'. See whc.unesco.org.

Northern Ireland has one such site: The Giant's Causeway.

To be nominated, a site must first be supported by us and apply for inclusion on the UK Tentative List. This will then join a queue for nomination by the UK.

The UK ratified the World Heritage Convention 1984 and has 27 sites. Combined with those of four other European countries, this accounts for almost 20% of the present list of 851 sites with half of these sites within Europe. There are 43 of the 181 signatories to the convention who have no World Heritage Sites at this time. This has caused UNESCO to seek ways to correct this imbalance including asking the UK to slow down its nomination process and to consider how it could support less developed regions (whc.unesco.org).

The Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) in London is responsible for UK Nominations and published a consultation on the process, in December 2008. The results of this and a proposed way forward were published in February 2010. This was followed by a call for applications. We understand that 4 applications were made from Northern Ireland. The results of the process will be announced in 2011.

European Heritage Label

A European Heritage Label was launched in spring 2007. The impetus for the label came from a tri-partite French, Spanish and Hungarian initiative whose joint proposals were presented at a meeting of the Council of Culture Ministers in Brussels in May 2006. The purpose of the label is to highlight sites and monuments that have played a key role in European history and to raise their profile as tourist attractions. The UK has not made any nominations under this scheme and DCMS has expressed the following concerns in its recent consultation: 'If we were to participate in the scheme we would need clarity on a number of issues including the costs and responsibilities of involvement; how duplication with the World Heritage List will be avoided; and the extent to which the process for nomination will be an open and inclusive one.' See EHL Introduction (.PDF 15Kb). A consultation on this was issued in 2009 - See ec.europa.eu.