The world heritage system aims to protect sites of outstanding universal value. The human rights system aims at advancing democracy and human rights. Both represent global flagship values. 981 world heritage « properties », spread over 160 countries, were recognised by UNESCO between 1972 and 2013. Recently, the agenda of « Our Common Dignity » involves a collective effort to strengthen rights-based approaches in world heritage work. Even if the rights and heritage regimes in theory converge, a number of elements hinder effective practice. Emerging literature points to the critical, yet often problematic, nature of heritage recognition in relation to human rights. The Asia-Pacific region is particularly revelatory in terms of the diverse, social, legal and institutional challenges concerned.

The research team worked in Australia, Vietnam, Nepal and the Philippines as well as on the international level to explore the realization of human rights in the World Heritage system at a site, national and international level. To harmonize the team’s approaches, they defined four groups of human rights they wanted to analyse more closely:

• Land, property and resource rights
• Participation and consultation rights
• Livelihood and development rights
• Minority, indigenous peoples and cultural rights

The team combined legal reviews, in-depth case studies on World Heritage sites, interviews with heritage scholars and national level roundtables to gather insight.

If you would like to know more about the research results, check out the policy briefs with concrete recommendations the team published on each of the countries HERE. The research team organised an international science policy meeting in January 2016, resulting in the Caux Call for Action, which can be found at the end of the Working Paper.