World Heritage Convention
1972 international treaty
The World Heritage Convention, formally the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, is an international treaty signed on 23 November 1972, which created the World Heritage Sites, with the primary goals of nature conservation and the preservation and security of cultural properties. The convention, a signed document of international agreement, guides the work of the World Heritage Committee. It was developed over a seven-year period (1965–1972).
The convention defines which sites can be considered for inscription on the World Heritage Sites list, sets out the duties of each country's governments to identify potential sites and to protect and preserve them. Signatory countries pledge to conserve their World Heritage Sites, report regularly on the state of their conservation and if needed, to restore the sites. The convention also sets out how the World Heritage Fund is to be used and managed.
It was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16 November 1972, and signed by the President of General Conference of UNESCO, Toru Hagiwara, and the Director-General of UNESCO, René Maheu, on 23 November 1972. It is held in the archives of UNESCO.
Development
The International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, which began after appeals by Egypt and Sudan in 1959, led to the relocation of 22 monuments. The success of the project, in particular the creation of a coalition of 50 countries behind the project, led UNESCO, together with the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), to prepare a draft convention on the protection of cultural heritage.
A White House conference in 1965 called for a "World Heritage Trust" to preserve "the world's superb natural and scenic areas and historic sites for the present and the future of the entire world citizenry".
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “World Heritage Convention” is 1972 international treaty. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through World, Heritage and Convention, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “1972 international treaty” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2096669. VIAF identifies the subject as 185889866. The Library of Congress control number is n82008428. None of the 4 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1972, 1965 and 1959.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “World Heritage Convention”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow World Heritage Convention primary sources, World Heritage Convention archive and World research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “World Heritage Convention”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “World Heritage Convention” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.