The World Heritage Committee has inscribed 24 new sites on Unesco’s World Heritage List and approved extensions to three existing sites.

It also added three World Heritage sites to the List of World Heritage in Danger and took one off that list.

During the session that opened on June 28 and ended on Wednesday, the director-general of Unesco, Irina Bokova, launched the global Unite for Heritage Coalition, designed to strengthen mobilisation in the face of deliberate damage to cultural heritage, particularly in the Middle East.

The World Heritage Committee also adopted the Bonn Declaration, which recommends that heritage protection be included in the mandate of peacekeeping missions where appropriate.

The following sites were added to the List of World Heritage in Danger:

Hatra (Iraq)

Old City of Sana’a (Yemen)

Old Walled City of Shibam (Yemen)

Los Katíos in Colombia, which was added to the list in 2009, was taken off.

The committee inscribed a new mixed, cultural and natural site, to the World Heritage List:

Blue and John Crow Mountains alongside 23 cultural sites:

Tusi sites (China)

Christiansfeld, a Moravian church settlement (Denmark)

The Par Force Hunting Landscape in North Zealand (Denmark)

The Climats, terroirs of Burgundy (France)

Champagne Hillsides, Houses and Cellars (France)

Speicherstadt and Kontorhaus District with Chilehaus (Germany)

Susa (Islamic Republic of Iran)

Cultural Landscape of Maymand (Islamic Republic of Iran)

Necropolis of Beth She’arim – a landmark of Jewish revival (Israel)

Arab-Norman Palermo and Cathedral Churches of Cefalú and Monreale (Italy)

Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: iron and steel, shipbuilding and coal mining (Japan)

Baptism Site “Bethany Beyond the Jordan” (Al-Maghtas) (Jordan)

Baekje Historic Areas (Republic of Korea)

Aqueduct of Padre Tembleque Hydraulic System (Mexico)

Great Burkhan Khaldun Mountain and its sacred landscape (Mongolia)

Rjukan-Notodden Industrial Heritage Site (Norway)

Rock Art in the Hail Region of Saudi Arabia

Singapore Botanical Gardens (Singapore)

Ephesus (Turkey)

Diyarbakir Fortress and Hevsel Gardens Cultural Landscape (Turkey)

Fray Bentos Cultural-Industrial Landscape (Uruguay)

The Forth Bridge (UK)

San Antonio Missions (US)

The World Heritage Committee approved extensions to three sites:

Cape Floral Region Protected Areas (South Africa)

Routes of Santiago de Compostela: Camino Francés and Routes of Northern Spain [an extension of the ‘Routes of Santiago de Compostela’] (Spain)

Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park (Vietnam)

The new inscriptions bring to 1031 the number of sites inscribed in 163 countries on the World Heritage List.

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