Activities >> Meetings

Zimbabwe Meeting 2000

A meeting was held at the Great Zimbabwe World Heritage Site from 26 - 29 May 2000 on the topic, Authenticity and Integrity in African Context. This meeting, organized by the World Heritage Centre at the request of the World Heritage Committee, was funded by the World Heritage Fund and the Nordic World Heritage Office. It fell within the framework of the Global Strategy adopted by the World Heritage Committee in 1994, in order to improve the representativity of the World Heritage List. Three Global Strategy meetings had previously been organized in Africa (Harare 1995, Addis Ababa 1996, Porto Novo 1998) as well as several seminars and workshops. At these meetings organized by the World Heritage Centre, which aimed at identifying categories of African heritage, and preparing tentative lists and nominations, the issues of authenticity and integrity were discussed; however, the Great Zimbabwe meeting for the first time, focused on these issues.

To date, 630 properties have been inscribed on the World Heritage List. In order to attain a better representativity of the List, new nominations which embody the diversity of cultures and different categories of heritage are encouraged. African cultural heritage is still under-represented despite its archaeological, architectural, technical, and spiritual treasures; its remarkable modes of occupying and using the land and space; and its networks for trade and the exchange of ideas. So far only 50 cultural and natural properties in 22 of the 34 African countries that have ratified the Convention are inscribed on the List.

The Scientific Committee set up for the preparation of this meeting, defined the purpose, objectives and outputs as follows:

Purpose:

• to provide a forum of discussions to African and international experts on the notions of Authenticity and Integrity for potential World Heritage properties in "traditional societies".
  

Objectives:

• to highlight the universality of several aspects of African heritage: namely the importance of the links between nature and culture, tangible and non tangible heritage, the interactions between human beings and the land (settlements, modes of subsistence, technological evolution), and human beings in society (spirituality and creative expressions), expressing the diversity and richness of living or past cultures;
• to define the implications of the applicability of the notions of authenticity and integrity to these kind of societies;
• to propose applicable operational parameters.
  

Outputs:

• to prepare recommendations and a synthetic report on issues related to authenticity and integrity in an African context.
• to prepare and disseminate a publication on the Proceedings of the meeting.

Based on the recommendations made at the meeting, the scientific committee held a session on 29 September 2000 to prepare a text to be submitted to the World Heritage Committee.

The meeting was attended by approximately 20 professionals including African and international experts and UNESCO staff. Attendees were asked to prepare papers or case studies on the subject which were presented during the meeting.

A number of documents related to the concepts discussed at the meeting can be found on the UNESCO World Heritage web site at the following address: http://www.unesco.org/whc/events/africa-authenticity.htm.