Thematic meetings will be held for pooling current information and understanding of issues, trends and innovations of the field. These meeting will take a snapshot of the 'state of the art' and make recommendations for future actions by a variety of actors.

Furthermore, results will be used to orient the content of later activities of the programme.

Participants will be specialists from Latin America and beyond. Among the themes considered important by the professionals who took part in the expert meeting are:

• legal frameworks and policy tools for heritage and its conservation;
• conservation education programmes and activities;
• management systems for conservation of cultural heritage;
• climate change and its effect on cultural heritage;
• illicit traffic;
• the nexus of intangible and tangible heritage;
• religious heritage.

For the 2008–9 Biennium it is proposed that two meetings will take place to address the themes of illicit traffic and of conservation education programmes in the region.

updated on: 22 November, 2007