In a milestone gathering, Indigenous leaders joined forces with heritage experts and international organizations to chart a new path for protecting heritage – one rooted in partnership, respect, and shared stewardship. Jointly coordinated by ICCROM alongside the International Indigenous Peoples Forum for World Heritage (IIPFWH), UNESCO, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the event marked an important step towards stronger, more inclusive participation of Indigenous Peoples in the World Heritage Convention.
Thanks to the generous support of the Governments of Australia and Canada, the Workshop on World Heritage and Indigenous Peoples - Building Participation and Ensuring Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) was designed with an overarching aim of achieving change in how Indigenous Peoples are engaged in the processes of the World Heritage Convention, and to lay the foundation for future collaboration.
Exploring the World Heritage Convention through an Indigenous lens
The workshop – held at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris from 26 to 28 May – was a mutual learning experience for all organisations involved, providing a chance to understand the current roles and responsibilities of those involved, and identifying gaps where both immediate and long-term actions could be planned and implemented to strengthen Indigenous participation in World Heritage processes.
Over three days, the workshop became a space for key discussions, ranging from the broader intersection between Indigenous Peoples and heritage such as identifying Indigenous Peoples through an inclusive statement of coverage, and application of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), striving for equitable governance, to recognising diverse values and their relationship with Outstanding Universal Value of World Heritage.
Offering an opportunity to unpack different procedures of the World Heritage Convention, participants delved deeper into the nominations-related processes of Tentative Listing, Preliminary Assessment, Nomination Evaluations, and management-related processes such as management planning and implementation processes, reactive monitoring process, and Periodic Reporting – and finding where in these processes FPIC could be better applied and practised.
ICCROM’s commitment to people-centred heritage
For ICCROM, adopting people-centred and place-based approaches is at the heart of conservation efforts, where protection and management lie with respecting and engaging people who value and create heritage.
Actively recognizing and embracing Indigenous and traditional knowledge systems in heritage conservation and management is a step forward in achieving just governance arrangements, ensuring inclusivity and equitable benefits sharing, with better and effective risk reduction measures for heritage conservation.
Together with its partners, ICCROM remains deeply committed to continuing research and development of needed resources and practices to support Indigenous-led heritage conservation. This workshop is not the end of a conversation but the beginning of a collective journey towards more equitable stewardship of the world’s precious heritage places.
Photo credits: UNESCO