The World Heritage Committee,  the main body in charge of the implementation of the Convention, has developed precise criteria for the inscription of properties on the World Heritage List and for the provision of international assistance under the World Heritage Fund. These are all included in a document entitled "Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention". This document is regularly revised by the Committee to reflect new concepts, knowledge or experiences.

Pursuant to Decision 6 EXT.COM 5.1: Revision Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention 

The World Heritage Committee,

  1. Thanking the Drafting Group and all other experts, representatives of States Parties to the World Heritage Convention, the Advisory Bodies and the World Heritage Centre for work accomplished to date on the revision of the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention;
  2. Taking note of the Report of the March 2002 Drafting Group on the Revision of the Operational Guidelines presented as document WHC-03/6 EXT.COM/INF.5A;
  3. Considering that the 3rd Draft Revised Operational Guidelines presented in document WHC-03/6 EXT.COM/INF.5B represents a substantial effort, but that further work is required to reflect the recent decisions of the Committee (in particular Decisions 6 EXT.COM 3 and 6 EXT.COM 4and 6 EXT.COM 7) and to make them more userfriendly;
  4. Recalling the decision of the 25th session of the Committee to allocate US $ 50,000 from the World Heritage Fund in 2003 for the revision of the Operational Guidelines and the subsequent decision 26 COM 24.2 (paragraph 3) to reduce this amount to US $ 22,000;
  5. Taking into account decision 6 EXT COM 5.2 relating to the preparation of a volume of the Basic Texts of the Convention;
  6. Requests the World Heritage Centre, working in collaboration with the Advisory Bodies, to carry out the tasks itemized below in the Technical Annex in order to present revised user-friendly Operational Guidelines to the World Heritage Committee for adoption at its 27th session (Suzhou, China 29 June-5 July 2003);
  7. Decides to include an item on the adoption of the revised Operational Guidelines on the agenda of the 27th session of the Committee (Suzhou, China 29 June-5 July 2003).

The Operational Guidelines are periodically revised to reflect the decisions of the World Heritage Committee. Please verify that you are using the latest version of the Operational Guidelines by checking the date of the Operational Guidelines

See also …