Human rights

Many protected areas worldwide overlap with ‘territories and areas conserved by Indigenous peoples and local communities’ or ‘ICCAs’ (Indigenous peoples’ and community conserved areas’). These overlapped ICCAs include conserved commons, sacred places and Indigenous and community protected areas.

Following several years of preparatory work across the globe, legal scholars, judges, UN officials and climate change experts from 11 countries came together to finalise a new normative framework aiming to strengthen the right of climate-displaced persons, households and communities. This resulted in the approval of the Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement within States in August 2013.

Our living planet is and has always been on the move. Many species move in search of necessities such as food, water, shelter, reproduction, and safety. In some cases, movements are an adaptive response to environmental stresses and shocks; in other cases, environmental change, whether land degradation, climate change or other forms, may add to other drivers of migration.

Since the mid-2000s, the mining sector has been driving Mongolia's exports. However, while in recent years economic growth has been slowing down, the increased number of mining operations profoundly affects Mongolia's economic policies, social dynamics and environment.

The World Heritage community is currently adopting policies to mainstream human rights as part of a wider sustainability agenda. From site-designation to their conservation and management, this book explores the various rights issues and analyses the diverse social, cultural and legal challenges and responses at both regional and global levels. 

The objective of the Our Common Dignity initiative has been to contribute towards building awareness of rights issues in World Heritage and heritage management, to promote ‘good practice’ approaches to rights and their enabling conditions, and to develop and recommend relevant tools and guidelines in World Heritage, from tentative list nomination through to management.

This document presents the key results of the Our Common Dignity initiative on rights and World Heritage undertaken by the Advisory Bodies to the World Heritage Convention (ICCROM, ICOMOS and IUCN) under the coordination of ICOMOS Norway between 2011 and 2016. The report describes and discusses work carried out by the Advisory Bodies during this period, and should not be seen as their final words nor their entire institutional opinion on this topic.

Human rights issues have been an integral dimension of UNESCO's mission and work since its establishment. While rights issues are not explicitly mentioned in the 1972 World Heritage Convention, its Strategic Objective "To enhance the role of communities in the implementation of the World Heritage Convention" underscores the need to respect and support communities to be involved in World Heritage processes. Where rights issues are not addressed, a range of problems and conflicts can arise.