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Searching for controversies in the UNESCO Archive

UNESCO headquarters, Paris, 2015, Photo: Fred Romero via Wikimedia Commons, Licence: CC BY 2.0

The UNESCO library and archive is a busy place: People from a diverse mix of cultures and languages come together, different in many ways but sharing their interest in international culture and the white badge on a blue ribbon that grants them access through the gates on Avenue de Lowendal. Founded in 1946 as one of the United Nations’ earliest agencies, UNESCO’s mission was to promote education and science, preserve national cultures while fostering exchange between them and facilitate international communication.

With the horrors of the Second World War in mind, UNESCO’s objective was to secure peace and understanding through intercultural collaboration, rather than through diplomatic treaties between national governments.1 Although UNESCO was founded with peace in mind, the years that followed were anything but peaceful for the international community. The organization had to navigate the tensions of the Cold War and decolonial liberation movements. As a UN agency it was both forum and agent in these conflicts.

In my PhD project I study the history of the World Heritage Program and monument preservation at UNESCO. Considering the historical circumstances, it is striking how UNESCO processes regarding cultural heritage appear smooth and largely consensual. The archival material I studied at Avenue de Lowendal shows little evidence of friction and make UNESCO look running like a clockwork. Decisions in the General Assembly or its commissions were rarely controversial and there is hardly discontent in the official documents. How is it that UNESCO, with its highly idealistic agenda and amidst global tensions, was operating so calmly and steadily?

The lost Buddhas of Bamyan, Afghanistan, 2009, Photo: UN / Fardin Waezi, Licence: Copyright (Fair Use)

Afghan boys play football near where one of the Buddhas of Bamyan once stood. Subsequent to the 2001 destruction of the two giant standing Buddha statues by the Taliban, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2003 simultaneously inscribed the cultural landscape of the Bamyan Valley onto the World Heritage List and the List of World Heritage in Danger.

The focus of my research is on the ideals and practices of heritage preservation in the second half of the twentieth century. I assume that heritage conservation underwent a transformation in its intention and objectives in the 1950s and 1960s. In the long nineteenth century, cultural heritage was conceived in the context of national states. A conservator’s duty was to conserve the material representations of a nation in the form of historic and artistic monuments. This changed after the Second World War: Cultural heritage was now understood to represent a geographically specified culture and to belong to the whole world. Heritage conservation meant to conserve historical treasures of all of humanity. The heritage movement constructed a universal past for the global population, represented in monuments of world heritage, that was meant to transcend national boundaries.

A milestone for heritage preservation in the twentieth century was the commencement of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (generally known as the World Heritage Convention) in 1972.2 It created a repertory of World Heritage Sites all over the planet which represented monuments of “outstanding universal value”. The Convention installed a World Heritage Committee, elected from the convention parties, which was to select the sites for the list in consultation with the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), an international association of conservation professionals, and the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM).

The ideas of what an object of heritage or what “outstanding universal value“ might be, were vague and might have differed from person to person. UNESCO, ICOMOS and the likes left the definition of monument deliberately open. However, decisions on how to care for monuments are not only questions of aesthetics but of politics and material property. Therefore, one could expect that making decisions in an international committee regarding monuments and heritage was a matter of conflict of interests. But when we look at the debates in preparation of the 1972 Convention, we see very little controversy.

Consider a meeting to coordinate principles and criteria for protection of cultural property and monuments that took place in Spring 1968.3 Representatives from thirteen countries including postcolonial Ghana, India and UAR (Egypt), Western European states, USSR and USA gathered to discuss goals and processes for international heritage preservation. They were joined by experts from international organizations such as ICOMOS or ICCROM.

The representatives from Ghana reported that their legislation on monument preservation, passed after independence, mainly aimed to protect structures on the coastline built by Europeans in the 17th century. The country would need help from UNESCO to preserve them. Egypt mentioned various campaigns for safeguarding ancient monuments in international collaboration with Western and Eastern Europe, among them the campaign for saving the temples of Abu Simbel from flooding.  Both USA and USSR praised their extensive public institutions for monument preservation.

The meeting touched upon assumingly controversial topics such as relations between Global North and South or between East and West. But the representatives from Western Europe and the USA seem to get along fine with their Soviet and Yugoslavian counterparts. They did not mix questions of monument preservation with geopolitics. The discussants acknowledged that industrialized countries already have advanced measures for monument preservation in place; the new international protection scheme should focus on heritage in the developing world. But there was no talk about responsibility for former imperial powers or colonial crimes.

At the time when the meeting on international heritage preservation took place, UNESCO was in discussion on the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. This convention aimed to inhibit trade with artifacts stolen by colonial powers. It also included a paragraph for retuning stolen artifacts to the countries or communities of origin. But the whole discourse on returning colonial artifacts from Western museums did not affect the discussion on international heritage conservation, although it entailed potential for conflict.

According to the discussion report, the diverse parties appear to be in harmony. All agreed on the necessity to set up international structures in addition to national preservation schemes. They also agreed that it is not possible to define what “universal value” is and according to which criteria a monument should be considered as such. No party intended to push through their canon or aesthetic style. The meeting agreed to keep the category of heritage as open as possible. Everyone gathered behind “the idea that mankind is collectively responsible for protection [of heritage]”.

Experienced historians might not be surprised by the lack of controversy in the UNESCO material. UN bodies follow a tight-knit protocol, implicitly or explicitly. Formats for discussions are designed to keep the conversation polite and negotiators expect diplomatic etiquette. One could argue that the harmony of negotiations is not the result of the UNESCO process but is the prerequisite to make UNESCO happen at all.

I assume two factors make UNESCO’s archival documentation appear free of dissonance: First, it had a large and cumbersome bureaucracy and highly formalistic decision-making process. Any binding decision took years to formalize and went through numerous instances of expert commissions. And second, in many cases, statements remained vague and left room for interpretation. The vast technocratic process of the UN and the highly idealistic yet vague rhetoric of universal heritage functioned as a manufacture of consent.

  1. Geoff Simons, The United Nations. A Chronology of Conflict. (New York, 1994), 71. []
  2. Aurélie Élisa Gfeller and Jaci Eisenberg, ‘UNESCO and the Shaping of Global Heritage’, in Poul Duedahl (ed.), A History of UNESCO. Global Actions and Impacts (Basingstoke, 2016), 279. []
  3. UNESCO Archive, “Meeting of Experts to Co-ordinate, with a View to Their International Adoption, Principles and Scientific, Technical and Legal Criteria Applicable to the Protection of Cultural Property, Monuments and Sites. Paris, 26.02. – 02.03.1968. Final Report”, 31.12.1968, document code SCH/CS/27/8, record number 0000082376. []

OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Julian Schellong (12. März 2025). Searching for controversies in the UNESCO Archive. Dialog und Austausch. Abgerufen am 18. November 2025 von https://doi.org/10.58079/13gj2


Julian Schellong

Julian Schellong is pursuing a PhD in history at TU Darmstadt with a dissertation titled "'Outstanding Value to Humanity': International Monument Conservation, UNESCO, and the Construction of a Global Past, c. 1941-1989". The dissertation explores internationalism and universalism in monument preservation in the twentieth century. It is a contribution to cultural history of globalization. Julian Schellong research was supported with grants from the German Historical Institutes in Paris and Rome. In fall 2023 he spent a semester as visiting researcher at EUI Florence. In 2025 he is a visiting fellow at ZZF Potsdam. Julian Schellong holds an M.A. in History and Philosophy of Knowledge at ETH Zurich and graduated with a thesis on the history of meteorology in Switzerland.

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