UNESCO has been protecting the most significant world monuments for half a century

Paris/Prague - The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, known by the acronym UNESCO, was established shortly after World War II to develop cooperation in education, science, and culture. In the latter area, its list of World Cultural and Natural Heritage is particularly well-known, where the organization includes the most significant monuments. The path to its establishment was opened by the UNESCO Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted on November 16, 1972.

The goal of this convention is the long-term protection of monuments, to which the countries on whose territory the monument is located commit to cooperate with other states. To this end, a World Heritage Fund has also been created, to which the contracting parties are required to contribute and from which a loan for the protection of the monument can be provided, but the requesting state must cover a substantial part of the project. Among other things, the establishment of the convention was contributed to by a project in Egypt in the early 1960s, where, under the patronage of UNESCO and with the assistance of Czechoslovak experts, a large number of ancient monuments were relocated due to the construction of the Aswan Dam.

Cooperation then led UNESCO to lay a permanent foundation in the convention. Based on the agreement, since 1976, sites from around the world have been awarded the title of World Heritage Site, either cultural or natural (some are mixed). The list includes various buildings, mountains, lakes, national parks, and entire cities, totaling 1,154 sites in 167 countries. The Czech Republic has 16 sites on the list, placing it among the top twenty countries. In 2008, entries also began in the list of intangible cultural heritage, which now includes nearly six hundred customs, traditions, or cultural events, of which seven are in the Czech Republic.