The Approach of Advisory Bodies to Evaluating Iran’s World Heritage Nomination Dossiers

The formal advisory bodies of the World Heritage Committee (ICOMOS and IUCN) evaluate all the nominations of properties for inscription on the World Heritage List. These evaluations help the World Heritage Committee to decide which properties to inscribe on the world heritage list. However, it is the World Heritage Committee that makes the final decision, which can be contrary to the recommendations of the advisory bodies. Therefore, there may be many properties on the list that have not necessarily been approved by the advisory bodies. The review and technical evaluations carried out by the advisory bodies can reveal deficiencies in the nomination dossiers, which may be overshadowed by the committee’s decisions. Nevertheless, understanding the approach of these bodies and their evaluation methods can be taken into consideration in the preparation of nomination files and avoid heavy costs in the process. The following research offers a review of the Iranian cultural and natural property nominations for inscription on the World Heritage List and analyzes the issues and deficiencies of these nomination files through the lens of the advisory bodies. To carry out this research, all the evaluation reports of the advisory bodies regarding Iran’s World Heritage nomination dossiers have been analyzed using qualitative content analysis. This study found that the main focus ofICOMOS lies on the “justification” section, while IUCN mostly concentrates on “justification” and “management” sections. The review also shows that the main challenges in the evaluation stage are due to a lack of mutual understanding between the nominating State Party and the advisory bodies. In general, the advisory bodies consider the most important issues in Iran’s WH nomination dossiers to be the information provided in the sections of justification (Outstanding Universal Values), conservation, and comparative analysis.