Meeting of the expanded session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee

From September 10 to September 25, 2023, a meeting of the expanded 45th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee was held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.The Committee session is an annual meeting of representatives of the participating countries of the Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage of 1972, UNESCO advisory bodies and experts in the field of heritage.

The Russian delegation, headed by Rinat Alyautdinov, Permanent Representative of Russia to UNESCO, included Margarita (Feoktistova), Abbess of the Novodevichy Monastery, Vladimir Aristarkhov, director of the D. S. Likhachev Russian Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, and his deputy, Nadezhda Filatova, head of the Department of World Heritage and International Cooperation, and employees of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture. Russia, the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and representatives of the expert community.

The session became one of the largest in the history of the Committee. As a result, 42 sites were included in the World Heritage List, 33 of which are cultural, and 9 are natural. The majority of the objects included in the List this year belong to the European and Asian regions.

Interview of Russia's Permanent Representative to UNESCO Rinat Alyautdinov: