Seychelles Pitches Mission Ruins of Venn’s Town to UNESCO Committee in Busan
BUSAN, South Korea, the Minister for Tourism and Culture, Ms Amanda Bernstein, is leading a Seychelles delegation to the 48th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, taking place from 21 to 31 July 2026 in Busan, where the Mission Ruins of Venn’s Town on Mahé are being formally reviewed for inscription on the World Heritage List.
According to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre tentative-list entry for the site, the Mission Ruins are the remains of a late 19th-century Anglican mission settlement established by the Church Missionary Society between 1876 and 1889 on the lush hills of Sans Soucis in the south-west of the Morne Seychellois National Park, at an altitude of 450 metres and within the Port Glaud district. The site was declared a national monument in 1984 and added to the Seychelles tentative list for World Heritage inscription in 2013 under cultural criteria (iv) and (vi).
The nomination dossier, prepared by the Ministry of Tourism and Culture with technical support from the Seychelles Heritage Foundation, sets out the case that the Mission Ruins represent the fate of freed African children landed in Seychelles after the abolition of slavery and the formation of the Creole Seychellois identity. The dossier identifies the foundations and partial walls of five buildings covering an area of about 540 square metres, including the dormitory and laundry block whose 19 small chambers remain visible beneath the dense rainforest canopy. In March 2026 the Seychelles Cultural Encounters Foundation confirmed that the nomination dossier had passed UNESCO’s technical completeness check and was now formally registered for evaluation under the procedures of the World Heritage Convention.
Minister Bernstein’s delegation includes senior officials from the Department of Culture, the Seychelles Heritage Foundation, and the Department of Foreign Affairs. The delegation will hold bilateral meetings with members of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, the advisory body that reviews cultural-nomination dossiers ahead of committee votes, and with representatives of other Small Island Developing States that have used the World Heritage framework to anchor heritage-led development. The Seychelles Independent reported earlier this month that the delegation’s main priority in Busan is to secure advisory-body support for the dossier before any committee vote at a future session.
A successful inscription would make the Mission Ruins the first cultural World Heritage Site in Seychelles and the country’s second World Heritage property, joining the Aldabra Atoll, which has been inscribed since 1982. The Seychelles government has framed the bid as a heritage-tourism anchor for Mahé’s inland communities, in line with the broader diversification strategy set out in the Tourism Department’s 2024–2028 plan. Heritage authorities have already invested in the site’s visitor pathway, the 1972 viewing platform (where Queen Elizabeth II took tea during a state visit), and the interpretive panels installed on the Sans Soucis ridge over the past three years.
The 48th session of the World Heritage Committee is the first in three years to be held in person following the 2024 and 2025 sessions. The Seychelles dossier will be reviewed alongside nominations from other Small Island Developing States, including a joint cultural and natural submission from Mauritius on the Le Morne cultural landscape. The Committee is also expected to consider new climatic and natural-hazard vulnerability criteria drafted by the advisory bodies, which would give future inscriptions of coastal and low-lying sites a more rigorous risk assessment.
Sources cited: 1. UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Mission Ruins of Venn’s Town, Tentative List entry,
