đź“· Photo: Yonhap News Agency (Republic of Korea), 2026
The 48th session of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage Committee closed in Busan, South Korea on 29 July after a ten day meeting that inscribed twenty five new properties on the World Heritage List and adopted a framework to broaden representation for Africa and small island developing states.
Hosted at the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center, the session was the first held in the Republic of Korea and brought together delegations from one hundred and sixty countries, according to the Korea Heritage Service. The committee inscribed nineteen cultural, five natural and one mixed site, bringing the global total to one thousand two hundred and seventy three properties across one hundred and seventy three states parties, Yonhap News Agency reported.
Seychelles was represented by a delegation led by Minister for Tourism and Culture Amanda Bernstein and supported by members of the National Technical Committee for the Mission Ruins of Venn’s Town nomination. According to a Ministry of Tourism and Culture announcement, the nomination dossier for the Venn’s Town mission, submitted in early 2026, passed the technical completeness check by the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and entered the international evaluation phase earlier this year.
The Busan meeting advanced several priorities of direct relevance to small island states. Delegates adopted the Busan Declaration, a framework intended to safeguard heritage against climate change and regional conflict, the Korea Times reported. Members also discussed measures to lift representation for Africa and for small island developing states, a group whose cultural and natural heritage is highly exposed to climate and coastal risks. The committee accepted three first time inscriptions for African states: the Medina of the Ancient Sultanate of Comoros, the Boma Badingilo Migratory Landscape of South Sudan and the Roças of SĂŁo TomĂ© and PrĂncipe, the Chosun Ilbo confirmed.
The committee also handled conservation cases for one hundred and forty seven sites already on the list, extended Germany’s Berlin Modernism Housing Estates and added a second phase of Korea’s Getbol tidal flats. Three sites in South Sudan, Palestine and Lebanon were inscribed under emergency procedure and simultaneously listed as World Heritage in Danger. Turkey was selected to host the forty ninth session in Istanbul in 2027, taking the committee chair by regional custom.
The Seychelles bid for the Mission Ruins of Venn’s Town, a nineteenth century Anglican mission school and cemetery on Mahé, has been on the national tentative list since 2013 and is being promoted under criteria three, four and six of the World Heritage Convention. The site is located in the south west of the Morne Seychellois National Park and was declared a national monument in 1984. Bernstein’s ministry has indicated a target inscription window of 2027 if the evaluation proceeds as planned.
For the tourism and culture ministry, the Busan trip was an opportunity to engage advisory body representatives on procedural and technical questions while the evaluation is in progress, rather than a decision moment for Venn’s Town itself. The property’s inscription, should it come, would mark the first cultural World Heritage listing for Seychelles and would parallel the country’s two natural sites, Aldabra Atoll and the Vallée de Mai, both inscribed in 1982 and 1983 respectively.
The next decision point for Seychelles will be the advisory body evaluation in mid 2027, ahead of the Istanbul session, where the committee will formally consider the nomination. Until then the ministry has signalled that technical exchanges and management plan refinements will continue in the background.
Sources cited: Seychelles Reaches Major Milestone in UNESCO World Heritage Nomination, Ministry of Tourism and Culture, March 2026 · UNESCO Committee Session in South Korea Closes With 25 New Heritage Sites, Yonhap News Agency, 29 July 2026 · UNESCO Session Wraps Up With Tidal Flats Expansion, Busan Declaration, Korea Times, 29 July 2026 · UNESCO Committee Concludes in Busan With 25 New Sites, Chosun Ilbo, 29 July 2026 · Mission Ruins of Venn’s Town, UNESCO Tentative List entry, 2013 onward.
