ABSTRACT
The Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage was adopted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization General Conference at its seventeenth session in Paris on 16 November 1972. According to the text of the preamble, it is incumbent on the international community as a whole to participate in the protection of the cultural and natural heritage of outstanding universal value. Thus the 1972 Convention strengthens the protection of certain cultural property 'of outstanding universal value'. The definition of the property protected by the Convention is narrower than that given in the 1954 Hague Convention, since only immovable property is protected. The World Heritage Committee continues to give attention to situations of armed conflict. At the Cartagena session in 1993 it vigorously condemned the destruction of the heritage in Bosnia Herzegovina which was in flagrant contradiction with international law, and called for emergency assistance.
