The government grant goes to the African World Heritage Fund. Norway is thus working to realise its commitments to UNESCO's convention on how to support nations that face particular challenges in the work with world heritage.
02/08/2006 :: The fund was formally established in South Africa in early May of this year. The motto is: "African heritage—fragile, handle with care."
"We are very pleased on the government's behalf that Norway makes an important contribution to promote African world heritage in this manner," Norwegian Minister of the Environment Helen Bjørnøy said. Norwegian Minister of International Development Erik Solheim supports this statement and elaborates:
"The cradle of humankind was in Africa, and it is therefore our common history that the African nations administer. We all share the responsibility of preserving this for the future," he said.
The purpose of the fund is to ensure that African world heritage makes it to UNESCO's World Heritage List. This will in turn contribute to an effective administration of African world heritage sites. This is important as African nations are underrepresented on the list and because many African world heritage sites are endangered due to the lack of financial resources. The fund will work towards enhancing the professional skills of the personnel in the field, and the world heritage efforts will also be tied in with social and economic development on the continent.
The African nations have themselves initiated the fund and will represent the biggest financial contributors. This illustrates that the countries themselves take responsibility to follow up the commitments in the convention and work actively towards solving the challenges facing the world heritage administrative process today.
The Norwegian contribution was announced at UNESCO's world heritage committee meeting that was recently completed in Vilnius. It was received with great enthusiasm by the African nations as well as UNESCO. Several other countries announced their support for the fund.
Norwegian Ministry of the Environment