As part of the Third Cycle of the Periodic Reporting Exercise in Africa, over 100 participants from Anglophone speaking African States Parties will be meeting at Nairobi, Kenya, from 19 to 22 February 2020, to go through the statutory processes of the World Heritage Convention. This regional meeting organized by the UNESCO Office in Nairobi, the World Heritage Centre in cooperation with the UNESCO Offices in the Africa region and in close collaboration with the African World Heritage Fund (AWHF) and the Advisory Bodies aims to familiarize the World Heritage Site Managers of the Africa region with the Periodic Reporting statutory processes of the World Heritage Convention. During the 3-day meeting, World Heritage Site Managers will be briefed on the outcomes of Action Plan of the Second Cycle, Periodic Reporting process, on the new introduction of the revised questionnaire. Representatives of the Advisory Bodies to the World Heritage Convention, IUCN and ICOMOS will present specific aspects of the Outstanding Universal Value of sites and their attributes. The exercise will help lead to a number of useful discussions and sharing of experience between the World Heritage Site Managers of the region and to promote regional cooperation.

UNESCO is organizing the International Scientific Committee (ISC) to discuss conservation and management of the Lumbini World Heritage Site, the birthplace of Lord Buddha; the ancient city of Tilaurakot, included on the Tentative List for World Heritage; and other Buddhist sites in the Greater Lumbini Area (GLA)The meeting will review project activities and coordinate various initiatives carried out by the Government of Nepal, development partners, and donors in the GLA. The meeting will bring together national authorities, donors and international and national experts in archaeology, conservation, urban planning, the environment, tourism and heritage management. Representatives of the Buddhist community are also invited to understand the needs of Buddhist pilgrims and communities. The meeting will be followed by site visits to the Sacred Garden of Lumbini and Tilaurakot, and Heritage Festival in Tilaurakot on 6 March 2020. UNESCO is also organizing a workshop on initiating the World Heritage nomination process in order to facilitate the Government of Nepal for the development of the nomination dossier of sites on the tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage Status, in particular, the ancient Tilaurakot site, on 7 March 2020 in Lumbini.

The UNESCO Dakar Office, in partnership with the WCO, INTERPOL and Niger, is organizing a training workshop from April 27th to 30th 2020 in Dakar to build the capacities of museum/heritage professionals as well as law enforcement and security forces including customs and police in six countries: Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger and Senegal. This training is part of a programme to strengthen mechanisms to combat illicit trafficking of cultural property in Africa, which has been under way since 2015.Over the past 15 years, there has been a resurgence of illicit trafficking of cultural property, particularly in areas affected by armed conflict, which has become a matter of major concern to the international community. In a Sahelian context increasingly weakened by the threat of armed groups and the looting of heritage and in order to respond to the current challenges of peace and security in the region, UNESCO is positioning itself as a focal point through a programme to strengthen the mechanisms for fighting illicit trafficking of cultural property by bringing together a group of diverse actors (art experts, national and international museums; heritage professionals, customs, police, legal experts, etc.). The review of the actions implemented by the UNESCO Dakar regional office to date highlights the need to consolidate the cooperation mechanisms between the various key actors involved in the fight against illicit trafficking of cultural property while maintaining an inclusive and non-sectoral approach. For this reason, the Dakar office, in partnership with the WCO, INTERPOL and Senegal, is organizing an in-depth training workshop that will bring together customs, police and museum professionals in order to harmonize the levels of knowledge between actors and to stabilize an effective and operational co-ordination network between the different services at the national and regional level. This four-day training, which is part of a wide-ranging capacity-building programme, will offer both separate and joint sessions in order to consolidate and improve the effectiveness of the coordination network for the fight against illicit trafficking of cultural property in Africa, ensure the fluidity of information exchanges, identify and better assign roles and responsibilities between law enforcement and security forces and museum professionals in order to speed up the processing of cases of illicit trafficking.At the end of the four-day workshop, with the active support of the associated experts, the participants will have acquired a better knowledge of the prevention of illicit trafficking of cultural property, stabilized a coordination system in the event of a customs seizure or police investigation and submitted proposals for a protocol for intervention in the event of restitution. One of the added-values of this workshop will be the identification of appropriate legal measures for the protection of cultural property in the countries concerned and the validation of communication and awareness-raising tools for the launch of a sub-regional campaign to be carried out during the year 2020 among communities and transit points (airports, ports, etc.).

The Eighth Session of the Subsidiary Committee of the Meeting of States Parties to the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property will take place at UNESCO Headquarters (Room XI) on 25 and 26 May 2020.This session will be organized on the basis of the functions assigned to the Subsidiary Committee by the Meeting of States Parties (art.14.6 of the Rules of Procedure of the Meeting of States Parties). In 2020, the theme will revolve around the 50th anniversary of the 1970 Convention.

The Committee is composed of 22 Member States of UNESCO elected by the General Conference at its ordinary sessions (this year it has 21 members). It meets in regular plenary session at least once and not more than twice every two years.The 22nd session of the Committee aims to examine the follow-up to the recommendations adopted at the 21st session.