European inventory of
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Kisić – Transnational nominations for the UNESCO World Heritage List as a policy tool in post-war contexts: The case of Stećci medieval tombstone graveyards

Kisić, V. (2023) Transnational nominations for the UNESCO World Heritage List as a policy tool in post-war contexts: The case of Stećci medieval tombstone graveyards

The UNESCO World Heritage List is one of the best-known and most-praised international cultural policy mechanisms of all time. At the same time, it is also one of the most criticised cultural policy mechanisms, which has led to numerous cycles of revisions and adaptations of this mechanism. One such adaptation is the concept of transnational cultural property, which could be inscribed in the WHL following a transnational nomination process that foresees transnational management and protection of the heritage in question. Besides their important goal of balancing the World Heritage List, transnational nominations are promoted as having the potential to de-nationalise competition for the WHL, create transnational cooperation around heritage protection, and foster intercultural understanding among different societies. At the same time, they are seen as being more complex, resource-demanding, and conflictual than ordinary state party nominations. This is further enhanced when the heritage being nominated is highly dissonant and when the nominating states have been through political and
armed conflicts in recent history. This paper analyses exactly such a case—a joint effort of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia in nominating and managing Stećci Medieval Tombstones. Using this example, it looks at the achievements and limitations of transnational nomination as a policy tool.