UNESCO and the City

Abstract

Chapter 3 focuses on the inscription process that brought Melaka onto the World Heritage List in 2008. By employing a long-term perspective, the account begins with the first attempts to nominate Melaka in the late 1980s. It took two decades to obtain World Heritage status. The main obstacle was not only related to Melaka’s worthiness, but the supposed lack of protective commitment shown by national authorities, together with policies that did not follow UNESCO-derived standards and guidelines. World Heritage inscriptions are not linear processes, but the result of convergences and shared understandings between international, national, and local actors. Similarly, the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) that justifies inscriptions is not inherent to the site, but constructed along the way.