Malaysia’s Papan Nominated for Coveted UNESCO Recognition (?)

via The Star, 12 October 2023: Indexing this story because it has to do with a potential World Heritage site in Malaysia, but some of the details don’t make sense. State parties (i.e. country governments) are the ones who make nominations to the World Heritage list, not local groups and not the local ICOMOS. I suspect there’s something lost in the reporting here.

Papan Heritage Gallery and Papan Heritage Conservation Task Force head Jacky Chew said the townsfolk are having their own initiatives to attract more tourists to the town, which is more than 100 years old.

“Kampung Batu Papan is one of the seven new villages in the peninsula that has been nominated by the International Council on Monuments and Sites Malaysia (Icomos) to Unesco for world heritage status,” he said.

Currently, there are four World Heritage Sites in Malaysia, namely Gunung Mulu National Park (Sarawak), Kinabalu Park (Sabah), Lenggong Valley (Perak) as well as George Town and Melaka. The latter two are listed under one category as “Historical Cities Along the Straits of Malacca”.

Source: Papan nominated for Unesco World Heritage status | The Star