Ohrid, 10 July 2025 (MIA) -- The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has decided to postpone the inscription of the Ohrid region on the List of World Heritage in Danger until next year, MIA's Ohrid correspondent reports.

At its 47th session currently taking place in Paris, the committee gave the Municipality of Ohrid and the central government another year to meet their committments.

The authorities need to follow the recommendations in UNESCO's Reactive Monitoring mission reports on the state of the Ohrid region and report to UNESCO on their progress by Feb. 1, 2026. 

The postponement came after the Macedonian delegation in Paris submitted an amendment against the adoption of the draft decision of the World Heritage Committee inscribing the Ohrid region on the List of World Heritage in Danger.

The draft decision was based on the prolonged deterioration of the Ohrid region's cultural and natural heritage attributes due to the inadequate enforcement of regulations and the limited implementation of conservation actions, which UNESCO said continued to leave the region in a highly vulnerable state.

"The 2024 Reactive Monitoring mission confirmed this severe extreme vulnerability," it said, adding that North Macedonia's efforts to reduce and remediate adverse impacts remained slow, leading to "irreversible degradation."

According to UNESCO on its website, inscribing a site on the List of World Heritage in Danger allows the World Heritage Committee to allocate immediate assistance from the World Heritage Fund to the endangered property.

Thirty-nine environmental organizations and a European network of 15 member organizations supported the draft decision. In a letter to UNESCO, Macedonian environmental activists were joined by Albanian, Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Austrian and British environmentalists in asking that UNESCO put Ohrid on the List of World Heritage in Danger.

They expressed their concern regarding "the degree of ongoing destruction," "the urgent need of restoration of the region's natural and cultural values," and "the real danger of irreversible loss of its integrity and authenticity."

Dragana Velkovska from the Ohrid SOS citizens' association told MIA's Ohrid correspondent that the World Heritage Committee's decision was political.

"The committee has yet again decided to ignore the experts," she said, adding that UNESCO had undermined its own World Heritage Convention.

The environmental activist said it was unprecedented that three consecutive expert mission reports were ignored by UNESCO while the destruction of Ohrid was spreading unabated.

"Listening to lobbyists instead of experts only encourages new destructive activities," Velkovska said.

Making decisions based on politics instead of expert recommendations, she said, relieved the authorities of their responsibility to stop projects destroying the Ohrid region's natural and cultural heritage.

"This is a tough defeat. Not only for Macedonia but also for the world," she said. mr/