Introduction - FOREVER YOUNG: CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF THE WORLD HERITAGE CONVENTION

This open access publication gathers young and senior scholars of the Una Europa Universities to celebrate the first fifty years of the UNESCO 1972 World Heritage Convention (WHC). Financed as a Seed Funding Grant of the Una Europa Alliance, the WHC@50 project offers an interdisciplinary analysis of the WHC, the jewel of the UNESCO Conventions. By introducing the (r)evolutionary concept of World Heritage and involving the International Community as a whole in the preservation, valorization and transmission to future generations of cultural and natural sites and landscapes of outstanding universal value, the WHC is indeed one of the major treaty instruments of our age. We therefore hope, through the final results of the WHC@50 research cooperation activity, to contribute to the dissemination of the WHC knowledge, attracting the attention of academics, politicians, experts, officials and civil society, and contributing to the debate for strengthening the 1972 UNESCO Convention, suggesting solutions to overcome the problematic aspects of its implementation and activities.