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, Macedonian media reported.
Lake Ohrid and the city of Ohrid are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and the UNESCO Committee expressed concern over certain challenges such as urbanization and tourism pressure. However, they believe these threats can be mitigated with further protection and management measures.
At its 47th session held in Paris, the committee gave the Municipality of Ohrid and the Government one more year to fulfill their obligations, to follow the recommendations from the UNESCO reactive monitoring mission report on the state of the Ohrid region, and to report to UNESCO on their progress by February 1st, 2026.
The postponement came after the North Macedonian delegation in Paris submitted an amendment against the adoption of the draft decision of the World Heritage Committee to place the Ohrid region on the List of World Heritage in Danger. That is, an exemption from the list was requested for now, in order to gain additional time to implement the demands for preservation and restoration of the region.
The draft decision was based on the prolonged deterioration of the cultural and natural heritage features of the Ohrid region due to inadequate enforcement of regulations and limited implementation of conservation actions, which UNESCO claims continue to leave the region in a very vulnerable state.
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 United Kingdom (UK) ecologists, who requested that UNESCO include Ohrid on the List of World Heritage in Danger.
They expressed concern over “the degree of ongoing destruction,““the urgent need to restore the region‘s natural and cultural values,“and “the real danger of irreversible loss of its integrity and authenticity.“
