UNITED NATIONS (BNO NEWS) – The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will consider dozens of sites for a possible inscription on the World Heritage List, including sites from Kiribati, Marshall Islands and Tajikistan for the first time, the United Nations (UN) announced on Tuesday.

The Phoenix Islands protected area in Kiribati, the Bikini Atoll nuclear testing site in the Marshall Islands and the Mountains of the Pamirs in the Tajik National Park in Tajikistan are three of the many sites to be considered at the next meeting of the World Heritage Committee later this month in Brasilia, capital of Brazil.

Forty-one properties from thirty-five nations will be presented for inscription at this year’s session. The committee will also review the state of conservation of 31 sites on the List of World Heritages sites in danger by pollution, urban development, poorly managed mass tourism, wars and natural disasters.

Last year, the committee removed from the list Germany’s Dresden Elbe Valley and the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary in Oman, due to the building of a four-lane bridge in the heart of the cultural landscape for the first, and for failing to fulfill its conservation obligations for the latter.

The World Heritage List currently acknowledges 890 sites to be of outstanding universal value. The 2010 World Heritage Committee session will took place from July 25 to August 3.

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