Interview
Jean Musitelli
World Heritage Convention
Jean Musitelli is a senior French civil servant. A former student of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud and the National School of Administration (ENA), he graduated in Italian studies. After teaching in high school, he began his career at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1979, before becoming first secretary at the French Embassy in Rome.
In 1984, he joined the diplomatic unit of the President of the Republic, where he was in turn special advisor for international affairs, diplomatic councillor and spokesperson. He was also special advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 1997, he was appointed Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of France to UNESCO, a position he held until 2002. He was then part of the group of international experts responsible for the preliminary draft of the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity (2003-2004). From 2009 to 2012, he was a full member of the High Authority for the dissemination of creative works and the protection of rights on the internet (HADOPI). Today, he chairs the Diversum association, which works for the development of the purple economy on a global scale, as well as the Interministerial Commission of the Château de Vincennes. He has been awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor, the National Order of Merit and the Order of Arts and Letters.
As Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of France to UNESCO, Jean Musitelli attended the meetings of the World Heritage Committee from 1997 to 2002. In 2000, as part of the Convention reform program launched by the General Assembly of States Parties, he chaired a working group on equitable representation of the Committee, whose recommendations were presented to the meeting in Cairns.
Interview with
Jean Musitelli
6 December 2019, Paris, France
The following audio extracts are from an interview with Jean Musitelli by Christina Cameron the 6 December 2019 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The interviews highlights in particular the values of universalism and international solidarity at the origin of the Convention, the important contribution to the Cairns reforms, the France-UNESCO Co-operation Agreement and the importance of involving local communities in safeguarding World Heritage.
- 1. The World Heritage Convention
- 1a. Involvement of Jean Musitelli in World Heritage
- 1b. Key objectives of the World Heritage Convention
- 1c. Reform agenda at Cairns
- 1d. Policies that influenced the implementation of the Convention
- 1e. Successes and failures of the Convention
- 2. World Heritage Committee
- 3. Involvement of States Parties
- 4. Terrorism and deliberate destruction of World Heritage
- 5. Involvement of civil society
Oral Archives of the
World Heritage Convention
Under the leadership of the Canada Research Chair on Built Heritage at the University of Montreal, an international team of researchers conducts interviews with pioneers of World Heritage to capture memories of important moments in the history of UNESCO Convention.
Launched in 2006, this initiative is part of the UNESCO History project that celebrated the 60th anniversary of the creation of UNESCO. The Oral Archives project records the precious witness of people closely associated with the creation and implementation of the Convention. Their recollections and views have greatly enriched the book by Christina Cameron and Mechtild Rössler, Many Voices, One Vision: The Early Years of the World Heritage Convention (Ashgate/Routledge, 2013).
