Identity · method · rules of the record

About PWHI

The Pakistan World Heritage Initiative is an independent civil-society initiative — not a government body, and not affiliated with UNESCO or the Department of Archaeology and Museums. It exists to hold an honest, cited, publicly verifiable record of Pakistan’s heritage: the six inscribed World Heritage properties, the twenty-nine candidates on the Tentative List, and the roughly 6,200 catalogued places in the national inventory — most of which have no legal protection.

What PWHI is — and is not

PWHI is independent by design. It receives no government mandate, speaks for no ministry or department, and is not a party to UNESCO proceedings. Its authority is evidentiary, not official: every claim it publishes is meant to be checkable against a named source. It is not a tourism promotion body, not a contractor, and not a political platform. Where PWHI criticises, it addresses decision-makers as people who can fix things — the purpose of the record is a decision, not a verdict.

What PWHI documents

The World Heritage record — the six inscribed properties and their State of Conservation history, the twenty-nine Tentative List candidates and their waiting clocks, and Pakistan’s obligations under the World Heritage Convention, tracked live during Committee sessions (currently the 48th session, Busan).
The national inventory — a structured registry of ~6,200 catalogued heritage places with per-record provenance, coordinates carrying confidence labels, protection status, and inventory photographs displayed from the official DOAM source. Every record has its own page on the National Heritage Atlas.
The protection gap — 684 places with identifiable legal protection against 5,516 (~89.0%) without: the single fact the whole ecosystem exists to change.
Crisis files — evidence-marked monitoring of live conservation matters, led by Taxila Watch and its published State of Conservation report.

Method and sources

PWHI works from four source classes, in declining order of authority: official UNESCO records (Committee decisions, State of Conservation reports, mission reports, the Operational Guidelines); Pakistani statutes and gazettes (the Antiquities Act 1975 and provincial instruments — protection is never asserted without an identifiable instrument); scholarly publication (led by the Pakistan Archaeology journal record, 1964–2018); and reputable reporting, anchored to Pakistani sources wherever possible. Structured retrieval across all of these is built on PWHI Heritage Intelligence — an evidence-grounded research engine over the 6,200-record registry, 122 World Heritage Committee decisions and 20 heritage statutes, designed to cite its sources, label authority levels, and abstain when the corpus does not establish an answer. A public interface is in preparation.

The rules of the record

Verified vs analysis. Verified UNESCO information is always distinguished from PWHI’s own analysis. Draft Committee decisions are labelled provisional until adopted.

Nothing invented. No facts, citations, coordinates, legal protections, threats, or image rights are ever invented. Where the record is thin, the page says so.

Evidence markings. Working documents carry [V] verified / [R] reported / [TV] to-be-verified markings openly, and nothing unverified travels into court- or government-facing versions.

Matrix, not a verdict. On contested matters PWHI presents obligations, evidence and gaps for expert determination — it does not declare guilt, and it states the other side’s position in its own terms.

Images are labelled. Photography carries the public face; AI-generated and deck-derived art is always captioned as illustration, never presented as documentary evidence; inventory photographs are displayed from the official source with attribution.

Corrections. Errors are corrected openly and on the record: corrections@pwhi.digital.

The ecosystem

PWHI operates four connected public platforms over one governed record: pak-heritage.site — the National Heritage Atlas of all ~6,200 places; pwhi.digital (this site) — the institutional, legal, UNESCO-compliance and advocacy platform; pak-heritage.pics — the governed visual archive (moderated; opening in stages); and pak-heritage.forum — moderated expert and public deliberation (in preparation). One heritage record, one evidence history, one geospatial identity — four connected public experiences. The longer-term architecture — the Pakistan Heritage Digital Ecosystem and its mature form, a national heritage-intelligence public infrastructure — is published in PWHI’s architecture papers.

Founding, authorship and standing

PWHI was founded and architected by Khurram Chughtai as a public-interest initiative “for the sake of the heritage of Pakistan.” He is the author of its heritage research, its legal and compliance analysis, and its state-of-conservation reporting, and is responsible for the editorial standards set out above. He writes in a personal and civil-society capacity; his professional standing is with JUSnREM.

The independence boundary, stated plainly. PWHI is not a commercial product, subsidiary or service of JUSnREM or of any other venture, and takes no funding from any custodial authority whose work it documents. The affiliation is disclosed because expertise should be attributable and accountable — not because any commercial interest attaches to this record.

The initiative welcomes correction, collaboration and scrutiny — the record is the point, and the record is public.