World Heritage Property
Status: UNESCO World Heritage property (inscribed 1980) · Sindh · criteria (ii)(iii) · UNESCO ref 138
Overview (Verified — UNESCO)
One of the largest cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation (c. 2500 BCE), an exceptional testimony to a lost civilisation, built entirely of unbaked brick with a planned grid, drainage and the Great Bath.
Location
Sindh, Pakistan. Property boundary and buffer zone as recorded by the World Heritage Centre — see the UNESCO record.
Criteria for inscription (Verified — UNESCO)
Inscribed under criteria (ii)(iii).
Conservation and the UNESCO record (Verified — UNESCO decisions)
- 46 COM 7B.38 (2024) — took note of the March 2024 joint World Heritage Centre/ICOMOS Reactive Monitoring mission; drainage, conservation, vulnerability assessment (decisions/8564)
- 4 COM V.12 (1980) — inscription
Reported threats (PWHI analysis — verification required per site)
Salinity, rising water table, monsoon rainfall, resource constraints.
PWHI position (PWHI analysis)
PWHI calls for project-level Heritage Impact Assessment for any development affecting the property or its buffer zone, submitted to the World Heritage Centre before irreversible decisions, and for the timely delivery of the management and disaster-risk instruments requested by the Committee.
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre — property record: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/138
- UNESCO Committee decisions (via PWHI Heritage Intelligence decision corpus)
- PWHI editorial analysis is labelled as such and is not an official or UNESCO determination.