PARIS, FRANCE.- Bulgaria has communicated to the Director-General of UNESCO the instrument of its ratification of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Heritage adopted, in November 2001, by the General Conference of the Organization at its 31st session. 
 
This ratification, which will take effect in 3 months, was signed in Sofia, on 25 September last, by the President of the National Assembly, Mr Ognian Gerdykov, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Solomon Passy.

Bulgaria thus becomes, after Panama, the second country to ratify this Convention which is designed to ensure and strengthen the protection of the underwater cultural heritage “as an integral part of the cultural heritage of humanity and a particularly important element in the history of peoples, nations, and their relations with each other concerning their common heritage”.

The Director-General welcomed this ratification and invited “the Member States of UNESCO to follow the lead of Panama and Bulgaria, in order to permit a rapid entry into force of a text of particular importance in a field where international cooperation is indispensable in addressing of the increase in the “commercial exploitation of underwater cultural heritage, and in particular, by certain activities leading to the sale, acquisition or barter” of this heritage.