No, The Lumbini Site Is Not An Endangered Site Per UNESCO

Several newspaper reports and social media posts have been claiming that Lumbini, the site which currently sits inside Nepal’s borders where the Lord Buddha was born, has been named as an endangered site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) last week. 

A news report in Aruna newspaper reads in Sinhala, 

“The 47th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee has decided to conduct a monitoring mission about Lumbini, the birthplace of the revered Prince Siddhartha, on the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger and take a decision based on the report. The decision to include Lumbini on the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger was made at the committee meeting last year due to various reasons, including leakage problems at the Maya Devi Temple.”

A similar statement was made on the Derana Aruna TV Programme:

Given the importance of this site for Buddhists in Sri Lanka and over the world, we decided to check the veracity of the claim.

Fact Check/Verification

We first did a keyword search of words “Lumbini”, “UNESCO”, “endangered”, and “Nepal”, which produced no reliable sources of evidence to prove this claim to be true. We then checked the UNESCO website and its updated list of endangered cultural sites. It lists 53 properties which the World Heritage Committee has decided to include on the List of World Heritage in danger in accordance with Article 11 (4) of the United Nations Convention. It does not list any site in Nepal or any other country in South Asia. 

We then checked the UNESCO list of cultural heritage sites, which lists 1248 sites across the world “forming part of the cultural and natural heritage which the World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universal value.” This list includes the Lumbini site, but does not identify it as one in danger. It only has the yellow label, which indicates a cultural site of value. Sites in danger have a red label. 

We also found reports that while in July 2024 UNESCO had discussed placing Lumbini in the list of endangered sites, it eventually decided against it. A post on the Lumbini Development Trust’s website says the following:

“Among the 21 countries of the World Heritage Committee, representatives from 19 countries, including India, expressed that Lumbini is of exceptional global significance and that Nepal should be given time for improvements, thus standing against its inclusion in the danger list.”

A report on the Kathmandu Post reiterated that these improvements related to 12 points were acknowledged as positive at the 47th UNESCO Convention held in July 2025:

“The decision to defer inclusion came after discussions recognised conservation-friendly and reformative steps taken…Sanuraja Shakya, member-secretary of the Lumbini Development Trust, said Nepal had acted on all 12 points—covering conservation, legal clarity, and policy formulation—and submitted a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) report that yielded a favourable outcome. “We addressed everything comprehensively,” he said. “This has yielded good results. We will continue with conservation-focused work.”

Conclusion

The claim that UNESCO has named Lumbini, the sacred site of the Lord Buddha’s birth as an endangered site is untrue.

Our Sources

World Heritage List by the UNESCO Heritage Convention, UNESCO website, as updated on July 21, 2025
List of World Heritage in Danger, by the UNESCO Heritage Convention, UNESCO website, as updated on July 21, 2025
‘Proposal to Include Lumbini in the Danger List Rejected’, The Lumbini Development Trust Website, published on July 28, 2024
‘Lumbini avoids UNESCO danger list’, The Kathmandu Post, published on July 11, 2025