Ohrid did not end up on the blacklist. At the 48th session of the World Heritage Committee in Busan, UNESCO decided that the Ohrid Region would not, for now, be inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger - and instead left Macedonia and Albania another five years to implement the protection recommendations. At first glance, good news. But good news it is not.

Because five years are not a victory. They are a postponement of the most serious measure UNESCO applies - and probably the last warning before it. The working documents prepared ahead of the debate were clear: the conditions for inscription on the in-danger list are still met, and the draft decision proposed exactly that. The outcome turned only after an amendment was tabled during the session itself, and a majority of members decided to grant the state one more deadline.

The number that says it all

In the Ohrid Region today the talk is of 4,847 illegal buildings. That is not a figure that fell from the sky - it is the result of years in which the institutions looked away while thousands of illegal structures sprang up beside the most protected lake in the country. And the proof that the state is not doing its job is not abstract: between 2019 and 2024, 456 final and enforceable demolition orders were issued. Carried out - not one.

So we have the law, we have the orders, we have the stamps and the signatures. We lack only one thing - the will to carry it out. Statements that illegal buildings „should be demolished in a lawful manner“ sound reasonable, but they come too late. The real question is not how to demolish, but why building was ever allowed in the first place. The rule of law does not begin with a bulldozer - it begins with no one daring to build where they must not.

The problems Ohrid carries have long been known, and UNESCO has repeated them for more than a decade: uncontrolled urbanisation, pressure from tourism, wastewater, pollution, insufficient coordination between the two states that share the lake. The shoreline, Studenčiško Blato and the old town core remain especially sensitive. Every session - the same notes. Every session - a new deadline.

World heritage status is not eternal and is not a given. It is earned through management, and management is exactly what is plainly missing. If these five years too end up in committees, administrative procedures and ceremonial speeches like the ones before them, then there will be no one to blame but ourselves. Ohrid does not need new strategies. It needs someone to finally carry out those 456 orders that have been gathering dust in a drawer for years.