Slovenia joined the specialised UN agency only days after becoming a full member of the UN in 1992 and ratified the founding documents the same year.

While the Škocjan Caves were on the World Heritage List already before Slovenia declared independence from former Yugoslavia in 1991, the list of Slovenian world heritage sites has since been extended by the prehistoric pile-dwellings in the wetlands south of Ljubljana and the decommissioned mercury mine in Idrija.

Slovenia has a further six sites on the UNESCO tentative list, some of them together with other countries - the Kras landscape, mountain iron works in Bohinj, the Franja WWII hospital, European beech forests, the work of architect Jože Plečnik (1872-1957) and a WWI remembrance trail.

The Škofja Loka Passion play has made it to UNESCO's representative list of intangible cultural heritage, while three more nominations have been filed - the traditional carnival masks, bobbin lace making and dry stone walling, which was nominated together with eight other countries.

The joint nomination of traditional Lipizzan horse breeding is also being negotiated with Austria, Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia. According to the Culture Ministry, the nomination is to be filed in March 2018 if all the countries list their stud farms in their national registers.

UNESCO's Memory of the World Register includes Codex Suprasliensis, the largest among just a few surviving manuscripts in Old Church Slavonic, of which parts are kept by the Ljubljana National and University Library.

Three Slovenian sites have been included onto the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance - the Sečovlje salt pans, the Škocjan Caves and the Cerknica intermittent lake.

UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere programme includes the Julian Alps, the Kras and the Kozjansko & Obsotelje biosphere reserves, while the registration of the Mura biosphere area is also in the process.

Moreover, the Idrija Geopark and the transnational Karawanken/Karavanke Geopark are in UNESCO's network of global geoparks.

Slovenia is a member of the UNESCO Executive Board from 2015 to 2019. In September, Ljubljana will host a world congress on freely accessible educational sources.