The 6,200 · citizen verification campaign
Standing or vanished?
Pakistan’s national inventory records 6,200 heritage places — but an inventory entry is not a site. Many records rest on surveys now decades old. Since then: urban expansion, illegal excavation, brick-robbing, floods, canal schemes, housing colonies. Some of these places thrive. Some are wounded. Some may already be gone — and officially, no one has noticed. This campaign finds out, place by place, with citizen eyes.
The verification scale
Every site report uses one simple, honest vocabulary — designed so a student and a surveyor produce comparable records:
Standing
Substantially as recorded; fabric legible; no acute threat observed.
At Risk
Standing but visibly threatened — erosion, vegetation, neglect, visitor damage.
Damaged
Major loss of fabric since the record — collapse, digging, quarrying, fire.
Encroached
Built over or occupied — housing, agriculture, infrastructure inside the site.
Vanished
No trace on the ground at the recorded location. The record has outlived the place.
Not Found
Could not locate — coordinates wrong, access blocked, or identification uncertain.
How a verification works
Step 1 · Pick
Choose a site near you
Open the Heritage Atlas and find catalogued places in your district — every one has its own page and coordinates.
Step 2 · Visit
Go, look, respect
Public access only. No digging, no collecting, no trespass, no drones without clearance. If the site is on private land, ask — most owners are proud to show it.
Step 3 · Record
Photograph & assess
Wide shot, detail shot, threat shot. Pick one status from the scale. Note the date.
Step 4 · Report
File the record
Send site ID, status, photos and notes — every verified record joins the public census and the Atlas. groundtruth@pwhi.digital
Safety and ethics first: never risk yourself, never confront encroachers or diggers — document from a distance and report. Sensitive finds (exposed artifacts, fresh looting pits) are reported to us privately, not posted publicly.
Where to start — the densest unverified districts
From the inventory, the districts with the most unprotected (and therefore unmonitored) catalogued places:
| District | Province | Unprotected sites |
|---|---|---|
| Bahawalpur | Punjab | 368 |
| Karachi | Sindh | 338 |
| Layyah | Punjab | 236 |
| Mardan | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa | 235 |
| Lower Dir | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa | 188 |
| Mansehra | Khyber Pakhtunkhwa | 175 |
Why this matters for policy
A protection system that does not know what still exists cannot set priorities, cannot budget, and cannot be held to account. The census gives the policy platform its evidence floor: which of the 6,200 to protect first, which of the 29 are nomination-ready, and which losses must be recorded before the record itself is quietly deleted. Every “Vanished” verdict is not a failure of this campaign — it is evidence of a failure that would otherwise stay invisible.
Inventory figures compiled from public heritage records, verified July 2026. Suggested citation: PWHI, “Ground Truth — Standing or Vanished?”, pak-heritage.forum/ground-truth.