The increase in natural disasters, conflict and unmanaged urbanisation in different parts of the world present diverse challenges to communities and their heritage. The selection of which aspects of heritage to remember and which of those to forget becomes complex in such contexts, resulting in heritage-making processes that often exacerbate differences between groups and communities. Despite these challenges, conservation, interpretation and adaptive reuse of heritage sites can also serve as the medium through which democracy, social justice, human and cultural rights can be upheld. Such intricate nuances of heritage-making present some of the most current challenges to the reconciliatory role of cultural heritage in an increasingly complex world. These concerns featured as recurring threads in many of the papers presented at the sessions on The Role of Cultural Heritage in Building Peace and Reconciliation (or Heritage for Peace), a subtheme of the Scientific Symposium on Heritage and Democracy, held in conjunction with the 19th ICOMOS General Assembly in New Delhi, India. This article reflects on the papers presented at these sessions and its relevance to the sphere of Australian heritage.