“Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention: A decade after the entry into force”

1. Intangible Cultural
Heritage Convention:
A decade after the entry
into force.
Tenth Annual Meeting of the South-East European
Experts Network on Intangible Cultural Heritage
Brač - CROATIA
14-15 June 2016

2. 2
The Convention today –
States Parties
As of 8 June 2016:
• Ratified by 168 states
overall
• By all countries of SEE
ICH network
• 10 out of 24 Eastern
European countries
have been or are
Committee members
© All Rights Reserved: UNESCO/ ICH
Western
Europe and
North
America
21
Eastern
Europe
24
Latin
America and
Caribbean
31
Asia and
Pacific
33
Africa
41
Arab States
18
• Entered into force in
2006

3. 3
How is the Convention being
implemented at national level?
Creating a legal
and administrative
context for
safeguarding
Awareness-raising
Identifying, defining
and inventorying
living traditions
Establishing
partnerships to
safeguard the
ICH present in
territory of State
Party

4. 4
Community participation
• One of the most challenging aspects in
implementation of 2003 Convention
• Only communities possess specific intangible
cultural heritage – it is not the property of States,
nations, humanity but the Convention is an
agreement between States
• No definition of communities in the Convention
• Convention and Operational Directives request
States Parties to involve and assist communities,
with their consent, in managing and safeguarding
their living traditions
Traditional Vallenato music of the
Greater Magdalena region inscribed
on Representative List, Colombia,
2015.
© Leon Dario Pelaez, Revista
Semana

5. 5
Inventorying of ICH
• One of the few obligations under the Convention
• Not necessarily ‘national’
• Inventories should be defined by communities;
• Problem of hierarchy/ranking the importance of ICH
elements;
• Issue of inclusion/exclusion, scope and size of
inventories;
• Some national inventories are not in line with the
Convention (‘outstanding value’, ‘authenticity’);
• Issues of commercialization of ICH, labelling of
inventoried ICH.
© 2004 by Melitta Abber

6. 6
Awareness-raising
• One of the biggest impacts of the Convention
International Level
• ICH has become an established concept in
general cultural heritage vocabularies
National level
• Increased recognition, including through TV,
radio, newspaper, internet etc.
• Communities whose ICH elements have been
listed have expressed intention to reinvigorate the
cultural activities
Suai villagers gathering, Timor Leste
© UNESCO/R.Goswami

7. 7
Lists of the Convention…
• 336 elements inscribed on the Representative List
• 43 elements inscribed on the Urgent Safeguarding List
• 12 programs / projects / activities selected for the
Register of Best Safeguarding Practices
• Clear imbalance in favour of the
Representative List
• Although it has contributed to raising
awareness and impact on safeguarding ICH

8. 8
Inscribed elements –
regional imbalance
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
Western
Europe and
North
America
Eastern
Europe
Latin
America
and the
Caribbean
Asia and
Pacific
Africa Arab States
Representative List
Urgent Safeguarding List
Register of Best Safeguarding Practices

9. 9
Working on cross-border ICH
• Represents opportunity for international /
regional cooperation;
• Can raise awareness about shared
identity and cultural roots;
• Can sometimes be used to establish
cooperation between and serve to
mutual benefit for states;
Listing can raise competitive feelings
between states and communities;
© All Rights Reserved: UNESCO/ ICH
© 2012 by Péter Kohalmi
© Information and Documentation Center of Folk Culture/Ministry
of Culture and Tourism

10. 10
• Monitoring and evaluation
framework with objectives,
indicators and benchmarks
needed to measure and
demonstrate results
• An expert meeting to take place in
Chengdu (China) in July 2016
Monitoring and evaluation
framework
Tchopa, sacrificial dance of the Lhomwe people of southern Malawi
inscribed on Representative List, Malawi, 2014,
© Museums of Malawi

11. 11
Partnerships
• 8 Category 2 Centres under the
auspices of UNESCO for Intangible
Cultural Heritage
• 11 UNESCO Chairs in the field of ICH
• Need to encourage tertiary education,
including postgraduate level of ICH
safeguarding studies
• Collaboration with WHO, WIPO and
the World BankParticipants of the Fourth Meeting
of ICH category-2 centers

12. 12
Recent developments
• 12 Ethical Principles
• Operational Directives on ICH and
Sustainable Development in line with the 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development
• Improved access to International Assistance

13. 13
Just adopted- Chapter on ICH
and sustainable development
• Inclusive social development
• Environmental sustainability
• Inclusive economic development
• Peace and security

14. 14
International assistance
• Amount increased to US$ 100 000 for the
requests to be examined by the Bureau,
because:
 States used to give priority to the Representative
List, rather than International Assistance, when
having to choose within the ceiling of files;
 States lack human and financial resources to
develop international assistance requests that
adequately meet the eligibility criteria.
• New area for improvement – requesting for
services under international assistance
mechanism

15. 15
Capacity-building - most
important
• Long-term engagement with states to create
institutional and professional environments for
safeguarding ICH
• Activities in more than 70 countries since 2011
• 5 priorities:
 Redesign of institutional infrastructures
 Revision of cultural and other policies and
legislation
 Development of inventory methods
 Development of effective safeguarding measures
 Participation in international cooperation
mechanisms
• Content and training materials + network of trained
expert facilitators

16. 16
Funding of capacity building in
South-East Europe
• Sofia C2C centre’s support is much appreciated, as no
other donor in the region for the time being
• Cooperation with European Union with a view to start
long-term and sustainable capacity building for ICH
safeguarding:
• Safeguarding ICH is not one of the priorities for EU
• The voice of potential beneficiary countries is
important in their negotiations with EU bodies
• Through international assistance
• By funds coming from countries’ themselves

17. 17
SYNERGIES BETWEEN 1972
AND 2003 CONVENTION
© All Rights Reserved: UNESCO/ ICH

18. 18
1972 Convention 2003 Convention
Focus Conservation of natural
and cultural heritage
properties
Safeguarding of intangible
cultural heritage elements
Nature Cultural and/or natural Cultural and/or social
Link to
Development
Heritage as fundamental
to sustainable
development
Cultural heritage as a
mainspring of cultural diversity,
an important vector for
sustainable development
Major
Stakeholders
Enhanced role of
communities (strategic
objectives 5Cs)
Communities and individuals
maintaining living intangible
heritage
Similarities in
domains…
Cultural landscapes Cultural spaces
Differences & similarities

19. 19
World Heritage
• World Heritage
List
• List of WH Sites in Danger
• WH Committee identifies sites in
serious danger
• To encourage corrective action
Intangible Cultural Heritage
• Representative List
• Register of Best Safeguarding
Practices
• Urgent Safeguarding
• Identified and nominated by State
Parties
• To mobilize assistance
Mechanisms

20. 20
World Heritage
• Outstanding Universal Values
(OUV) decided by authorities and
experts in consultation with
stakeholders
• Comparison of value between
sites; site must fill a gap on the
World Heritage List as best
exemplar or representative within
its geo-cultural region/globally
Intangible Cultural Heritage
• Significance to communities,
and decided by communities
• No comparison of value among
ICH elements
• ICH changes over time
Core concepts

21. 21
World Heritage
• Integrity: wholeness and
intactness of site, no impact on
OUV from development/neglect
• Authenticity to be protected: OUV
is truthfully and credibly expressed
through form and design, materials
and substance, spirit and feeling,
etc.
• Evolution from the Venice Charter
(1964) to the Nara Document on
Authenticity (1994)
Intangible Cultural Heritage
• ICH can evolve but should not be
divorced from its social context.
• Viability to be safeguarded:
keeping the transmission and
healthy changes of the practices
to next generations >> continued
practice / “Living Heritage”
Core Concepts

22. 22
In some cases, Intangible Heritage is
one of the contributing factors
that determines the
Outstanding Universal Value
of the World Heritage site.
Criterion (vi):
be directly or tangibly associated with events or living
traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and
literary works of outstanding universal significance
e.g. Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Auschwitz Birkenau…
22

23. 23
Example of synergies in the lists
(Kenya)
© All Rights Reserved: UNESCO/ ICH
World Heritage List Representative List of ICH
Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests Traditions and practices associated
with the Kayas in the sacred forests
of the Mijikenda
• Consist of 11 separate forest sites spread
over some 200 km;
• Contain remains of numerous fortified
villages, known as kayas, of the Mijikenda
people;
• Regarded as the abodes of ancestors and
are revered as sacred sites and, as such,
are maintained as by councils of elders.
• The Mijikenda includes nine Bantu-speaking
ethnic groups in the Kaya forests;
• The Mijikenda identity is expressed through
forests- related oral traditions and performing
arts;
• Practices constitute codes of ethics and
governance systems, and include prayers,
oath-taking, burial rites and charms, naming of
the newly born, initiations, reconciliations,
marriages and coronations.

24. 24
Example of synergies in the lists
(Philippines)
© All Rights Reserved: UNESCO/ ICH
World Heritage List Representative List of ICH
Rice Terraces of the Philippine
Cordilleras
Hudhud chants of the Ifugao
• For 2,000 years, the Ifugao rice fields have
followed the contours of the mountains;
• They are the fruit of knowledge handed
down from one generation to the next, and
the expression of sacred traditions and a
delicate social balance;
• They have helped to create a landscape of
great beauty that expresses the harmony
between humankind and the environment.
• The Hudhud consists of narrative chants
traditionally performed by the Ifugao
community;
• The community is well known for its rice
terraces extending over the highlands of the
Philippine northern island;
• It is practised during the rice sowing season, at
harvest time and at funeral wakes and rituals.
• Include more than 200 chants. A complete
recitation may last several days.

25. 25
© All Rights Reserved: UNESCO/ ICH
Dr. Tim Curtis
Secretary of the 2003 Convention and
Chief of the Intangible Cultural
Heritage Section, UNESCO
www.unesco.org/culture/ich