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
Jan 12, 2017
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
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Inscribed elements –
regional imbalance
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
WesternEurope and
NorthAmerica
EasternEurope
LatinAmericaand the
Caribbean
Asia andPacific
Africa Arab States
Representative List
Urgent Safeguarding List
Register of Best Safeguarding Practices
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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
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• 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
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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 Bank Participants of the Fourth Meeting
of ICH category-2 centers
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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
Just adopted- Chapter on ICH
and sustainable development
• Inclusive social development • Environmental sustainability • Inclusive economic development • Peace and security
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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
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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
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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
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SYNERGIES BETWEEN 1972
AND 2003 CONVENTION
© All Rights Reserved: UNESCO/ ICH
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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…
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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.
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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.
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© 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