Introduction of 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage

Masanori Nagaoka

Programme Specialist for Culture, UNESCO Office, Jakarta

Since its founding in 1945, UNESCO has worked to protect humanity’s heritage. An early landmark action was the international campaign launched in 1959, to rescue the Nubian Monuments and sites in Egypt at risk of flooding from the Aswan High Dam project. In 1972, UNESCO launched another prominent campaign for international support to restore the Temple of Borobudur in Indonesia which was suffered from overgrown vegetation and abandonment for years. These actions provided the inspiration for a number of UNESCO Conventions in the field of culture, including 1972 Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.

Over the years, UNESCO’s experience in implementing its cultural Conventions highlighted a lack of attention to the living or intangible cultural heritage. What helped to shift our exclusive focus from tangible to intangible were the collective voices of people of every walk of life and every part of the world anxious that their heritage was being endangered.

The 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage stipulates the importance of such heritage as a mainspring of cultural diversity and a guarantee of sustainable development. The Convention provides the general public with a sense of identity and continuity, helping them to understand their world and giving meaning to their lives and their way of living together.

The importance of the Convention in the eyes of the international community was demonstrated by the unprecedentedly rapid pace of ratification over the recent years. As of 17 October, 2010, 131 countries have already ratified the Convention. Many others will join it soon. By signing up, States are committed to ensure the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage present in their territories, as well as to identify and define this living heritage with the participation of communities, groups and relevant non-governmental organizations.

Today, only seven years after the adoption of the Convention, intangible cultural heritage and its safeguarding is recognized again as an essential part of our cultural heritage, providing us with a sense of identify and continuity that offers a unique opportunity to engage with differences while building social harmony, both nationally and internationally.

The Convention emphasizes the importance of the active involvement of communities, in particular indigenous communities, groups and individuals, in safeguarding and managing their living heritage, since it is only they who can consolidate its present and ensure its future. States that ratify the Convention commit themselves to safeguarding heritage by taking such measures as protection, promotion and transmission through formal and non-formal education, research and revitalization, and to promoting greater respect and awareness. One practical measure is to identify and define the various elements of intangible cultural heritage on its territory, in one or more inventories.

The Indonesian government has been taking a number of proactive initiatives to ensure the safeguarding of such heritage. The Practical Handbook for Inventory of Intangible Cultural heritage of Indonesia published in 2009 is one of the excellent efforts which ensures identification of such unique elements in Indonesia that action needs close cooperation with non-governmental institutes and community members. In this regard, we suggest that the Papuan government promote the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage by mainstreaming this inventorying effort into its strategy as one of the prioritized actions and by taking an important initiative in identifying and preserving the unique intangible cultural heritage in Papua together with the communities.