Modalities for Community Participation in Implementing the UNESCO ICH Convention

The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICHC) is the first example of an international cultural heritage treaty that acknowledges the need for community involvement to such a high degree. This principle emerged from the landmark 1999 UNESCO/Smithsonian Institution Conference, A Global Assessment of the 1989 Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore: Local Empowerment and International Cooperation. It was further endorsed by the Turin Round Table, where experts discussed the definition of the term “intangible cultural heritage” and by the Rio Expert Meeting that identified the priority domain to be included in the future instrument, which was fed finally into the ICHC. This chapter examines how this concept of community involvement in the safeguarding of the ICH was enshrined by the experts at their meetings and how it was subsequently watered down by the representatives of UNESCO member states at the intergovernmental meetings that drafted the ICHC and its operational directives.