The Samoan government’s efforts to revitalize fine mat weaving (‘ie sae) and the making of siapo or tapa, a bark cloth art, now includes a series of short films describing the processes. The film series was commissioned by the Ministry of Women, Community, and Social Development and produced by Galumalemana Steven Percival, a local filmmaker and ICHCAP correspondent. The documentary films in the Samoan language provide viewers with a glimpse into how these cultural products continue to be used in Samoan society. These traditional crafts are full of esoteric knowledge and lie at the bedrock of Samoa’s rich intangible cultural heritage.\n\nHere is a short video from the series.\n\nYoutube: https://youtu.be/Ccuf67O3Gos \n\nPhoto : Makers of Samoan siapo or tapa use traditional knowledge for dyes and fixatives ©Galumalemana Steven Percival

Loy kratong is one of the representative festivals held throughout Thailand. An event is held every year on the day of the full moon in December of the lunar calendar, and a ceremony is held to honor the river (and water) goddess, Ganga.\n\nThe origin of the loy Kratong Festival is unclear, but it is most likely that it began during the Sukhothai Kingdom in the 14th century. Through the festival, people ask for forgiveness for using water to dirty the river, make a lotus-shaped basket made of banana leaves, place the basket on their forehead, pray, and float it on the river to make a wish. In northern Thailand, a festival is held under the name Yi Peng, which means “flying lantern,” hoping that the lantern will fly in the sky to blow away diseases and bad luck.\n\nAll of the school affiliated with the temple and local community members work together to prepare for the festival, and through the preparation of the event, community members, especially the younger generation, actively participate in the safeguarding and transmission of traditional culture. In addition, the loy Kratong events held throughout Thailand include the production of Kratong and competitions, which are effective in continuing public interest in handicraft traditions and delivering traditional Thai culture.\n\nThis loy kratong festival video is one of the 10 ICH Video Documentary Series. which is the result of the collaborative project between ICHCAP and Thammasat University in Thailand. Both organizations aim to raise visibility and strengthen the public’s access to ICH in Thailand through this project.\n\nPlease refer to the brochure for more information on the Thai ICH video documentary.\n\nphoto 1 : © ICHCAP\nphoto 2 : After the massive launch of Khom Loys the sky is filled with the lanterns at the YeePeng Festival in Sansai Thailand © John-Shedrick, CC-BY-2.0\nphoto 3 : Thai people setting their candle-lit krathongs in the Ping river at night during Loy Krathong © John Shedrick, CC BY 2.0, Changed: Size\nphoto 4 : © ICHCAP\nphoto 5 : Thai couple and child ready to set their candle lit krathong into the river during Loy Krathong © John Shedrick, CC-BY-2.0, Changed : size\nphoto 6 : © ICHCAP\nphoto 7 : © ICHCAP\nphoto 8 : © ICHCAP\nphoto 9 : © ICHCAP

The Moriones Festival is a Lenten tradition held annually on the holy week on the island of Marinduque, Philippines. In the 16th century, Spanish missionaries brought the Roman Catholic faith to the Philippines, and since then, Christian beliefs, rituals, practices, and various related cultures have been absorbed into the Filipino culture throughout the various island regions. Catholics participate in the Moriones Festival in honor of the Passion of the Christ, asking God for mercy with their hearts and praying for their family’s well-being and prosperity.\n\nOne of the most eye-catching elements of this festival is a mask in the form of the faces of Roman military commanders or soldiers in the Bible. During the festival, people wear these masks and parade through the streets dressed as soldiers. Mask makers start making masks by taking pre-orders from November, four months before the festival. Delicately sculpting wood to express detailed features requires considerable skill, creativity, and artistry of the artisan. In the past, the mask was made in a large, crude form that covered the entire head, but as time went on, the size decreased and various flower decorations were added on to the head. In the early days of the Moriones procession, the majority of participants were local adult males. Today, it is an event in which the entire community participates, and men and women of all ages wear masks and participate in the festival.\n\n1. Moryonan Lenten Tradition\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLXen1g2tAaHDVurZGxieuywxmvMjFfgPZ&v=Ar6nKtFcZ58&feature=emb_title\n\n2. Mask Making for Moryonan Lenten Tradition\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYzJ_PXG_ns&list=PLXen1g2tAaHDVurZGxieuywxmvMjFfgPZ\n\nThis Moriones Festival of the Philippines video is one of the 10 ICH video Documentary Series, which is the result of the collaborative project between ICHCAP and National Commission for Culture and the Arts(NCCA) in the Philippines. Both organizations aim to raise visibility and strengthen the public’s access to ICH in the Philippines through this project.\n\nVideos represent the most accurate method of capturing ICH as it exists in the real world, as well as being effective tools for communicating with the public. ICHCAP will endeavor to continue vividly documenting the scenes of ICH that are hidden across the Asia-Pacific region with the aim of raising the profile of ICH elements as treasures of humanity and introducing them to the public.\n\nPlease refer to the brochure for more information on the Philippines ICH video documentary.\n\nPicture 1: The Participants Gathered for a Meal after the Moriones Festival © ICHCAP\nPicture 2: Children Enjoying the Festival in Moriones Masks © ICHCAP\nPicture 3: Child Unmasked at the Moriones Festival © ICHCAP\nPicture 4: Reproducing the Bible's Story at the Moriones Festival © ICHCAP\nPicture 5: Moriones © ICHCAP\nPicture 6: A Procession of Carrying the Statue of Jesus at the Moriones Festival © ICHCAP\nPicture 7~10: Moriones © ICHCAP

Rapid modernization in the postwar period have caused changes in lifestyle and the decline of traditional cultures that had been inherited as wisdoms of peoples for thousands of years in the Pacific Island nations. In addition, traditional knowledge has been of ten lost without proper documentation, and accessible information on their cultures and histories by the local people are largely limited. We believe that learning one’s own culture and history generates and enhances respect to one’s origin and identity and further creates the present and future culture based on these traditions.

This paper begins by reviewing the current implementation of the 2003 Convention at the international level, notably its ratification status and the inscriptions on its two lists—the Urgent Safeguarding List and the Representative List—as well as on the Register of Best Safeguarding Practices. It then examines how procedures to process nominations and inscriptions on the lists and register have been improved and rationalised since drawing up the first version of the Operational Directives in 2008.The paper takes note of the significance of the capacity-building activities undertaken by the UNESCO Secretariat. It then addresses the implementation of the Convention at the national level on the basis of the First Periodical Reports on the implementation of the Convention that have recently been submitted to the Committee. Various fundamental issues are brought to light.Finally, the paper discusses the importance of distributing tasks among the three East-Asian Category 2 Centres for the implementation of the 2003 Convention in the Republic of Korea, the People’s Republic of China, and Japan and underscores the significant roles that have been entrusted to the information and networking centre in the Republic of Korea.

With recent recognition of the value of intangible cultural heritage (‘ICH’ hereafter) elements of a specific society, movements have emerged to signify them as common cultural heritage of humanity. These movements are related with UNESCO's activities, and they are spreading across the world as cultural movements to newly evaluate disappearing traditional culture and safeguard them. As part of these movements, UNESCO stresses that, by announcing the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003, protection and management of ICH are the way of preserving traditional culture of each country as well as that of safeguarding cultural resources of humanity. \n

Central Asia is a region that has served as the centre of social and economic, in particular cultural interrelations of East and West. The nations of this region have a rich cultural heritage and ancient traditions like any nation in the world. The nations of Central Asia - Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan – make up a unified cultural space, defined by great grassland steppes and famous mountains, nomadic culture and common history, relics and traditions. Throughout this region we find petroglyphs, keregsur, steles, ruins and other monuments attesting to the mingling of peoples in the Central Asian steppe since prehistory. The territory of our own nation, Mongolia, has indeed been the centre several nomadic empires at various stages in history, established by different peoples of Central Asia sharing a similar cultural origin – Hunnu, Khitan, Turks, Uighurs, Kyrgyz and Mongols.

The unbalanced geographical distribution of accredited NGOs was identified as one of the major concerns by the General Assembly, the Committee and the Secretariat when the reflection process on the advisory role of accredited NGOs started at 12.COM in 2017. One of the recent actions to address the challenge is an initiative towards the establishment of aworking group for the ICH NGO Forum dealing with regional imbalance of accredited ICH NGOs. The initiative came from our NGO, the Finnish Folk Music Institute, and was endorsed by the ICH NGO Forum Steering Committee. The working group will start discussions based on the possible measures received via the survey and work with the aim to overcome the ongoing imbalance.

Ancient Koreans first adopted Chinese characters (hanja, 漢字) for widespread use in the middle of the 4th century, with the establishment of educational institutions and the import of Chinese books as textbooks. The Korean way of pronouncing Chinese characters was called dongeum (東音), and differentiated from the Chinese way. In 1443, Koreans created their own characters (hangeul). Since then, hangeul, Korean-Chinese words and Chinese characters have been used in combination.The mother tongue (vernacular) of Koreans from the ancient to the present has been part of the Altaic family. This mother tongue can be called the indigenous language (native Korean), distinct from Korean-Chinese (dongeum) words. Needless to say, Korean culture and indigenous language predate Korean-Chinese words. Thus, it is a meaningful task to seek the origins of intangible cultural heritage (hereinafter intangible heritage) in indigenous language.

This publication contains papers from the 2021 World Intangible Cultural Heritage Forum held online for three days, from September 29 to October 1, 2021. The event was hosted by the National Intangible Heritage Center and organized by ICHCAP.\n\nThe forum was held under the theme of “Rediscovering Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Era of Convergence and Creativity” to re-examine the creative value of intangible cultural heritage and present the possibilities by examining examples of innovation and value creation through intangible cultural heritage.

The concept and practice of intangible cultural heritage development, collection, teaching, preservation and protection, and passing on the knowledge and skills from the older generations to the younger ones is not new to the Federated States of Micronesia and its peoples, commonly referred to as the FSM. The FSM being comprised of many small islands, some are volcanic while others are atolls or low-laying islands, has a total resident population of around 100,000 per the last population census survey conducted in 2010. Although the population number seems rather small compared to other moderate-sized places or countries such as South Korea and other Asian neighbors including other island states located in the Pacific Ocean, the diversity of its peoples extending from the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean to the west; between the Republic of Palau and the Republic of the Marshall Islands, based on their past historical migration and cultural formation or evolution have often times posed cultural and social cohesion challenges among these islands from the past to the modern days. Such cultural and, to certain extent, ethnical differences sometimes affect modern day socio-political administration of the islands in the FSM as its people, although have adopted and embraced the concept of nationalism, still view themselves as culturally different from each other. Each State in the FSM considers itself as unique and therefore slightly different from the other States in terms of its cultural heritage, history, practices and methods of passing on the traditional knowledge from the older generations to the younger ones. Because traditional methods of transferring such knowledge and skills differ from islands (State) to islands, there are still certain common elements or means used with such practices. All of which are to ensure proper transference of the resources to the proper and entitled individuals within the extended family systems or clans, and to ensure proper attention and care are afforded to the older generations (elders in the family or clan systems) by the younger ones. Knowledge and skills are considered in these islands as learned resources, meaning that such knowledge and skills can be utilized as means to ensure individual, family and clanship well-beings, survivability, and maintenance of social status or up-ward social mobility. In some instances and for good purposes, the assurance is tied with the maintenance of the traditional roles, responsibilities and authority of the families and the clans in their achieved or ascribed ranking or status of the cultural system and practices of the islands.