After the Angkor was inscribed on the World Cultural Heritage List, it was necessary to establish working mechanisms to promote national and international collaboration.

Eau le inailau a tamaitai—this Samoan adage explains the capability of women to achieve their goals in any domain through singularity of purpose and collaborative efforts.

In the context of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, a wide field of NGOs is active in between governments and communities to translate concepts, facilitate and support safeguarding programs, advocate bearers’ perspectives and interests, etc. In doing so, they often turn out to be key actors for successful heritage processes engaging communities.

Bhutan is a treasure trove of rich and unique tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Bhutan’s distinctive and often sacred cultures have been preserved and passed down through the generations. Today, the country is recognized for its unbroken and untainted immemorial cultural inheritance. One of the components of Bhutan’s varied intangible culture was royal court dances performed to entertain kings and their entourage at the palace.

The Kyrgyz komuz is a national musical instrument. Traditionally, komuz was made from a single piece of wood. The instrument has three strings, which were traditionally made from dried ram innards, but in modern times, fishing lines are often used instead.

The Azerbaijani Carpet Makers Union (ACMU), founded in January 2010, is a voluntary self-governmental public association of citizens rallied to support Azerbaijani carpet weaving.The ACMU seeks to promote a revival of the powerful spiritual heritage of carpets, the national traditions of the Azerbaijani people, a consolidation of the creative potential of seen figures of society and culture, support for talented children and youth, and creative carpet dynasties. The purpose of the ACMU is also to convey objective information about the unique national culture, rich historical heritage, and diversity of the carpet art of Azerbaijan to the international community.

The food we eat is an important part of culture. It is also an expression of community identity. As American folklorist Millie Rahn writes, The kitchen, historically, is the place where families gather and where the everyday and the ceremonial meet and overlap. Here families interact and share private traditions, expressing identity through their food to each other and to the world. Creativity is alive in this space, from daily mealtimes to more elaborate feasts that mark rites of passage, religious and secular holidays, and other special events. This is where knowledge is passed on, from traditional ways of preparing and using various ingredients, implements, tools, and techniques to legends, stories, anecdotes, and cultural exchanges that have become part of familial and regional folklife. We all eat, and associate different layers of cultural meaning to the food we consume. Explorations of food, then, can be an easy conduit into the complex world of intangible cultural heritage. This article gives several examples from the safeguarding initiatives of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador that have used foodways as a means to get people thinking about, and engaged with, concepts of cultural transmission and heritage conservation.

It has become recognized nowadays that cultural heritage encompasses more than collections of objects or monuments; it includes just as much also intangible manifestations such as traditions and living expressions. This intangible cultural heritage (ICH) stretches into a wide range of domains of our society, such as performing arts, social practices, oral traditions, rituals and festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature, and the knowledge and skills used to produce traditional crafts.

The Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Intangible Cultural Strategy has four broad goals: documentation, that work of inventorying ICH; celebration, where we honor our tradition-bearers; transmission, where we ensure that skills are passed from person to person and community to community; and finally cultural industry, where we can build sustainable communities using Intangible Cultural Heritage as a tool.

The Asia-Pacific region can be called a treasure house of ICH because of its diverse heritage and rich cultural environment. However, much of the ICH in the region is facing the possibility of disappearance because the value of ICH isn’t fully understood and there is a shortage of institutional and administrative support. In particular, developing or underdeveloped countries in the region are experiencing difficulties in effectively safeguarding ICH in the context of maintaining sociocultural traditions and promoting sustainable development because globalisation, urbanisation, and modernisation stand as obstacles.Recognising the shortcomings in ICH safeguarding, ICHCAP, a UNESCO Category 2 Centre, has recently been established based on the approval of UNESCO General Conference in 2009 and the agreement between UNESCO and the government of the Republic of Korea. The main roles and functions of the Centre focus on information and networking in the ICH safeguarding field. ICHCAP has contributed to ICH safeguarding and has learned a lot from the activities the Centre has conducted and participated in over the past four years.In this paper, I will introduce the main roles, functions, and collaborative works of ICHCAP in relation to ICH safeguarding in the Asia-Pacific region. I am hoping that the information provided here will also contribute to developing useful methods and cooperative measures in the ICH field among Asia-Pacific Member States and ICHCAP.

"The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (‘ICH Convention’ or ‘Convention’ hereafter) was adopted in 2003 and subsequently brought into force in 2006. The ICH Convention mandates signatories to use or mobilise various measures to safeguard intangible cultural heritage. \nEven though the Convention does not succinctly mention the elaborate legal measures for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, the intellectual property rights to protect intangible cultural heritage and its holders are implied throughout provisions of the Convention. To implement the Convention’s spirit, the Operational Directives clarify legal form as safeguarding measures by stating that: State Parties shall endeavor to ensure, in particular through the application of intellectual property rights, privacy rights and any other appropriate form of legal protection, that the rights of the communities, groups, and individuals that create, bear and transmit their intangible cultural heritage are duly protected…."

In December 2011, Rumah Angklung was founded by a group of young people who loved and cared about the Angklung (a traditional Indonesian musical instrument) and finally had the initiative to create a community. That community is now a serious foundation committed to preserving and developing Indonesian art and culture, especially related to angklung.