Pebaek was one of the important ritual procedures of a traditional wedding ceremony. The ritual was performed at the groom’s house after the bride finished the wedding ceremony at her house. Pebaek was to introduce herself properly to her new in-laws and, her rst greetings were to the inlaw parents and relatives.

Community participation in identifying, inventorying, managing and safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is a central tenet of the Convention (e.g. see Article 11(b) and Article 15). States can involve communities in various activities under the Convention (this is discussed further in Participant’s text 7.4 below). However, the Convention and the ODs do not give precise indications about how to identify the relevant communities, groups and individuals. Nor do the Convention and the ODs give much guidance about how to involve them in actions concerning their ICH. This gives considerable leeway to States Parties to respond to their specific situations. It is, for example, equally possible to start by identifying specific ICH elements and then work with the people who practise and transmit them (who would be defined as part of ‘the community concerned’); or by first identifying communities and then, together with them, identifying their ICH.

Of all the things that represent Palauan culture, the Chief ’s or Community Meeting Hall, known as the bai, is the most iconic symbol. The bai is covered inside and out with many symbols, motifs, and stories, called deliaches, which are pictures and carved patterns that either tell a story or represent Palauan-ness. For hundreds of years, these deliaches have served didactic purposes to teach and maintain traditional values. People seated in the bai need to know all this symbolism by heart.

While Indigenous people represent 5% of the world’s population, it is estimated that Indigenous lands account for around 20% of global landcover, which contains 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. Many Indigenous communities have expressed concerns that modern-day environmental conservation and land management practices often conflict with their traditional ways of life. Regulations restrict their access to the land and natural resources that they have relied on for subsistence, medicine, and spiritual well-being, in many cases for generations.

While recording and performance copyrights on some of the recordings has expired, the underlying works recorded in most cases fall into the categories of intangible cultural heritage featuring traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) not normally covered by legal copyright frameworks. With the growing interest among indigenous and traditional communities around the world in cultural reclamation and increased awareness among these communities of their cultural documents held in museums, libraries, and archives sometimes thousands of miles away, new frameworks for dealing with the unique intellectual property challenges these documents raise are required. This paper will describe the learning curve and outcomes of attempts at the BL to establish such workable frameworks and methods for legal and ethical inclusion of a large body of material for worldwide distribution on the BL Sounds website. The paper offers anecdotal reports and ideas for the development of best practice for dealing with intellectual property in this context.

Today, it is generally acknowledged that indigenous culture and knowledge around the world is under threat by globalization, rights infringement and violation, and other effects of modernization, including the general lack of respect for traditional culture and the individuals or communities through which that culture is manifested.

Torn apart by decades of conflict, post-2003 Afghanistan was on the brink of an economic, social, and cultural collapse. Besides the much-mediatized shelling of the country’s material heritage, such as the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan’s intangible heritage equally took an untold toll. In addition to various practices that had been directly targeted and proscribed (such as making the rubab, a short-necked lute), a general weakening of the national economy, disruption of raw material procurement networks, and an overall destruction of the social fabric put a majority of Afghanistan’s heritage at risk. Particularly threatened were its craftsmen, the stewards of woodcarving, goldsmithing, or miniature techniques, skills firmly rooted in more than 3,000 years of artistic traditions and defining features of many of the country’s communities.

My presentation is called ‘New Trends and Directions in the 2003 Convention’ although it is a bit hard to say which trends are new because this is really the first round of periodic reporting we are getting. So what I want to do is give you a summary of the information received by UNESCO following the start of the periodic reporting process. So they are obviously new directions because this is the first time. Some results are surprising and unanticipated, and others are to be expected.

In the context of maritime realm, when people hear about Sulawesi Islands, they might directly think of Coral Triangle Ecoregions (CTE). This is because since the declaration of Coral Triangle Initiative, a multilateral cooperation of six nations (Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, the Philippines, Timor Leste and Solomon Islands) to save guarding the productivity and sustainability of the Coral Triangle Ecoregions in 2009, these regions have attracted worldwide attention on its coral reef and associated ecosystem bio-diversity. Sulawesi Islands sit at the center of the regions (Figure 1). As the name implies, CORAL Triangle ECOREGIONS, people’s focus of attention is coral reef and associated ecosystems. Or, to put it in different words, the focus of attention is the natural ecosystem. Thus, the mainstream narratives about CTE is about bio-diversity, conservation and the ecosystem services to human being (see for example The Nature Conservancy 2008, CTI brochure). \n\nNonetheless, there is a serious concern on the sustainability of the regions. International institutions such as the World Ocean Council notes ‘as a global center for marine biodiversity, the CT is a major conservation priority. The CT’s environmental diversity and economic value are threatened by climate change, urbanization, overfishing, and other impacts. With these threats affecting six countries in the region, leaders created the Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI). Officially titled the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (World Ocean Council 2016).

Inventories are a fundamental tool for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH). In its “Guidance Note\nfor Inventorying ICH,” UNESCO reiterates the importance of community participation in the inventorying\nprocess. In other words, ICH inventories must go beyond mere documentation of specific elements by experts and instead enable a collaborative process whereby the information gathered assists with keeping the ICH meaningful and viable for associated communities. Digital media offers exciting opportunities for engaging communities in ICH inventory processes, as well as in modeling information in ways that help heritage professionals, advocates, and practitioners gain a more nuanced view of an element’s viability. In this paper I present two digital tools, Photovoice and Arches, that can assist community-based inventories to identify and document the complex cultural “ecosystem” that ICH lives through.

Turkmenistan is vast country with rich, diverse, and deeply rooted oral and traditional cultures determined in terms of their interconnected relationship among humans, nature, and animals. The majority of the intangible aspects of Turkmen culture, like most indigenous cultures, are mainly unrecorded. The available materials on ICH existed in print or as photo and audio fragments from several resources without any documentation and classification.