The National Institute of Folk & Traditional Heritage, popularly known as Lok Virsa, was established by the government of Pakistan in 1974 with a mandate to collect, document, preserve, and disseminate Pakistan’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage.

The Maranao are a southern Philippine ethno-linguistic group living along the fringes of Lake Lanao in the Lanao provinces of Mindanao. The Maranao are best known for their love of beauty as shown in their ukil art, poetry—the epic Darangen, inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List—and the torogan, the grandest type of Philippine architecture.

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.

A wide range of festivals are held in Uzbekistan to generate public interest in intangible cultural heritage. This includes the recent International Bakhshi Art Festival, which was held for a week from 5 April in the ancient city of Termez. Bakhshi is a multi-genre art form that brings together singers, musicians, and performers of Doston, a Central Asian oral epic. Teams from seventy-five countries took part in this festival, which featured not only a wide range of performances but also an enlightening international conference.

Wrestling is an intense struggle between two people based on strength, endurance, and patience. In addition to power and physical capacity, this contest also requires mental strength and control of the body with the mind. Wrestling has some characteristics that reflect people’s physical struggle with nature under various circumstances. As a consequence of these two complementary aspects, this activity has long been part of relations, competitions, and some kinds of claims of superiority among human beings. Wrestling, for all these reasons, is one of the oldest sports in the history of humanity. At the same time, this means that rich traditions, rituals, and practices have formed and evolved around wrestling in different parts of the world. Therefore, it is possible to say that this sport, in a way, represents one of the aspects of the cultural accumulation of humanity, the knowledge, practices, and rituals transmitted from one generation to the next. This fact also leads us to think of the regional, national, and local forms of wrestling that may be regarded in the context of diversity of cultural expressions. Within this perspective and the focus of this paper, traditional oil wrestling embodies a living heritage with various cultural characteristics. It might be helpful to provide some information on the history and main elements of traditional oil wrestling before elaborating upon its value from the perspective of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) identity, transmission, and safeguarding efforts.\nTraditional oil wrestling is performed on a grass field by wrestlers called who are doused in olive oil and wear a type of hand-stitched, tight-fitting, knee-covering leather pants called . The roots of the relation between Turks and wrestling may be traced back long before its presence in Anatolia and the Republic of Turkey, to Central Asia in

Pencak Silat is an intangible cultural heritage that allows a community to express its culture and, more importantly, is a vehicle that allows practitioners to manifest the best values passed to them by their teachers for the benefit of all in society. It is practiced in countries in Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. However, not much research has been done on the history and culture of Pencak Silat in Singapore. The project entitled “Preserving Intangible Cultural Heritage: Documenting and Recording the History, Culture and Memory of Malay Martial Arts Groups in Singapore,” led by Dr. Mohamed Effendy from the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, and sponsored by the National Heritage Board of Singapore, is therefore a timely one. It aims to safeguard the history and culture of Malay martial groups of Singapore by documenting and recording their past and cultural activities. Thus, the project provides the inspiration and backdrop for this paper, which will describe how Pencak Silat connects communities in Singapore to their historical origins. The paper will also analyze how Pencak Silat has contributed to the social and cultural success of the Singapore Malay community today, and lastly, it will examine to what extent Pencak Silat values can be used to further enhance the development of a community.

Bangladesh is rich in intangible cultural heritage in all the five domains outlined in the 2003 ICH Convention namely oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, and festive events, knowledge about nature and the universe and traditional craftmanship.Four elements are inscribed in the UNESCO representative list and two applications are submitted in 2019. The Ministry of Cultural Affairs has a list with literature of 54 elementsunder the 5 ICH domains, while researchers identified 123 elements. Comprehensive inventorying of living heritages is under process with the Government. Bangladesh, by ratifying 2003 Convention, assumes its obligation of safeguarding these elements of ICH. Among the elements, some are sustainable for the economic output of the objects associated with the elements. Others remain vulnerable for change in lifestyle, knowledge pattern, social and economic advancement, science and technology. Require safeguardfor sustainable development that includes transmission of the ICH elements for generations.

Intangible cultural heritage is one of the most unprotected forms of artistic heritage. Nowadays, in the globalization environment where different cultures exist and interact, intangible cultural heritage requires our special attention. For Tajikistan, the first victory of efforts put forth toward safeguarding ICH was the acknowledgement of Shashmaqom as a masterpiece of human intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO.

The Kazakh oral tradition is closely associated with the culture and lifestyle of nomadic civilisation. One of the main branches of the Great Silk Road is known to have led across Central Asia and Kazakhstan. The instrumental and oral traditions of numerous nomadic and settled nations were developing along the Great Silk Road in close interethnic contacts. In particular, many scientists and researchers note that different cultures and ethnic groups have common variations of tamboura-like instruments with silk strings and dulcimer-like instruments and traditional guttural singing.

One can say without any overstatement that, during the several last years, the significance of one of UNESCO category 2 center, the International Information and Networking Center for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region under the auspices of UNESCO (ICHCAP), was essential in supporting the initiatives to safeguard the intangible cultural heritage in Tajikistan. It is known that, after the adoption of the UNESCO Convention on intangible cultural heritage safeguarding (2003), a wave of initiatives and efforts to safeguard intangible cultural heritage covered Central Asia, because there had been a process of self-recognition and changing opinions on spiritual heritage after the collapse of the USSR.

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is the most populated city in the country. It is also one of the most populated cities in the world with a density of 23,234 people per square kilometer within a total area of 300 square kilometers. The Greater Dhaka Area has a population of over 18 million as of 2016 (World Population Review, 2017). According to the UN World Urbanization Prospects (2014), the population of Dhaka was only 336,000 in 1950. Dhaka has always been a center of cultural vibrancy and has a long history and tradition of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The cultural vibrancy and heritage that have given glory to Dhaka for centuries often get buried under different modern-day civic problems. As an ever-expanding mega city, Dhaka is losing its cultural spaces to religious and ruling coteries. Many of the city’s prime spaces are now earmarked for various public and private business, commercial, or military purposes. The situation was not so deplorable even during the Pakistan era from 1947 to 1971.

The Maranao of Lanao del Sur, Mindanao, Philippines has a vibrant culture that is evident in their way of living. It is as colorful as the malong1 they wear and as elaborate as the okir2 designs on their architectural structures. One of the more intricate pieces making up Maranao culture cannot be touched but heard through the epic singing of the Darangen.