The Cambodian teanh prot (“pulling the rope”), which is generally rendered in English as “tug-of-war,” is one of the most important ritual games played nationwide during certain times of year, especially around the three-day New Year holiday in mid-April. Although the game can be played at any time for entertainment, it is ritually played in the afternoon on the last day of the New Year and/or in the afternoon of chlong chet, a rice-associated ceremony observed shortly after the New Year. The event takes place in an open space of the village or Buddhist monastery.

Bangladesh, the world’s largest delta is crisscrossed by many great rivers and their innumerable tributaries. With a vast expanse of lush crop fields and hilly borderland thickly covered with virgin forests, it has always been known as a land full of nature’s bounties. Ancient chroniclers have described it as “a land of emerald and silver”, “a garden fit for kings”, or “a paradise among countries”. It is no wonder that this country has always attracted settlers, traders, and conquerors who turned the land into a crucible of diverse creeds and cultures. Despite this, little has been done for the safeguarding of the very rich and varied cultural heritages of our ancestors.

Angkor Park, spread over an area of 40,100 hectares, happily coexists with local settlements (112 villages scattered within the boundaries of the registered site and dating from before the inscription of the site as a World Heritage element in 1994) and a sizeable settlement outside—the town of Siem Reap, a mainly recent development south of Angkor. Siem Reap is the provincial capital with an international airport, over a hundred hotels and guesthouses, innumerable restaurants and cafes, and markets and shops, and this is to say nothing of administrative buildings.

The University of Santo Tomas-Graduate School Center for Conservation of Cultural Property and the Environment in the Tropics (USTGS-CCCPET) was established in 2003 primarily to advance research and advocacy on heritage conservation and sustainable development. At a time when heritage was at risk all over the world, pressured by globalization, climate change, migration, tourism, and terrorism, the search for memory and identity became more pronounced and more assertive.

There have been various cooperative activities for safe-guarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH) at the domestic, regional, and international level since the Convention for the Safeguarding of the ICH was adopted by UNESCO’s General Conference in 2003. ICHCAP, a UNESCO Category 2 Centre in the ICH field, has been working to share information, build networks, and raise visibility of ICH in the Asia-Pacific region, which shows the cultural iden-tities of relevant communities who can be a driving force of sustainable development of the societies. \nTug-of-war has also been an ICH theme ICHCAP has worked to safe-guard and raise awareness. Among a number of diverse ICH elements, tug-of-war is a cultural phenomenon found worldwide. In Asia, espe-cially, tug-of-war has been a custom deeply embedded in rice cultivation and is therefore found largely in agricultural societies. Tug-of-war was generally performed as a prayer for rain or to predict the bounty of the upcoming harvest. It has common features worldwide based on climate and environment. However, differences arise according to the distinct characteristic and the creativity of the region, which makes tug-of-war a worthwhile research subject as an Asian joint heritage.

I recall a documentary film entitled “Whose is this song” (by Adela Peeva, 2003) about a folk song sung by the local communities in the different countries of the Balkans that “has different faces and exists as a love song, a military march meant to scare the enemy off, a Muslim religious song, a revolutionary song, an anthem of the right nationalists, etc.”1) The impression after watching the film is unforgettable about the shared folk song as an ICH that has been claimed as an own original song in different countries in Europe and with not always the same meanings and functions for local communities. This reveals a good example of shared heritage across borders that can bring people together for mutual respect of international efforts on ICH safeguarding as stated in Article 19, “the States Parties recognize that the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage is of general interest to humanity, and to that end undertake to cooperate at the bilateral, sub-regional, regional and international levels.” The hundreds of such shared songs and other heritage domains such as the traditional festivals, folk rituals, music, craftsmanship, agricultural knowledge, forest protection, and so on have been common among peoples across borders and they shall be safeguarded internationally by the concerned communities. They are deserved of putting together in the multinational files by concerned States Parties for the UNESCO’s possible inscription in the sake of peace, dialogue and being together.\nThis presentation will overview the UNESCO’s multinational inscription of shared ICH and the challenge of the States Parties for building up these nominations.

Knotting is, in essence, the act of tying a thread or a cord so that it does not come undone, while knot craft is the art of weaving together various shapes using threads or cords made through various methods in order to serve a certain physical or psychological purpose.\nThe origin of knotting can arguably be traced back to the advent of humanity itself. In primitive times, it was necessary to fashion cords and knots out of tree bark and grass for survival purposes in the context of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle; uses would have included tying or linking together hunting tools or carrying captured prey. With the advancement of humanity, however, knots surpassed their purely utilitarian purpose and evolved into craft items that are closely linked to everyday life, with the addition of various materials and crafting techniques. For example, each civilization has evolved its own knotting techniques and shapes influenced by its surrounding environment, to craft items such as belts or waist cords, baskets, and straw mats. Over time, knots have also become accessories worn for aesthetic purposes and ornamental items used to decorate the household, in addition to ritual items used in various ceremonies. In this regard, knots have surpassed their original survival and everyday life purposes to take on aesthetic and spiritual functions as well.

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.

The mountain terraces in the cordilleras of northern Luzon, Philippines, were included in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list in 1995. Propitiously, there was no mention of the word rice in the citation of the inclusion. It well may be because, when the Spanish explorers went up the cordilleras in the 16th-17th centuries, they made mention of the existence of terracing. However, no mention of rice was made.

The similar actions in fairytales, epics, and dastan of Altaians, Tatars, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Karakalpaks, and other Turkic-speaking people, shows that the Uzbek dastan “Alpamysh,” as a creation of Turkic oral folk art, has a long history. In other nations, it is called “Alpamys,” “Alpamiros Botir,” “Alyp-manash,” “Alpamsha,” “Alpamysh,” and “Barchin Hiluv.”

Epics are the literary version of a nation’s history. They provide insight into a nation’s lifestyle, traditions, history, and present and future ways of thinking. The process of modernizing moral values depends on the study of literary heritage.

The Swiss Archive of the Performing Arts (SAPA) emerged in 2017 from the joining of three independent archives in Bern, Lausanne, and Zurich. The histories of SAPA’s predecessors demonstrate the ever-developing approaches in documenting performing arts—a field that, like ICH in general, cannot be preserved in its original form. In our case, the documentary efforts started nearly 100 years ago with an initiative to collect books and other documents on theater culture in Switzerland. Later, objects such as stage design drawings and models followed and found their way into a small museum. The increasing usage of video in contemporary dance in the 1990s resulted in the establishment of the former Dance Media Library in Zurich in 2005, the youngest of the three SAPA predecessors.