The Tao Foundation for Culture and Arts is a Philippine non-profit, non-governmental orga-nization based in Quezon City, National Capital Region, Luzon and in Agusan del Sur, Caraga Region, Northeastern Mindanao. Established in 1994, the Tao Foundation is led by an all-fe-male Board composed of Filipino scholars, artists, and Indigenous community leaders engaged in cultural regeneration initiatives in response to the five centuries of colonial and neocolonial histories and the need to help build strong cultural communities. The Tao Foundation’s mission is to (1) facilitate the exchange, transmission, and development of Philippine ICH/TCH; and to (2) contribute to the empowerment of culture bearers or those who possess ancestral practical and theoretical knowledges that have endured and transformed to remain relevant through colonial and neocolonial histories as a result of day-to-day and more large-scale acts of resistance.

Cultural heritage documentation is a continuous process empowering monitoring, maintenance and understanding the cultural heritage object. It is required for conservation by providing proper and timely information, while it is both the outcome and action of meeting the information requirements of cultural heritage management. Cultural heritage documentation makes reachable a range of tangible and intangible resources, such as metric, descriptive, thematic and societal records of cultural heritage.\nSeveral International Convention and Charters, heritage documentation has a outstanding position in our obligation, as humanity, to protect, conserve and restore cultural heritage. The Athens Convention (1931), the Hague Agreement (1954), the Venice Charter (1964) and the Granada Agreement (1985) are just few examples in which the documentation need is also underlined, as an integral part of protection, study and conservation.\nBy nature, cultural heritage documentation and standards are tied. All the different phases of the ‘process’ enfold the sense of standards.

The Tao Foundation for Culture and Arts is a Philippine non-profit, non-governmental orga- nization based in Quezon City, National Capital Region, Luzon and in Agusan del Sur, Caraga Region, Northeastern Mindanao. Established in 1994, the Tao Foundation is led by an all-fe- male Board composed of Filipino scholars, artists, and Indigenous community leaders engaged in cultural regeneration initiatives in response to the five centuries of colonial and neocolonial histories and the need to help build strong cultural communities.

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.

Since the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was initiated in 1946 to promote world peace and development based on international understanding and cooperation, there have been continuous efforts to safeguard cultural heritage of humanity. However, it is undeniable that tangible cultural heritage, which includes natural and cultural heritage, received greater emphasis than intangible heritage. The Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage adopted in 2003 in Paris ("2003 Convention" hereinafter) is regarded as a milestone that changed the historical perception and marked a turning point.

Bangladesh has utilized limited opportunities of international networking for safeguarding its distinctive and diverse Intangible Cultural Heritage (hereafter ICH) elements as the networking activities are still limited to only in policy framing and in discussions, files and trainings of the government officials. No effective measure has been taken so far by the government to safeguard the transmission process of the disappearing ICH elements, though United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (hereafter UNESCO) and some other development partners voluntarily have been providing both financial and technical supports to the government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh to formulate a national inventory of ICH and to take effective measures for safeguarding ICH elements since the beginning of the 21st century. But, so far the plans, policies and guidelines could not be translated into reality. Meanwhile, many practitioners have been giving up practicing traditional art forms, music, customs, knowledges and skills, which they inherited from the ancestors, because of poverty, lack of safeguarding measures, unplanned urbanization, disappearance of spaces, impact of foreign culture, and shirking of their jobs for ever growing popularity of satellite TV channels, gadgets and the Internet. This study, developed through primary and secondary data analyses, explores the causes those stand in the way to achieve the expected goals for safeguarding ICH in Bangladesh and also provides some possible solutions to the problems with the aim of capitalization of the maximum benefits from international networking.