Aleph Notes #3: Intangible Cultural Heritage

Aleph has recently conducted two renewal evaluations of UNESCO Category 2 Centres in Bulgaria and Algeria. We provided an independent review of the Centres’ work to promote the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Intangible cultural heritage encompasses a wide array of practices, beliefs, traditions, knowledge and skills. In other words, it is the essential fabric that creates the living manifestation of the diversity of human knowledge and cultural life that makes communities unique. Additionally, incorporating cultural heritage into development activities can have an abundance of benefits including promoting inclusive social development, environmental sustainability, and inclusive economic development. 

Intangible cultural heritage is especially vulnerable to loss and destruction during conflict and natural disaster, but the impacts are often hard to define. Damage to historical buildings and monuments often make the news headlines, in part because it is easier to visualise and quantify. Damage to cultural traditions or ways of life are just as devastating, but often go unreported and unremarked. This is true even in cases where a particular belief or way of life has been targeted, such as ISIS’s persecution of the Kurds in Northern Iraq. Quantifying the extent of damage and loss has been stymied by a lack of basic data on intangible cultural assets.

Documenting intangible cultural heritage is an important step in helping to protect and safeguard at-risk practices. The creation of digital archives helps lay the groundwork for conservation work and facilitates prioritisation of safeguarding interventions. It also plays a critical role in helping to protect cultural identity for future generations and acts as a mechanism for the transfer of knowledge on craftsmanship, rituals, oral traditions and social practices. Without the documentation and mapping of intangible cultural heritage, it is not possible for communities to benefits of its involvement in development activities as described above.

This work must be led by communities living in the affected areas, who are the stewards of their own heritage. It must be a participatory and inclusive process, ensuring that marginalised voices and minority groups are engaged throughout in order to capture a holistic picture of the elements that make up the intangible cultural heritage of the area.

Aleph is focusing its work in three countries, where intangible cultural heritage faces risk from protracted conflict and insecurity: Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq. By focusing our work on intangible cultural heritage in these countries, we are seeking to shift the paradigm and elevate the importance of documenting these practices where they are most at risk in order to preserve them for future generations.