ICOMOS-ICICH President, Hee Sook Lee-Niinioja, and Sergio Ribeiro, CIRAT Brazil, co-organized and chaired a session on “Worldviews on Water” at the Water as Heritage Conference in Taiwan, May 27 – May 31, 2019.
Water: A Divine Gift from Allah to his People in the Islamic Religion and Environments, Hee Sook Lee-Niinioja, PhD, Independent Scholar-Helsinki; ICOMOS-ICICH
Water in its context of ecological and socio-cultural systems – opportunities in heritage policy, practice and research, from the Ramsar Convention to contemporary artists (and beyond), Dave Pritchard, Coordinator, Ramsar Culture Network
Worshipping Sacred Natural Sites as Heritage System of Safeguarding and Sustainable Use of Water Sources and Resources in Mongolia, Dr Professor Urtnasan Norov, President of Mongolian National Committee for ICOMOS
Indigenous World View: Water Ethics and Heritage, Mona Polacca, MSW, International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers; Indigenous World Forum on Water and Peace, Co-Secretariat
Publication by Deacon, Harriet and Rieks Smeets 2013
Deacon, Harriet and Rieks Smeets. 2013.The use of expertise in the examination of nomination files under the Intangible Heritage Convention. Report of the researchers meeting on Evaluating the Inscription Criteria for the two Lists of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention, IRCI (International Research Centre for ICH in the Asia-Pacific Region). 10-11 January 2013: Tokyo, Japan.
Marrying into the community whose culture you are studying opens up philosophical and practical quandaries for the researcher and facilitates opportunities that are not otherwise available. Marriage brings with it many subtle shifts in relationships within the community. George Orwell (1937) speaks of class difference but could equally have been talking of cultural difference when he said ‘it is not so much a stone wall as a plate glass pane of an aquarium; it is so easy to pretend that it isn’t there, and so impossible to get through it’. Does marriage enable you to cross that barrier? What difference, if any, is there in the nature of the resulting research and its benefits or otherwise to the community? This paper provides a glimpse into the author’s journey as a researcher in Northern Cape York Peninsula, Australia and reflects on the way interpersonal relationships influenced her approach to research.
Publication by Britta Rudolff, Susanne Raymond 2013
When the 2003 Convention was drafted a decade ago, one of its aims was to overcome the perceived exclusions and shortcomings of the earlier UNESCO heritage conventions, perceived as not community-driven and often Eurocentric in approach. The intention was to adopt a legally binding instrument, which allowed for stronger representation of heritage expressions of the South, which placed communities and grass-roots initiatives at the centre of its activities, and which would strengthen the recognition of, and support for, heritage practitioners. On the occasion of the Convention’s tenth anniversary, this paper offers a review of the Convention’s success rate in community involvement by focusing on two aspects: the degree to which communities were the driving forces or strongly involved partners in the preparation of candidature files for the Convention’s Intangible Heritage Lists and the way in which their free, prior and informed consent was documented. Based on these findings the paper reflects on potential further improvements towards the Convention’s aims within the forthcoming nomination cycles.