UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists

UNESCO’s international lists recognize cultural practices and expressions that communities identify as part of their intangible cultural heritage and seek to safeguard.

2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage: A UNESCO treaty establishing international cooperation to safeguard intangible cultural heritage. The Convention created the framework and lists that govern these recognitions.
Intangible Cultural Heritage: Practices, expressions, knowledge, and skills that communities recognize as part of their cultural heritage. The lists recognize examples of this broader kind of living heritage.
Cultural Heritage Tourism: Travel motivated partly by experiencing places, practices, and objects associated with cultural heritage. Listings can attract visitors and reshape how a practice is performed for public audiences.
UNESCO World Heritage List: A UNESCO list of cultural and natural sites considered to have outstanding universal value. It concerns places and sites, unlike these lists’ focus on living practices and expressions.
Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity: A UNESCO list intended to raise visibility of intangible cultural heritage and awareness of its significance. It is the best-known of the Convention’s lists and highlights heritage without ranking it.
Community-Based Intangible Cultural Heritage Inventory: A record of living heritage elements identified and documented with the participation of communities. Inventories help establish what communities consider heritage before nomination.
Heritage Commodification: The transformation of cultural heritage into goods or experiences for commercial exchange. International recognition may create market demand that communities must navigate.
UNESCO Memory of the World Programme: A UNESCO program promoting preservation and access to documentary heritage. Its focus is documentary materials rather than community-practiced living heritage.
List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding: A UNESCO list for intangible heritage whose continued practice is considered at risk. Its entries focus attention on practices facing threats to their viability.
Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage: Measures that ensure intangible cultural heritage remains viable and can be transmitted to future generations. Safeguarding, not display or preservation as a fixed artifact, is the Convention’s central aim.

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