{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "unesco-ich",
 "type": "org",
 "names": {
  "name": "UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage",
  "aliases": [
   "the 2003 Convention",
   "Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage",
   "ICH"
  ],
  "sort": "UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage"
 },
 "region": [
  "world"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "kind": "registry"
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "The UNESCO programme run under the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. It lists practices, not objects. A charm cannot be inscribed; the craft of making it, the festival it is sold at or the rite it belongs to can be. States Parties nominate, and an intergovernmental committee meets annually and decides.",
  "story": "Article 2 of the Convention defines intangible cultural heritage as traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants — oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe, and the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts. Those are the five domains.\n\nTwo statements in the Convention's own summary matter more than the lists. The first is that intangible cultural heritage is \"traditional, contemporary and living at the same time\" — it is not a survival, and an element does not have to be old. The second is that it is \"community-based: intangible cultural heritage can only be heritage when it is recognized as such by the communities, groups or individuals that create, maintain and transmit it\". A state cannot inscribe a practice over the heads of the people doing it.\n\nThere are three registers: the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, and the Register of Good Safeguarding Practices. The committee meets annually to evaluate nominations proposed by States Parties and decide whether or not to inscribe them.",
  "today": "What inscription is not: a ranking, a mark of quality, a property title, a trademark, or a bar on anyone making or selling anything. UNESCO's own wording is that intangible cultural heritage \"is not merely valued as a cultural good, on a comparative basis, for its exclusivity or its exceptional value\". *Inference —* this atlas therefore counts an inscription as attention paid and never as a verdict, and it never reads an absence from the lists as evidence that a practice is less real. Most of the practices in these records have never been nominated by anybody."
 },
 "dating": {
  "period": "2003 to now",
  "from_year": 2003,
  "to_year": null,
  "living": true,
  "label": "Convention adopted 2003; inscriptions annual since",
  "method": "textual",
  "tier": "cited",
  "source": "s:web-unesco-ich-what-is"
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "thai-wicha",
   "as": "the kind of living craft tradition the Convention's traditional-craftsmanship domain is written for",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "to": "japanese-engimono",
   "as": "a shrine-linked making and selling practice of the sort the lists take in",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "to": "maori-taonga",
   "as": "a tradition where the community-recognition clause does the work, not the list",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "to": "aiatsis",
   "as": "the Australian institute often confused with this programme; its language collection sits on UNESCO's Memory of the World register instead",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "nagpra",
   "as": "the contrast in kind: a binding national statute about objects, against an international list about practices",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "who-owns-a-charm",
   "as": "the long read on ownership, where inscription is the thing most often mistaken for a property claim",
   "rel": "story"
  },
  {
   "to": "the-fake-market",
   "as": "the long read on authentication; an inscription settles nothing about whether a given object is what a seller says it is",
   "rel": "story"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "What is Intangible Cultural Heritage?",
   "url": "https://ich.unesco.org/en/what-is-intangible-heritage-00003"
  },
  {
   "label": "The Lists and the Register",
   "url": "https://ich.unesco.org/en/lists"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:web-unesco-ich-what-is",
  "s:web-unesco-ich-lists"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:web-unesco-ich-what-is"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text.story": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:web-unesco-ich-lists",
    "note": "the three registers and the nomination route are cited; no element count is given here, because the figures on the listing page were not read element by element"
   }
  }
 },
 "images": [],
 "confidence": "high",
 "updated": "2026-09-16",
 "blurb": "The UNESCO programme run under the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. It lists practices, not objects.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "world",
   "name": "Everywhere",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "S",
    "E",
    "W"
   ],
   "note": "use for a sign or a practice documented on more than two continents"
  }
 ],
 "hemispheres": [
  "E",
  "N",
  "S",
  "W"
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "thai-wicha",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Thai wicha",
   "as": "the kind of living craft tradition the Convention's traditional-craftsmanship domain is written for",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "to": "japanese-engimono",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Engimono",
   "as": "a shrine-linked making and selling practice of the sort the lists take in",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "to": "maori-taonga",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Taonga Māori",
   "as": "a tradition where the community-recognition clause does the work, not the list",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "to": "aiatsis",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies",
   "as": "the Australian institute often confused with this programme; its language collection sits on UNESCO's Memory of the World register instead",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "nagpra",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act",
   "as": "the contrast in kind: a binding national statute about objects, against an international list about practices",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "to": "who-owns-a-charm",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "Who owns a charm",
   "as": "the long read on ownership, where inscription is the thing most often mistaken for a property claim",
   "rel": "story"
  },
  {
   "to": "the-fake-market",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "The fake market",
   "as": "the long read on authentication; an inscription settles nothing about whether a given object is what a seller says it is",
   "rel": "story"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:web-unesco-ich-what-is",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "What is Intangible Cultural Heritage?",
   "publisher": "UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage",
   "url": "https://ich.unesco.org/en/what-is-intangible-heritage-00003",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:web-unesco-ich-lists",
   "kind": "web",
   "title": "Browse the Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Register of Good Safeguarding Practices",
   "publisher": "UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage",
   "url": "https://ich.unesco.org/en/lists",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:web-unesco-ich-what-is"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:web-unesco-ich-lists",
   "note": "the three registers and the nomination route are cited; no element count is given here, because the figures on the listing page were not read element by element"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:web-unesco-ich-what-is"
  },
  "dating": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:web-unesco-ich-what-is"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "against_facts": [],
 "material_facts": [],
 "worn_facts": [],
 "form_fact": null,
 "holding_facts": [],
 "span": "2003 CE to now",
 "country_names": [],
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "bujeok",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Bujeok",
   "as": "the body that listed the Jeju Yŏngdŭng gut in 2009, one of the rites these talismans are handed out at the end of",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "ekeko",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Ekeko",
   "as": "the body Bolivia nominated Alasitas to in March 2011",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "keris-pusaka",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Keris pusaka",
   "as": "the body that inscribed the Indonesian kris in 2005",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "martenitsa",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Martenitsa",
   "as": "the body that inscribed it in 2017, on a file four countries submitted together",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "andean-illa-practice",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Illa practice",
   "as": "the body Bolivia's Minister of Cultures nominated Alasitas to in March 2011; Peru declared the feast and its miniatures national heritage in 2016",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "maori-taonga",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Taonga Māori",
   "as": "the international framework where the community-recognition clause, rather than a list, is the part that does the work here",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "red-thread",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The red thread",
   "as": "the body whose Representative List carries the martenitsa and the mărțișor",
   "rel": "org"
  },
  {
   "from": "aiatsis",
   "type": "org",
   "name": "Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies",
   "as": "the UNESCO instrument this institute is often assumed to work under; its language collection is on a different UNESCO register",
   "rel": "contrast"
  },
  {
   "from": "free-to-use",
   "type": "story",
   "name": "Free to use",
   "as": "the register that raises the same question at state scale — who may list, and who may reuse, somebody else's practice",
   "rel": "org"
  }
 ]
}