11 com ith/16/11. Com/4 Paris, 29 April 2016 Original: English

554.The delegation of Turkey once again expressed its appreciation of the enriched vision of the Evaluation Body as its critiques were not only indicative of what was needed in line with the Convention’s requirements but were becoming more and more conducive to serving as a guideline for States Parties to follow. Regarding criterion R.3, where in paragraph 3 of the Evaluation Body’s report it said the information in the file was insufficient for the Committee to determine if the criterion was satisfied, the delegation and its national experts believed the information was sufficient and upon due reflection the Committee might wish to recommend the first inscription of the submitting State.

555.The Chairperson thanked Turkey and asked the members of the Committee to react to Turkey’s proposal to inscribe the element: ‘The nomination demonstrates that pertinent and adequate safeguarding measures are proposed in order to improve the viability of the element, including advanced measures in parallel with the involvement of bearers and various segments of the local communities in the planning and implementation is also sufficiently developed.’ The Chairperson asked for a show of name plates to determine support for the proposal and concluded the proposal did not enjoy broad support, the original text of the decision was retained and the Chairperson moved to the adoption of the decision as a whole. There were no objections and the Chairperson declared adopted Decision 10.COM 10.b.9 to refer the nomination of Konjic woodcarving to the State Party for further information. The delegation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was given the floor.

556.The delegation of Bosnia and Herzegovina thanked the Chairperson and Committee saying that it respected the statement and would prepare a new nomination file for submission during a next cycle.

557.The Chairperson thanked Bosnia and Herzegovina and proceeded to the nomination by Bulgaria, asking the Chairperson of the Evaluation Body to present it.

558.The Chairperson of the Evaluation Body introduced the next nomination on Surova folk feast in Pernik region [draft decision 10.COM 10.b10] submitted by Bulgaria for possible inscription on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

559.The Evaluation Body considered that criteria R.1, R.2 and R.4 were met. The Body found criterion R.1 was satisfied as the nomination showed the Surova feast was passed down through generations providing its participants with a sense of identity and continuity while contributing to mutual respect between communities. The Body believed criterion R.2 was met as the nomination showed inscription could improve visibility and awareness of intangible cultural heritage in general, particularly in regions and countries where similar masquerade traditions were practised. The Body judged criterion R.4 as met as the nomination was prepared with participation of communities, groups and cultural institutions concerned and a considerable number of Survakari group leaders and secretaries of community centres had provided their free, prior and informed consent.

560.However, the Evaluation Body considered that criteria R.3 and R.5 were not fully satisfied. It felt that Criterion R.3 focused on safeguarding activities already undertaken and the few measures proposed did not address possible unintended consequences of inscription and were not oriented towards threats to the element’s viability. The Body found criterion R.5 showed that the element had been included on the national inventory of intangible cultural heritage since 2002 but its compliance with Articles 11 and 12 of the Convention remained to be seen.

561.The Evaluation Body, therefore, recommended referring the nomination to the State Party for additional information.

562.The Chairperson thanked the Chairperson of the Evaluation Body then mentioned the Committee had received a request for amendment from the delegation of Ethiopia, which was given the floor.

563.The delegation of Ethiopia said it had carefully reviewed the nomination and while it respected the Evaluation Body’s opinion found its referral unsuitable in view of the file’s quality, the element’s viability and the wide community participation in its safeguarding. The Ethiopian delegation strongly supported the proposed amendment to the draft decision and suggested an additional paragraph encouraging the State Party to pay particular attention to ensuring safeguarding measures regarding public attention following inscription and depopulation in the country that might impact the element’s future viability. It proposed the following amendments as submitted to the Secretariat: deletion of paragraph 3, a new text of R.3 to paragraph 2, a new text of R.5, adding a new paragraph to encourage the State Party to pay particular attention to ensuring the safeguarding measures are implemented, and changing the element’s status from referral to inscription.

564.The Chairperson thanked Ethiopia and asked the Committee to move to adopt the decision, paragraph by paragraph. Paragraph 1 was adopted without amendment, as were criterion R.1 and R.2 of Paragraph 2. Ethiopia’s amendment to criterion R.3 would be a new paragraph reading, ‘The nomination presented an elaborated set of safeguarding measures designed as a result of collaboration between communities and groups of the Surova folk feast, local municipalities and public institutions which have proved their efficiency. They have been applied systematically, successfully and without interruption by communities in the region for many decades’. The Chairperson said a list of speakers on the revised criterion R.3 was being prepared, of whom Kyrgyzstan was the first.

565.The delegation of Kyrgyzstan supported the amendment by Ethiopia and having explored the file, found abundant evidence of the involvement of different stakeholders in preserving and maintaining the practice. Kyrgyzstan asked Bulgaria if it could further clarify what the involvement of communities had been in the inclusion of the practice in the national inventory, and how the national representative list was organised and updated.

566.The Chairperson thanked Kyrgyzstan, asking the delegation to keep its question on criterion R.5 until the discussion dealt with that part of the paragraph, and gave the floor to Belgium.

567.The delegation of Belgium said that after looking at the different elements in the file, it agreed with the Evaluation Body’s analysis. There was an element of decontextualization as Survakari participated in different celebrations throughout the year according to their attractiveness and political nature, and disagreed with Ethiopia’s proposed amendment.

568.The delegation of Côte d’Ivoire expressed its support for the inscription of the element as it demonstrated participation which encouraged social cohesion while giving people a sense of identity. The delegation supported the proposal by Ethiopia as it felt that criterion R.3 had been satisfied, especially as the element was well known and continuously practised by communities.

569.Algeria said it supported Ethiopia’s proposed amendment.

570.The delegation of Greece supported Ethiopia’s proposed amendment as it felt there were some safeguarding measures that might create confusion among reviewers, but that the community’s voice could be heard, as well as their distress over the danger of depopulation. Greece said that this was what it wanted to see in the files, the voices of the people even if their distress and agony were shown in a way that might create confusion. In Greece’s view, the safeguarding measures were rightly developed and applied.

571.The delegation of Hungary welcomed the rich living tradition expressed in the nomination from Bulgaria, commenting on the delegate’s personal experience participating in the festival of masquerade games twice at which time she realised a huge number of mask-bearer communities practised their own cultural heritage. The delegate felt that the festival was a good occasion for meeting and socially interacting with local communities and on that basis asked Bulgaria to clarify what the relation was between the feast and the festival of masquerade games.

572.The delegations of India,_Congo_and_Turkey'>India, Congo and Turkey expressed their support to Ethiopia’s recommendations.

573.The delegation of Mongolia supported Bulgaria and followed Congo’s lead saying the nomination on the Surova feast in the Pernik region was a very traditional annual practice transmitted from generation to generation and encouraged the State Party to pay particular attention to ensuring that the safeguarding measures responded adequately to its increased public visibility.

574.The Chairperson thanked Mongolia and gave the floor to Tunisia which said it believed the communities were involved in one way or another in the safeguarding measures and therefore supported Ethiopia’s proposed amendment.

575.The delegation of the Republic of Korea said Bulgaria’s detailed plans on accommodating the Evaluation Body’s comments gave firm ground to believe the element would be safeguarded well and expressed support for the proposed amendment.

576.The delegation of Belgium asked the Chairperson of the Evaluation Body if after the Body’s careful analysis of the file it had found information that said something about measures addressing possible unintended consequences of inscription such as decontextualization, and the future relationship between the local feast and the festival, as Belgium had been unable to find it.

577.The Chairperson gave the floor to Bulgaria to respond to the question posed by Hungary.

578.The delegation of Bulgaria presented its compliments to the member of the Committee. Regarding the question about the relationship between the feast and the festival of masquerade games, Bulgaria said that for communities in Pernik region there was a clear separation between the Surova feast in the villages and the festival of masquerade games in the town. The festival is part of urban culture and dates back to the 1960s, while Surova is a folk custom that has been maintained for many generations in villages of Pernik. The relationship between the Surova folk feast and the festival of masquerade games has continued for 50 years without negative consequences on the viability of Surova as an element of intangible cultural heritage. On the contrary, the festival has contributed to raising awareness about the Surova folk feast and has facilitated efforts to maintain its viability and thus far no community members have noted that the festival might impact negatively on the Surova folk feast. The ongoing expectation was that the positive relationship between the Surova folk feast and the festival of masquerade games would continue in the future.

579.The Chairperson thanked Bulgaria and gave the floor to the Chairperson of the Evaluation Body.

580.The Chairperson of the Evaluation Body thanked the representative of Belgium saying that as could be seen in the evaluation, two things stood out with regard to criterion R.3: the safeguarding measures proposed did not address possible consequences of inscription, nor were they sufficiently oriented towards factors threatening the viability of the element. Regarding point 3.b.(i) of the nomination form on proposed measures to mitigate the possible consequences of inscription, the evaluation found that information in the form did not infer the criterion had been met.

581.The delegation of Latvia said it entirely supported the concerns of the Evaluation Body with regard to criterion R.3.

582.The Chairperson thanked Latvia and asked that members of the Committee supporting the amendment to criterion R.3 as proposed by Ethiopia raise their name plates. She declared that 16 members of the Committee were showing support for the amendment and that the paragraph was, therefore, adopted. Continuing with criterion R.4, there were no amendments proposed and criterion R.4 was, therefore, adopted. Criterion R.5 was the subject of a proposed amendment from Ethiopia.

583.The delegation of Ethiopia said its proposed amendment was to do with paragraph 5, which was on the screen and, therefore, didn’t need to be read aloud.

584.The Chairperson thanked Ethiopia and read it aloud on its behalf: ‘The nominated element was included in the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Bulgaria, compiled with regular updating mechanism and with full participation of the communities concerned as required by Articles 11 and 12 of the Convention’, and opened the floor for commentary on this particular part of the paragraph.

585.The delegation of Côte d’Ivoire said that it saw a contradiction between the evaluations of criteria R.4 and R.5 by the Evaluation Body and, therefore, supported Ethiopia’s amendment on criterion R.5.

586.The Chairperson gave the floor to the Chairperson of the Evaluation Body to clarify the observation made by Côte d’Ivoire.

587.The Chairperson of the Evaluation Body said that if he correctly understood the question raised by the honourable delegate of Côte d'Ivoire, criterion R.4 concerned the participation of a community or communities in the nomination, while the R.5 concerns the participation by communities in the process of inventory development, which are two different questions. The Evaluation Body had considered that for criterion R.4, the community had indeed participated; for criterion R.5, information contained in the nomination file did not support the conclusion that communities had participated in the development of the initiative in accordance with Article 11 of the Convention.

588.The delegation of Latvia returned to the general debate before the evaluations, during which there was an observation by the delegation of Belgium that the Committee might proceed to a discussion of criterion R.5 in order to take into consideration the information provided in the Annex. Latvia said that its reading of the nomination did not locate all the required answers to criterion R.5, yet when looking at the Annex of this particular criterion, on page 5 of that document it found the answers to both community involvement and updating aspects of the nomination. If the Committee was willing to adopt a more flexible interpretation of the nominations during the day, it might be a good moment to start to apply it, taking into consideration information given in the Annexes. Latvia concluded by showing support for the criterion’s positive evaluation.

589.The delegation of Kyrgyzstan said it had already asked a question relating to criteria R.3 and R.5 and would like to hear from Bulgaria, supporting Ethiopia’s proposed amendment.

590.The delegation of Belgium wished to again ask the Chairperson of the Evaluation Body whether a desire for consistency was one of the motivations for its conclusion on the current element. As Latvia has said, the Committee was perhaps moving towards a new interpretation of the evaluation, where if strictly applied, information should be put in the right section in the file. Belgium wished to see if the notion of consistency was important and whether the Committee was moving in a different direction to the evaluation.

591.The delegation of Algeria said that during previous sessions, there had been issues with having the right information in the right place and that Algeria believed that if information was in the file, it must be taken into consideration which was why it supported Ethiopia’s proposed amendment.

592.The delegation of India supported Ethiopia’s recommendation and agreed that if the required information had been provided in the file, the evaluation should take note of that.

593.The delegation of Congo supported Ethiopia’s proposed amendment.

594.The delegation of the Republic of Korea agreed with Latvia concerning the application of criterion R.5 and supported Ethiopia’s proposed amendment.

595.The delegation of Peru expressed support for Ethiopia’s proposed amendment saying that on the basis of the proposed changes to criterion R.3 it was able to support the amendment of criterion R.5.

596.The delegation of Turkey supported the amendment proposed by the delegate of Latvia, while suggesting that perhaps the Committee should discuss certain criteria for the preparation of national inventories as Turkey had not seen such information in the Operational Directives. A few years ago, Turkey had proposed an amendment to the preparation of national inventories specifically with the participation of communities concerned at the national level. Turkey felt that if criterion R.4 was to be adopted, the result would be a conflict between two criteria; for example, the conditions attached to criterion R.4 might be considered to have been met but there was not enough community participation in criterion R.5. This is why Turkey proposed a working group on the issue, as future nominations might have the same problem.

597.The Chairperson thanked Turkey and called on Bulgaria to respond to the question asked by Kyrgyzstan.

598.The delegation of Bulgaria responded that community participation in inclusion of the practice on a national inventory was extensively presented in Section 4.a. of the nomination file which was the reason for briefly remarking on it in Section 5. Bulgaria quoted: ‘The idea of adding the Folk Feast of Surova to the National Representative List of the intangible cultural heritage was taken up by the communities themselves – by the bearers of the element.’ ‘An orderly organisation of collecting signatures for the free and informed consent of each participant in the Survakari group was implemented in the villages. Within a week only, several thousand signatures were collected from 31 villages in the region.’ Another justification of community participation was provided on page 7 of the inventory, which clearly stated support from community representatives for the element’s inclusion in the national inventory. In section 5 of the nomination, the file clearly stated the national network of Bulgarian community centres which represent community organisations, and that it was involved in the preparation of the national inventory together with other stakeholders, in conformity with Article 11.b of the Convention.

599.Regarding the question about the organisation of the National Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Bulgaria pointed out that information about its updating was present in the nomination file. The list showed the regular biennial inscription of such elements and was updated every three years, which was reflected on the website provided and maintained by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Bulgaria. As for the inventory of intangible cultural heritage in the applying country, Bulgaria informed the Committee that it was updated following the logic of the Living Human Treasures system, which envisioned periodical actualisation, inscribing new elements and modifications at the request of communities.

600.The Chairperson thanked Bulgaria and gave the floor to the Chairperson of the Evaluation Body.

601.The Chairperson of the Evaluation Body thanked the representative of Belgium and continued to say the Evaluation Body required two types of information from the criteria; information given by the State Party to justify inclusion of the element in the inventory, which was evident in the first part but that the second part concerned data on development of the inventory process; and inventory information contained in the database of the State Party. The Evaluation Body was unanimous in considering that the inventory information was not in the form so it was now up to the Committee to determine if what was contained in the inventory could be used to complete the information given by the State Party in its nomination.

602.The Chairperson said that of the 23 members of the Committee who took the floor, 11 were in favour of the amendment and asked for another show of name plates to see if the amendment had broad support from the room. The second showing of name plates indicated the amendment was supported and criterion R.5 was adopted as amended. The Chairperson asked to adopt Paragraph 2 in its entirety, to which there was no objection and Paragraph 2 was adopted. In the last paragraph, ‘Decides to refer’ had been changed to ‘Decides to inscribe’, and Belgium was given the floor, ostensibly regarding paragraph 3.

603.The delegation of Belgium clarified that its comment was not on paragraph 3 but wanted to suggest having the discussion on the linkage between the file and what was in the annex of the inventory information in the context of the Evaluation Body’s report later in the day or the following day.

604.The Chairperson thanked Belgium and confirmed that the Secretariat had taken note, and gave the floor to Côte d’Ivoire.

605.The delegation of Côte d’Ivoire agreed with Belgium, saying that there was a reason that the Committee reviewed work accomplished by experts as it helped the experts to reflect on possible problems. Regarding the question of information not being in the right section of the nomination form, the delegation felt that the question of Belgium was timely and did not detract from the quality of the Bulgarian case.

606.The Chairperson thanked Côte d’Ivoire and suggested adopting Paragraph 3 as amended by Ethiopia; there were no objections and Paragraph 3 was adopted. As Paragraph 4 still needed to be adopted or studied, the Chairperson called on Ethiopia to take the floor.

607.The delegation of Ethiopia felt that the paragraph, in line with the preceding discussions and the review, encouraged the State Party to pay particular attention to ensuring that safeguarding measures would respond adequately to increased visibility and public attention that would follow from inscription on the Representative List, as well as depopulation in the country that might impact the element’s viability in the future.

608.The delegation of Belgium said it was still very concerned about the processes of decontextualization and associated threats and wished to add a phrase about them just after ‘Representative List”, inserting ‘to processes of decontextualization and depopulation in the country’ to assist the State of Bulgaria with its reflections on the dangers of decontextualization as expressed by the Evaluation Body.

609.The Chairperson acknowledged the small amendment proposed by Belgium, noting that Belgium wished to add to it.

610.The delegation of Belgium said it would like to repeat ‘processes’ twice, as the processes of decontextualization and depopulation are completely different.

611.The delegation of Turkey supported Belgium’s proposed amendment but felt there should be a small correction after ‘visibility’, querying the ‘visibility’ of what, and suggesting that perhaps ‘the Convention’ could be added.

612.The Chairperson thanked Turkey and gave the floor to the delegation of Côte d’Ivoire which supported Belgium’s proposed amendment, agreeing that there are two processes involved, namely decontextualization and depopulation.

613.The delegation of Peru supported Belgium’s proposed amendment.

614.The Chairperson gave the floor to the Secretary to comment on the proposal and talk about visibility in the paragraph.

615.The Secretary said while Ethiopia’s proposed amendment seemed clear on element visibility, with the submitting State having to pay particular attention to safeguarding measures where there is higher element visibility, she could not see how the Convention could be integrated in the paragraph as suggested because visibility of the Convention was not the issue.

616.The delegation of