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ITEM 11 OF THE AGENDA (re-opened):
DRAFT PLAN FOR THE USE OF THE RESOURCES OF THE INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE FUND
Document ITH/13/8.COM/11
Decision 8.COM 11
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The delegation of Brazil recalled its first intervention related to the decision just adopted that referred to decision 8.COM 11 and the Plan for the use of the resources of the Fund, and recalled that budget line 7, the cost of the advisory service to be provided at the request of the Committee, needed to be revised to permit the possibility to provide support to developing States whose representatives had been appointed to the evaluation body. This would also require an adjustment in the decision in paragraph 4 to submit the plan to the General Assembly ‘as amended’.
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The Chairperson noted that this was part of the package and suggested to proceed and approve this option so that the Secretariat could allocate the spending according to requests with regard to the evaluation body. With no comments or objections, this was pronounced adopted.
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The delegation of Brazil asked whether the Committee was moving to item 14.
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The Secretary noted that the Committee wished to take advantage of the revision of the Operational Directives to propose another amendment.
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The delegation of Brazil suggested presenting its proposal in agenda item 17 in ‘other business’.
ITEM 14.a OF THE AGENDA:
ACCREDITATION OF NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS
Documents ITH/13/8.COM/14.a
19 Accreditation Requests
Decision 8.COM 14.a
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The Chairperson now turned to the accreditation of NGOs and their recommendation to the General Assembly for accreditation in June 2014.
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Mr Proschan recalled that this was now the fifth Committee session in which requests for accreditation received from NGOs were considered. To date, 156 NGOs had been accredited, either by the third General Assembly in 2010 or the fourth Assembly in 2012. Document 14.a presented several lists of NGOs and other entities. In paragraph 4, 12 organizations that satisfied the criteria for accreditation, as set out in paragraph 91 of the Operational Directives and Committee may wish to recommend that they are accredited when the General Assembly meets. The requests or the dossiers for each of these organizations had been available online since early-mid October for consultation. Paragraph 5 comprised a list of several entities that, based upon the information provided, do not appear to satisfy the criteria; either they were fairly recent organizations or the scope of their activities was not clearly related to the work of the Committee. Finally, Annex I presents two lists: (i) NGOs that still have pending files, where they had sent files, but they did not respond in time following the Secretariat’s request for additional information; and (ii) 15 organizations that began the process, but had since had no further communication with the Secretariat in the last 12 months, and their requests were therefore proposed to be suspended.
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The Chairperson turned to the list of 12 NGOs listed in paragraph 4 that to satisfied all the criteria set out in the Operational Directives. With no comments or objections, he pronounced paragraph 4 adopted. Their names were duly inserted into the draft decision. The seven organizations listed in paragraph 5 had not been recommended, and no action was required, as well as for the organizations mentioned in paragraph 7 and listed in the Annex. With no comments or objections, the Chairperson moved to the adoption of the draft decision as a whole, and declared Decision 8.COM 14.a adopted.
ITEM 14.b OF THE AGENDA:
REPORT ON THE PROFILE OF THE NGOs ACCREDITED TO ACT IN AN ADVISORY CAPACITY TO THE COMMITTEE AND THE NATURE OF THEIR WORK AND PROPOSAL OF AN EVALUATION FORM FOR ASSESSING THEIR POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTION TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CONVENTION
Document ITH/13/8.COM/14.b
Decision 8.COM 14.b
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Turning to agenda item 14.b, the Chairperson recalled that this topic figured in the discussions of the NGO Forum last Sunday and several of the points that would be raised under this item were also discussed in agenda item 5.c in the report of the Internal Oversight Service earlier on Monday.
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The Secretary recalled that at its fourth session, the General Assembly invited the Committee to undertake a reflection on the criteria and modalities for accreditation of NGOs to act in an advisory capacity to the Committee, taking into account their role in the Convention. Last year at its seventh session, the Committee started the discussion but concluded that it did not have sufficient information on the profile of the accredited NGOs and the nature of their work. The Committee requested the Secretariat to report at its eighth session on these questions and to propose an evaluation form for assessing the potential contribution of accredited NGOs to the implementation of the Convention. The document 14.b presented both components. As explained in the document, the Secretariat was unable to undertake new data collection so the report was based on the analysis of information already available to the Secretariat, made up of the accredited NGO requests and information on their participation in statutory meetings for example. It therefore provided an incomplete picture of the nature of their work on the one hand, and offered little clear indication of their potential contribution to the implementation of the Convention on the other. Other sources of information included periodic reports and the IOS evaluation. Some of the findings of the IOS evaluation concerning the NGOs had already been discussed, but the Secretary recalled the key points. The evaluations suggested that NGOs provided a wide range of valuable contributions at the local, national and international levels, but they were under-utilized in policy processes, and State Parties should take greater advantage of their capacities. The evaluation also highlighted the fact that NGOs were willing to play a greater role in the implementation of the Convention, but had the perception that their contributions were not sufficiently considered by the Committee or reflected in its decisions. In the evaluation, this was said to be due in large to the ill-adapted accreditation criteria to the actual task of advising the Committee. The evaluation therefore concluded by recommending that the accreditation criteria and procedures be revised and that the views of accredited NGOs should be taken into account in the ongoing monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of the Convention, particularly through the periodic reporting mechanism. To echo these recommendations, draft decision 8.COM 14.b proposed to revise the Operational Directives in order to: (i) revise the accreditation process and criteria for NGOs to ensure that they have the required experience and capacity to act in an advisory capacity to the Committee; and (ii) to complement the data gathered on the implementation of the Convention through periodic reports submitted by States Parties with information provided by NGOs. The Secretariat could present specific procedures to the ninth session of the Committee in November 2014 to that effect. With regard to the annexed report form, the Secretary explained that the Committee was obliged from the beginning of 2014 to review the contributions and the commitment of the advisory organizations and its relations with them taking into account the perspective of the NGO concerned, as stipulated in paragraph 94 of the Operational Directives. Regardless of any decision on the revision of the criteria of accreditation, the review process had to be undertaken. The form annexed to this document therefore attempted to gather a wider range of relevant information about the actual and potential contributions of accredited NGOs at the national and international levels. The form was developed from the feedback and suggestions of members of the NGO Forum. The form could be finalized by the Secretariat after the debates, and if need be, after the General Assembly.
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The Chairperson opened the floor for comment.
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The delegation of Belgium thanked the Secretariat for the preliminary report, and it understood that the Secretariat was not in a position to carry out a full survey, but the results were already very interesting. It was noted that 142 of the NGOs, a large majority, had worked for more than ten years, longer than the 2003 Convention. It would therefore be very interesting to know if and how the 2003 Convention, and the successive versions of the Operational Directives, had influenced their working methods, their range of activities and their vocabulary. It was also noted that in part D of the draft report that the NGOs would complete, their participation in the work of the Committee could already be filled in by the Secretariat by consulting the reports of each Committee meeting and their participation at the NGO Forum. With regard to paragraph 96 of the Operational Directives, which stipulated that ‘accredited NGOs shall have advisory functions, may be invited by the Committee to provide it, inter alia, with reports of evaluation’, it recalled that it had already stressed the need to define ‘inter alia’ and it would thus be a good idea to invite the NGOs to elaborate on how they potentially saw their role in other functions to the Committee.
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The delegation of Latvia welcomed the efforts and analysis carried out by the Secretariat, and joined in the comments by Belgium concerning the involvement of NGOs within the process of implementing the Convention and on the way their advisory functions might be explored in the best and widest possible way. It drew the Committee’s attention to the Annex, namely the draft report of the NGOs to be submitted four years following their accreditation, and wished to know how the first reports were going to be evaluated. It welcomed part D, and agreed with Belgium that parts D.1 and D.2 could definitely already be answered by information known to the Secretariat. It also welcomed the questions in D.3, D.4, D.5, D.6 ad D.7, but also considered that the answers would be very important to ascertain at the very beginning of the process of accreditation, suggesting that these questions be asked within the form that NGOs already completed when requesting accreditation. This would help determine the capacities of the NGO to serve in an advisory capacity.
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Mr Proschan explained that a mechanism was not yet in place, and in order to settle the question of the Committee’s work in terms of the nomination files, proposed to begin this procedure once the General Assembly had finalized any possible changes that might be called for in the Operational Directives. The process would involve the Secretariat contacting all the NGOs and pre-filling certain sections of the form on the participation of NGOs at Committee meetings, while gathering relevant information at once. The Committee would then have to adopt a procedure at its ninth session, which called for the Secretariat to make concrete proposals on the timetable and procedure for the evaluation to proceed at that time. In any case, the Committee would have to wait for the General Assembly before finalizing the form before beginning to apply it to the NGOs that were initially accredited by the General Assembly in 2010.
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The Chairperson opened the floor to the NGOs.
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Speaking on behalf of the NGO Forum, an NGO representative remarked that members of the NGO Forum had been closely following and actively participating in the proceedings, and were happy of the Committee’s recognition of the greater role NGOs could play as advisers in the Committee and also in the implementation of the Convention. The representative recalled Decision 16.b of 7.COM that acknowledged the important contribution of NGOs worldwide in the implementation of the Convention at all levels, which was affirmed in the present session. The representative understood that the evaluation procedure would be reviewed, but it took the opportunity to reiterate that NGOs in different regions were playing a key role in implementing the Convention in partnership with the States Parties and the communities, and some recognition of their numerous activities helped in instilling greater motivation, as well as strengthening their efforts at safeguarding intangible cultural heritage.
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The delegation of Grenada believed that information should be added to D.1 and D.2 and not replaced because although the Secretariat had the list of participants to all the Committee meetings it would take time, when it was easier to check the information given by the NGOs.
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The Chairperson proceeded to the decision as proposed by the Secretariat, noting that the NGO Forum would be approved at the General Assembly.
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The Secretary suggested that paragraph 8 be aligned with the wording adopted in Decision 5.c, as it was the exact same paragraph, in order to align the wording just proposed to amend paragraph 8.
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With no further comments or objections, the Chairperson declared Decision 8.COM 14.b adopted.
ITEM 5.c OF THE AGENDA (CONT.):
REPORT ON THE EVALUATION BY THE INTERNAL OVERSIGHT SERVICE OF UNESCO’S STANDARD-SETTING WORK OF THE CULTURE SECTOR AND THE RELATED AUDIT OF THE WORKING METHODS OF CULTURAL CONVENTIONS
Documents ITH/13/8.COM/5.c
ITH/13/8.COM/INF.5.c
Decision 8.COM 5.c
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The Chairperson returned to unfinished business under agenda item 5.c, recalling that the Committee had suspended paragraphs 6, 7 and 11 on Decision 8.COM 5.c 1, and paragraphs 6 and 12 of Decision 8.COM 5.c 2. Beginning with paragraph 6 and 7 of c.1, the Chairperson noted that paragraph 6.a concerned item 13.d and the decision to create a single body. In paragraph 6.d, on the number of files treated, it was agreed that the existing priorities in the Operational Directives would be maintained, so the paragraph could be deleted. In paragraph 6.c, the Committee agreed to revise the accreditation process and the criteria for NGOs to ensure that all accredited NGOs had the required experience and capacity to act in an advisory capacity to the Committee. Paragraph 7 asked to revise the Operational Directives to accommodate the decisions already taken by the Committee. With no comments or objections, the Chairperson pronounced adopted paragraph 6, as amended, with the deletion of the redundant subparagraph 6.b. The Chairperson proceeded to paragraph 7, confirming that there were revisions to be brought for examination to the General Assembly. With no comments or objections, it was duly pronounced adopted. The Chairperson then turned to paragraph 11.c, and an oversight brought to the Committee’s attention by Latvia, explaining that it concerned the review and adaptation of the capacity-building programme to ensure that it responded to the major implementation challenges at the national level. The Secretariat had therefore proposed a paragraph that followed recommendation 7 of the IOS report. With no comments or objections, paragraph 7 was pronounced adopted. The Chairperson then turned to draft decision 5.c 2, and paragraphs 6 and 12. It was noted that the Committee had yesterday adopted the use of the resources of the Fund for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage, which included a paragraph mentioning the same issue. Thus, paragraph 6 could be deleted. Even if the Committee adopted a single body, paragraph 12 also mentioned the potential chargeback mechanism to the nominating States Parties that would not be needed. In this way, the paragraph responded to recommendation 2 of the audit.
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The delegation of Grenada sought a clarification that the deletion of paragraph 6 was already approved with a request to the Secretariat to apply the policy consistently.
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With no further comments or objections, the Chairperson declared Decision 8.COM 5.c.1 and Decision 8.COM 5.c.2 adopted.
ITEM 15 OF THE AGENDA:
DATE AND VENUE OF THE NINTH SESSION OF THE COMMITTEE
Document ITH/13/8.COM/15
Decision 8.COM 15
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The Chairperson was informed that the Secretariat had not received any invitations from any State Party to host the Committee’s ninth session on its territory.
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The Secretary confirmed that no invitations had been received and thus proposed the next Committee session be held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. With regard to the date, the Secretariat proposed 24 to 28 November. These dates were proposed in compliance with the Operational Directives that foresee that the Committee examines the nominations, proposal and requests in November each year, in light of the fact that the Secretariat did not have to organize with the host country, and in coordination with the dates of other convention meetings in order to avoid back-to-back meetings, as was the case with the 2005 Convention this year.
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With no comments or objections, the Chairperson declared Decision 8.COM 15 adopted.
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The delegation of Brazil requested the Secretariat to reserve room I.
ITEM 16 OF THE AGENDA:
ELECTION OF THE MEMBERS OF THE BUREAU OF THE NINTH SESSION OF THE COMMITTEE
Document ITH/13/8.COM/16
Decision 8.COM 16
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The Chairperson recalled that in accordance with Rule 12 and Rule 13 of the Rules of Procedure, the Committee shall elect its Bureau consisting of a Chairperson, one or more vice-Chairs and a Rapporteur who shall remain in office until the end of the next ordinary session. In accordance with Rule 13.4, the Committee in electing the Bureau shall have due regard to the need to have equitable geographical representation and in as much as possible a balance among the various fields of the intangible cultural heritage. In the past, the Chairperson of the Committee came from the host country. However, as the next session would be held in Paris there was some flexibility in the choice of the Chairperson.
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Following consultations within Electoral Group III, the delegation of Nicaragua wished to have one of its representative countries hold the Chair, and therefore proposed the ambassador of Peru who possessed considerable experience and is a career diplomat.
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With no comments or objections, the Chairperson pronounced adopted to appoint Mr José Manuel Rodríguez Cuadros from Peru as Chairperson of the ninth session of the Committee.
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On behalf of the ambassador, the delegation of Peru thanked the Committee and the Electoral Group III for its trust, adding that Mr Cuadros is a very experienced diplomat with a very long career and was capable of providing excellent service to the Committee's work.
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The Chairperson sought proposals for the Vice-Chairpersons.
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On behalf of Electoral Group I, the delegation of Spain suggested Belgium as Vice-Chair.
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On behalf of Electoral Group V(a), the delegation of Uganda suggested Namibia as Vice- Chair.
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The Chairperson noted the two proposals.
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On behalf of Electoral Group IV, the delegation of Indonesia recalled that three of the four present Committee Members were out-going, with Kyrgyzstan the only remaining member. It was recalled that Kyrgyzstan served as Rapporteur in the last session, and as the Group did not know the new Committee members from the Group, proposed Kyrgyzstan as Vice-Chair.
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On behalf of Electoral Group V(b), the delegation of Morocco proposed Egypt.
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On behalf of Electoral Group II, the delegation of Albania proposed Latvia.
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The Chairperson noted five Vice-Chairs but still required a Rapporteur, suggesting that one of the proposed Vice-Chairs also take the responsibility of Rapporteur, like China which currently holds both Vice-Chair and Rapporteur roles. The Chairperson began by first asking the Committee to approve the Vice-Chairs of Belgium, Latvia, Kyrgyzstan, Namibia and Egypt , which was adopted.
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The Secretary explained that the role of the Rapporteur was to cooperate with the Secretariat every evening during the Committee’s daily sessions to verify that the adopted decisions were exactly as proposed. Thus, the final decisions presented to the Committee at the end of its session would be checked by the Rapporteur to ensure the accuracy of the Secretariat’s work such that it reflected the debates.
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The Chairperson proposed Belgium, as the closest country.
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The delegation of Belgium clarified that as rapporteur in last year’s General Assembly, it recommended its colleagues.
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The Chairperson proposed Latvia.
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The delegation of Latvia appreciated the proposal and the confidence expressed, recognizing its good geographical position. Its only concern was that it would serve on the Subsidiary Body next year, which implied additional responsibilities during the next Committee session, but it would do its best to fulfil both duties if it had to.
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The Chairperson turned to Namibia, noting that it could be another Member of the Committee.
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The delegation of Latvia asked whether there had been a precedent of the same country serving as both Rapporteur and on the Subsidiary Body at the same time.
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The Secretary confirmed that Spain had served on the Subsidiary Body, as well as serving as Vice-Chair and Rapporteur in the same session.
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The delegation of Spain explained that it was not because it wanted to cover all the responsibilities, but rather because there were no other candidates.
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The delegation of Latvia replied that if it had been the case for Spain, and there are no other candidates willing to undertake these duties, Latvia would also serve as Rapporteur.
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The Chairperson thanked Latvia to a round of applause.
ITEM 17 OF THE AGENDA: OTHER BUSINESS
Decision 8.COM 17
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The Chairperson turned to other business and agenda item 17.
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The delegation of Brazil recalled the debates during the examination of agenda item 7 on the evaluation of nominations to the Urgent Safeguarding List, in which according to paragraph 27 of the Operational Directives the evaluation shall include the assessment of the ‘safeguarding plan’. However, criterion U.3 only required that ‘safeguarding measures’ were elaborated, which meant that the nominations were required to present specific measures, but when evaluating nominations, the evaluation included an assessment of the whole coherent narrative of those measures. In this regard, the Committee wished to present a draft decision requesting the Secretariat to present to the General Assembly proposals for revisions to the Operational Directives in order to introduce consistency between paragraphs 27 of the Operational Directives and criterion U.3.
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Before discussing the item, the Chairperson informed the delegates that interest generated during the sessions had gone from 6,700 unique online visitors to the site in Bali in 2011, 7,700 in Paris in 2012, and a record number of 14,300 online visitors during the present session, which has doubled compared to last year. This empathized the increasing interest of intangible heritage among the countries submitting nominations, but also generally as countries were interested in the topics of discussion. He also informed the delegates that some free time would be made available, and that a concert evening with world-renowned Azeri Mugham artist Alim Gasimova had been organized at the Mugham Centre.
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The Secretary clarified that the Committee would finalize the last decisions in the present session, which would then be provided to the Committee for adoption as a whole in a consolidated document once adopted by the Rapporteur. It was noted that the adopted decisions would still require a technical revision in Paris in order to ensure that they aligned with the official documents. The final online version would be uploaded in two weeks’ time.
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The Chairperson opened the floor for comment.
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The delegation of Grenada asked whether the Committee had to adopt amendments to the Operational Directives in order to change the form itself, and whether this should be reflected in the form ahead of the General Assembly.
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The Secretary replied that the form could not be changed until it was formulated in the Operational Directives. Brazil’s proposal to amend the Operational Directives would be presented at the next General Assembly so that the forms could be amended and take effect for nomination files in 2015 and inscriptions in the 2016 cycle.
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With no further comments or objections, the Chairperson declared Decision 8.COM 17 adopted.
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Regarding agenda item 13.a, the delegation of Morocco noted that the meeting on commercialization convened by Turkey had not been reflected in the decision.
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The Chairperson replied that the issue would be covered in the next session, and he duly closed the day’s session.
[Saturday, 7 December, morning session]
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