Document ITH/10/5.COM/CONF.202/9 Decision 5.COM 9
371. The Chairperson presented item 9 and began by recalling that the General Assembly had adopted new Operational Directives in June 2010 that had changed the procedures in the examination of nominations to the Urgent Safeguarding List, proposals for the Register of Best practices and International Assistance Requests greater than US$25,000. The Chairperson repeated his thanks to all the examiners who provided their advisory services for the nominations to the Urgent Safeguarding List inscribed on Monday 15 November and the international assistance request approved in the morning session. It had been noted that, notwithstanding the quality of their individual services, having two independent examiners conducting their examinations in parallel, and largely in isolation, revealed some shortcomings, which the General Assembly had tried to address with the new procedure that intended to bring greater coherence and continuity to the task, hopefully demonstrated over the coming years. The Chairperson invited the Secretary to introduce the background to item 9.
372. Having accepted the proposal of the Committee’s open-ended working group, the Secretary of the Convention, Ms Cécile Duvelle, explained that the General Assembly in June 2010 had adopted the revised Operational Directives for procedures related to the examination of nominations to the Urgent Safeguarding List, the Register of Best practices and requests for international assistance. The procedure formerly in place for the Urgent Safeguarding List and international assistance called for the Committee to appoint two examiners who, working independently and in parallel, would present their recommendations to the Committee. In some cases the appointed examiners had some familiarity with the Convention, but in many cases it was their first real contact with the Convention and the Operational Directives. They were appointed for their general knowledge of intangible cultural heritage and/or their specific knowledge of the element under nomination; however it was seen as likely that they would have different interpretations of the Convention and the inscription criteria. In the case of largely shared opinions, their recommendations could easily be synthesized, but this task was made more difficult in the case of divergent conclusions.
373. The Secretary further explained that the previous procedure for examination of the Register of Best Safeguarding Practices – examined by a working group set up during a Committee session – sufficed in Abu Dhabi when there were only three proposals, but with fifteen such
proposals in the current cycle it was clear that another examination process was required.
The process adopted by the General Assembly in June 2010 called for all these files to be examined by a consultative body to be appointed by the Committee and set up on a trial basis. Paragraph 26 of the Operational Directives specifies that, ‘the Committee shall select six independent experts and six accredited NGOs as members of the Consultative Body at each session, taking into consideration equitable geographical representation and various domains of intangible cultural heritage. The duration of office of a member of the Consultative Body shall not exceed 24 months. Every year, the Committee shall renew half of the members of the Consultative Body’.
374. The Secretary recalled that the Committee would already establish the Subsidiary Body in the present session, whose Rules of Procedure allowed the Committee to establish ad hoc consultative bodies, requiring only that the terms of reference, mandates and duration of office be adopted at the time of establishment. In order to carry out the wishes of the General Assembly, the Committee was thus faced with the challenge of setting up a system of rotation and renewal without establishing a standing body; the Convention did not provide for any standing bodies other than the General Assembly and the Committee. The Secretary therefore proposed that each year the Committee should re-establish the Consultative Body for a mandate of one year, re-adopting its terms of reference and re-appointing half of its members. In this way, the instructions of the General Assembly would be respected, as formulated in paragraph 26 of the Directives, without falling foul of the Convention itself.
375. The Secretary proceeded to present the draft terms of reference, which was displayed on the screen [refer to document ITH/10/5.COM/CONF.202/9]. It was noted that its structure closely resembled the terms of reference of the previously adopted Subsidiary Body, with the noted exception that the composition was in line with the Operational Directives, and the responsibilities of the Consultative Body concerned the Urgent Safeguarding List, the Register of Best practices, and international assistance greater than US$25,000 and not the Representative List. The Secretary turned to the Chairperson suggesting that the Committee first debate, then adopt, the terms of reference before appointing the six experts and six accredited NGOs.
376. The Chairperson concurred with the proposal and noted that the terms of reference closely resembled the corresponding language of the Operational Directives. The Chairperson proposed to begin with the paragraphs of the terms of reference, opening the floor to Members proposing amendments following each paragraph.
377. The Secretary then proceeded to read out paragraph 1 of the terms of reference of the Consultative Body.
378. There were no voiced comments or objections. The Chairperson thus pronounced paragraph 1 adopted by the Committee.
379. The Secretary proceeded to read out paragraph 2.
380. The delegation of Morocco asked the Secretariat for some clarification on the use of ‘if necessary’ and wondered whether it could decided upon at the present time.
381. As there were no rules governing the Consultative Body, the Secretary replied that it was up to the Committee to decide whether it wished to delete ‘if necessary’ or allow the Consultative Body to decide on the appointment of a rapporteur.
382. There were no further comments or objections. The Chairperson thus pronounced paragraph 2 adopted by the Committee.
383. The Secretary proceeded to read out paragraph 3.
384. There were no further comments or objections. The Chairperson thus pronounced paragraph 3 adopted by the Committee.
385. The Secretary proceeded to read out paragraph 4 in its entirety.
386. The delegation of the Islamic Republic of Iran highlighted a typo error – to replace ‘as’ with
‘an’ in paragraphs 4b and 4c, which was accepted by the Chairperson.
387. The Secretary proceeded to read out paragraph 5 followed by paragraph 6. There were no comments or objections to either paragraph.
388. The Chairperson thus pronounced paragraphs 4, 5 and 6, and therefore the terms of reference as presented, adopted by the Committee.
389. The Secretary then proceeded to the second part of item 9 and the appointment of the twelve members of the Consultative Body, as outlined in the terms of reference: six individual experts and six accredited NGOs. The Secretary reminded Members to take into account the principle of equitable geographic representation and the broad experience of the different domains of intangible cultural heritage. The Secretary briefly explained the pre-selection of the twenty-four candidates presented for the twelve positions, i.e. four from each electoral group. The Secretariat had access to a pool of ninety-seven accredited organizations for the NGO candidates and a database of some 1200 names for candidates among the individual experts, of which more than one-third had been recommended by States Parties over the past few years. In either case, priority was awarded to those with prior experience in the examination of Urgent Safeguarding List nominations or IA requests in 2009 or 2010. For those regions with no prior Urgent Safeguarding List nominations or IA requests, and consequently no experienced examiners, the Secretariat drew upon the names of experts who had closely followed the Convention or participated in UNESCO expert meetings and training workshops, and who had broad knowledge of intangible cultural heritage domains, rather than those that were highly specialized in only a single domain.
390. The Secretary further explained that having initially identified forty-eight potential candidates for each electoral group – half NGOs and half experts – the Secretariat sought to achieve gender parity among the individual experts. The first four names in each electoral group were then contacted, and the nature of the task and its proposed timetable was explained. All of those contacted confirmed their availability and agreed to present their candidature for appointment [refer to Annex 2 of document ITH/10/5.COM/CONF.202/9 for the complete list of proposed candidates]. The Secretary made clear that the list of candidates as presented was not limited and that the Committee was free to nominate other candidates if it so wished.
However, there was a certain degree of risk that other nominated examiners be unavailable or unable to take on the substantial work demanded of them.
391. The Secretary wished to highlight that three individual experts and only one accredited NGO had been named in Group V(b), which was due to the fact that the Arab States were under-represented with only one NGO receiving accreditation by the General Assembly in June 2010. The Secretary explained that the Committee had a certain degree of flexibility in its selection; it had an obligation to appoint six accredited NGOs and six individual experts, of which two members would be appointed from each electoral group to respect the principle of equitable geographic representation, but it could choose to name two experts from one electoral group and two NGOs from another, as long as the totals were respected. In order to preserve maximum flexibility, the Secretary proposed that the Committee first begin to appointment the candidates from Group V (b).
392. The Chairperson thanked the Secretary for the clear introduction and informed the Committee that at the Bureau meeting in the morning session, the delegation of the Republic of Korea had raised concern over the selection procedure as it appeared difficult to have a substantive discussion on the merits of each of the candidates as they were all equally qualified. However, as the Secretariat had determined that all twenty-four of the candidates were qualified and available, the Chairperson made an open suggestion to the Committee to decide whether they would prefer to draws lots or discuss the profile of each candidate individually in the process of selection.
393. The delegation of Cyprus sought clarification in the suggestion that two NGOs could be chosen from the same group as long as there were six NGOs in total, yet it seemed more
judicious to have one NGO from each electoral group. The delegation also had concerns about the case of V(b) with only one NGO.
394. The Secretary explained that in any case only two candidates per group could be appointed, and in the case of V(b), either two individual experts or one expert and one NGO could be appointed by the Committee. The Secretary confirmed that the Consultative Body had to be composed of six NGOs and six individual experts – two per electoral group. Referring to the Bureau meeting where the question of having an alternate was raised, in case the selected candidate was unavailable, the Secretary gave thought to the principle but felt that this was unnecessary as the candidates had already made their availability known prior to their pre-selection.
395. The delegation of Jordan asked whether the selection procedure as adopted would be permanently applied to appointments to the Consultative Body in the future.
396. The Secretary replied that the decision would reside with the Committee, and it was up to the Committee to appoint six new members, possibly three individual experts and three NGOs, in the following year. The decision to either draw lots or examine the candidates at length was not permanent and the procedure could effectively be changed in the following year.
397. The delegation of China asked whether it was possible to allow the electoral groups some time for internal discussion.
398. The Chairperson granted the Committee Members a ten-minute pause for group consultations.
[10-minute pause]
399. The delegation of Morocco spoke of the somewhat difficult and awkward process of selecting candidates among those present at the session, and thus the decision to draw lots prevented any ill-ease. On behalf of Group V(b), the delegation announced the selection of Mr Abderrahman Ayoub from Tunisia and the NGO, Association Cont’Act pour l’éducation et les cultures, from Morocco [refer to Annex II of this document for a brief description of each selected candidate].
400. On behalf of Group I, the delegation of Cyprus announced the selection of Mr Pablo Carpintero, and the NGO, Maison des cultures du monde from France.
401. On behalf of Group II, the delegation of Croatia selected Ms Rusudan Tsurtsumia from Georgia and the NGO, Česká národopisná společnost from the Czech Republic.
402. On behalf of Group III, the delegation of Paraguay announced the selection of Mr Guillermo Sequera from Paraguay and the NGO, Fundación Erigaie from Colombia.
403. On behalf of Group IV, the delegation of the Republic of Korea announced the selection of Ms Adi Meretui Ratunabuabua from Fiji, and the NGO, Craft Revival Trust from India.
404. On behalf of Group V(a), the delegation of Madagascar announced the selection of Ms Claudine-Augée Angoue from Gabon and the NGO, African Cultural Regeneration Institute – ACRI from Kenya.
405. The Secretary then proceeded to read out the draft decision, including the names of the appointed members to the Consultative Body (as cited above) but not their nationalities, as they did not represent their countries.
406. There were no comments or objections. The Chairperson thus pronounced Decision 5.COM 9 adopted by the Committee.
407. The session item was thus duly closed by the Chairperson.
[Wednesday, 17 November 2010, afternoon session – 5 p.m.]
ITEM 10 OF THE AGENDA: