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The page describes ethical principles that need to be taken into account when dealing with living heritage documentation, especially in the indigenous context. Wiki Loves Living Heritage tries to bring these situations into light and find ways to manage them in the Wikimedia context. This is an ongoing conversation, please join!

Ethical Principles for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage

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The Ethical Principles have been created in the spirit of the UNESCO 2003 Convention. They represent a set of overarching aspirational principles that are widely accepted as constituting good practices for governments, organizations and individuals directly or indirectly affecting intangible cultural heritage in order to ensure its viability, thereby recognizing its contribution to peace and sustainable development. Read about Ethics and Intangible Heritage

  1. Communities, groups and, where applicable, individuals should have the primary role in safeguarding their own intangible cultural heritage.
  2. The right of communities, groups and, where applicable, individuals to continue the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and skills necessary to ensure the viability of the intangible cultural heritage should be recognized and respected.
  3. Mutual respect as well as a respect for and mutual appreciation of intangible cultural heritage, should prevail in interactions between States and between communities, groups and, where applicable, individuals.
  4. All interactions with the communities, groups and, where applicable, individuals who create, safeguard, maintain and transmit intangible cultural heritage should be characterized by transparent collaboration, dialogue, negotiation and consultation, and contingent upon their free, prior, sustained and informed consent.
  5. Access of communities, groups and individuals to the instruments, objects, artefacts, cultural and natural spaces and places of memory whose existence is necessary for expressing the intangible cultural heritage should be ensured, including in situations of armed conflict. Customary practices governing access to intangible cultural heritage should be fully respected, even where these may limit broader public access.
  6. Each community, group or individual should assess the value of its own intangible cultural heritage and this intangible cultural heritage should not be subject to external judgements of value or worth.
  7. The communities, groups and individuals who create intangible cultural heritage should benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from such heritage, and particularly from its use, research, documentation, promotion or adaptation by members of the communities or others.
  8. The dynamic and living nature of intangible cultural heritage should be continuously respected. Authenticity and exclusivity should not constitute concerns and obstacles in the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage.
  9. Communities, groups, local, national and transnational organizations and individuals should carefully assess the direct and indirect, short-term and long-term, potential and definitive impact of any action that may affect the viability of intangible cultural heritage or the communities who practise it.
  10. Communities, groups and, where applicable, individuals should play a significant role in determining what constitutes threats to their intangible cultural heritage including the decontextualization, commodification and misrepresentation of it and in deciding how to prevent and mitigate such threats.
  11. Cultural diversity and the identities of communities, groups and individuals should be fully respected. In the respect of values recognized by communities, groups and individuals and sensitivity to cultural norms, specific attention to gender equality, youth involvement and respect for ethnic identities should be included in the design and implementation of safeguarding measures.
  12. The safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage is of general interest to humanity and should therefore be undertaken through cooperation among bilateral, sub regional, regional and international parties; nevertheless, communities, groups and, where applicable, individuals should never be alienated from their own intangible cultural heritage.
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Free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) is being used increasingly by international agencies. Its use covers rights to forests, produce and so on, but also culture and traditional knowledge. One international standard-setting instrument that gives prominence to free, prior and informed consent as a core provision, is the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Other examples are the International Labour Organization Convention 169 (ILO 169), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), among many others and national laws.  

In UNDRIP,  free, prior and informed consent allows the Indigenous Peoples concerned to give or withhold consent to a project that may affect them, their territories. Once they have given their consent, they can withdraw it at any stage. Furthermore, FPIC enables them to negotiate the conditions under which the project will be designed, implemented, monitored and evaluated.  This is also embedded within the universal right to self-determination. Many references to free, prior and informed consent that are in this declaration, especially relate to land rights, but the following articles are the most relevant for living heritage:

Article 11

Indigenous peoples have the right to practise and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. This includes the right to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures, such as archaeological and historical sites, artefacts, designs, ceremonies, technologies and visual and performing arts and literature.

Article 12

Indigenous peoples have the right to manifest, practise, develop and teach their spiritual and religious traditions, customs and ceremonies; the right to maintain, protect, and have access in privacy to their religious and cultural sites; the right to the use and control of their ceremonial objects; and the right to the repatriation of their human remains.

Article 19

States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free, prior and informed consent before adopt- ing and implementing legislative or administrative measures that may affect them.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) focuses on intellectual property rights issues, including their relation to traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions. In that context, the principles of free, prior and informed consent principle could entail that traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions held by an indigenous people or traditional community, and derivatives of such knowledge and expressions, should not be accessed, recorded, adapted, used or commercialized without the prior informed consent of the people or community concerned. It could provide a legal and practical mechanism for negotiation of ‘mutually agreed terms’ as a basis for benefit-sharing arrangements at the point of access to traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions. Compliance with free, prior and informed consent is also under active consideration in WIPO’s work concerning the intellectual property aspects of access to and benefit-sharing in genetic resources.

The principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent is also included in the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003). Under the 2003 Convention, FPIC is mandatory for safeguarding and for submitting nominations. The use of FPIC is expected in relation to inventorying, reinforcing the role of the community and practitioners in the inventorying process in accordance with the Convention. State Parties and other actors are supposed to comply with FPIC when working with communities. But also community members working within their own community should respect the principles of free, prior and informed consent. Being a member of a community does not automatically attribute the legitimacy to represent it. Free, prior and informed consent is also not an automatic exercise; it should involve discussion and consensus.

Principles such as free, prior and informed consent are not meant to be restrictive and discourage access, however. They can help to build the trust and protection required to share practices and information about specific living heritage.

Under the 2003 Convention, the FPIC principle has also been included as part of the Ethical Principles (EP4)

4. All interactions with the communities, groups and, where applicable, individuals who create, safeguard, maintain and transmit intangible cultural heritage should be characterized by transparent collaboration, dialogue, negotiation and consultation, and contingent upon their free, prior, sustained and informed consent.

https://ich.unesco.org/doc/src/U022-v2.0-FN-EN_Free_prior_and_informed_consent.docx

https://www.fao.org/indigenous-peoples/our-pillars/fpic/en/

CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance

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The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance were created to advance the legal principles underlying collective and individual data rights in the context of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).[1]

CARE is an acronym which stands for Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, Ethics.

Ethical sharing support team

Shared understanding between Wiki wisdom and Living Heritage safeguarding wisdom is needed to produce approaches and solutions at the intersection of open sharing and safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Would you like to join a working group to tackle the questions of ethics, intellectual property rights and more throughout the year, and come together when needed for making useful observations and solutions?

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Hit the Edit tab on the top and add your signature. Simply type ~~~~ below or choose Insert > More > Your signature. Make sure you already have a Wikimedia account! You can also write to wikiloveslivingheritage@gmail.com.

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References

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  1. ↑ "United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples | United Nations For Indigenous Peoples". www.un.org. Retrieved 2022-12-17. 

Resources

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https://www.ichandmuseums.eu/en/toolbox/ich-museums-ethics-deontology-instruments

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