The first international review meeting on UNESCO’s global strategy on strengthening national capacities for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage will be convened from 7 to 10 November 2012 in Beijing, China. It is organized by the Intangible Cultural Heritage Section at UNESCO in partnership with the Training Center for the Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region under the Auspices of UNESCO (CRIHAP) and the generous support from the Government of China.

One year into the global strategy, 42 countries are implementing tailored two-year capacity-building projects and 76 training workshops have so far been held, delivered by facilitators from the network of 75 UNESCO certified experts from all regions. They were trained to use the workshop materials developed by UNESCO in four thematic areas: (i) ratification, (ii) implementation, (iii) community-based inventorying and (iv) nominations.

The review meeting will therefore bring together 17 of these facilitators (English-speaking) and 8 UNESCO culture programme specialists from four field offices and the Intangible Cultural Heritage Section, who have all been actively engaged in this Programme. A number of CRIHAP members will participate as observers.

The meeting will take stock of the experiences so far and assess both the operational and substantive aspects of the capacity-building activities. It will review the process from project and workshop preparation to their impact on advancing the implementation of the 2003 Convention in beneficiary countries. The group will consolidate the lessons learnt and share ideas on how to further improve the content and effectiveness of this global strategy.

This meeting is an excellent opportunity of pursuing UNESCO’s objectives in the field of culture, notably to mobilize international and national expertise for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage. Following this first review meeting of the global capacity-building strategy, two additional review meetings are foreseen next year in Africa and Latin America with the participation of French- and Spanish-speaking facilitators.