The Committee,

1. Having examined document ITH/10/5.COM/CONF.202/7,
2. Recalling Article 16 of the Convention,
3. Further recalling chapters I.2, I.7, I.9 and I.15 of the Operational Directives related to the inscription of intangible cultural heritage elements on the Representative List,
4. Recalling in particular that Paragraph 30 of the Operational Directives states that ‘the Committee, through its Subsidiary Body, shall examine every year nominations for inscription on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in accordance with the resources available and their ability to examine these nominations. States Parties are encouraged to keep in mind the above factors when submitting nominations for inscription on the Representative List’,
5. Decides to convene an open ended intergovernmental working group, to be held at UNESCO headquarters before the sixth session of the Committee, to discuss possible measures to improve the treatment of nominations to the Representative List by the Committee, Subsidiary Body and the Secretariat, and to present its report which will take into account, inter alia, the proposed amendment by States Members of the Committee concerning the terms of reference of the Subsidiary Body which will appear in the Annex. This meeting will be organized on condition that voluntary supplementary contributions to the Intangible Cultural Heritage Fund are received in due course in order to cover all of the costs of organizing the meeting and the costs of the participation of representatives of developing countries that are parties to the Convention, whether or not Members of the Committee, but only for persons who are experts in intangible cultural heritage;
6. Invites the States Parties to submit to the Secretariat their points of view on the terms of reference of the Subsidiary Body in a reasonable time limit and requests the Secretariat to circulate them to the States Parties before the meeting of the Working Group;
7. Establishes a subsidiary body for the examination of nominations for inscription on the 2011 Representative List and adopts the terms of reference as presented in the Annex to this decision, in accordance with Rule 21 of its Rules of Procedure;
8. Decides that the Subsidiary Body shall consist of Italy, Croatia, Venezuela, Republic of Korea, Kenya and Jordan;
9. Further decides to consider the 107 nominations received before 31 August 2010 and not yet processed as admissible for possible evaluation in 2011;
10. Takes note that the total number of nominations to the Lists, proposals for the Register of Best Practices and requests for International Assistance admissible for possible evaluation in 2011 is 163;
11. Considers that the Committee and its organs responsible for the examination and evaluation do not have the capacity to responsibly and credibly evaluate all of these files and perform its duty under Article 7 of the Convention;
12. Requests the Secretariat, within the range of its capacity, to process between 31 and 54 nominations to the Representative List and transmit these to the Subsidiary Body, in order to allow its members to examine with priority multi-national nominations and those submitted by States Parties that do not have elements inscribed or have few elements inscribed on said List;
13. Thanks those States Parties that have voluntarily agreed to allow some of their files already submitted to be evaluated at a later date;
14. Considers that, for the 2012 cycle, it may evaluate a comparable number of nominations to the Representative List submitted before 31 March 2011 giving priority to those that are multi-national nominations or are submitted by States Parties that do not have elements inscribed or have few elements inscribed on said List, without prejudice to the conclusion of the Working Group for future cycles;
15. Further decides that, for the 2012 cycle, it shall apply the same principle of priority evaluation to files that will be submitted before 31 March 2011 for the Urgent Safeguarding List, Register of Best Practices and International Assistance.

ANNEX