Dr Janet Blake, OBE, a retired Professor of Human Rights Law, is the Director of the Persian Garden Institute for Living Heritage (NGO accredited to provide advisory services to the Committee). She has served on cultural heritage law committees of the International Law Association since 2012 and has provided professional advice on policy and legislative development for safeguarding ICH in the State of Palestine and Iran. She has facilitated capacity-building workshops in Armenia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Republic of Korea, Turkmenistan and UAE. She drafted the legal and technical preliminary study that led the way to developing the 2003 Convention, and she was Rapporteur of the Restricted (expert) Drafting Group for the first draft text of the Convention. Subsequently, she has prepared a report for the Executive Board on safeguarding endangered and indigenous languages (2008), reports for the Intergovernmental Committee on periodic reporting (2012-2018), revising the periodic reporting mechanism (2018-19), identification of community-based needs for living heritage safeguarding among refugee communities (2025), and preparing summary and full analytical reports of the ASPAC periodic reports (2025-26).