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People-centred and rights-based

approaches to cultural heritage

Recent policies for integrating tangible and intangible cultural heritage safeguarding and management

Dr Tamara Nikolić Đerić

Distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,

“Look at heritage as the witness of our humanity,” said Nahla Emam from Egypt at the Second UNESCO Conference on Cultural Heritage in the 21st Century. I believe this is why we are gathered here: because heritage is both a witness to our humanity and a source of it—one that we want to see thrive in the future.

Recent international heritage policies show an increasingly clear shift towards people-centred approaches. They recognise that heritage is experienced not only through monuments, collections, sites or landscapes, but also through the people, practices, knowledge, relationships and everyday uses that give them meaning. This shift offers an important platform for developing synergies between the 1972 World Heritage Convention and the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. It does not remove their distinct mandates; rather, it helps us to see where their implementation meets in practice.

I would therefore like to offer a brief overview of MONDIACULT 2022, the Spirit of Naples Call for Action of 2023, reflections from the Second Naples Conference in 2025, the ICOMOS Charter and Guidance on Sites with Intangible Cultural Heritage, and the new World Heritage Centre manual, Managing World Heritage. Together, these documents show why the relationship between places and living practices has become a practical management question.

Source: user-supplied speech, speech_zadnje_za print.docx.

User-supplied photograph: newly added sailing photograph on the first slide.

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“Look at heritage as the witness of our humanity.”

Nahla Emam

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Policies and guidance

The documents and reflections informing this talk

2022

MONDIACULT

Culture as a global public good and cultural rights

2023

Spirit of Naples Call for Action

Connections between places, living practices and rights-holders

2024

ICOMOS Charter and Guidance

Sites with Intangible Cultural Heritage: methods and ethics

2025

Second Naples Conference reflections

Knowledge and participation in practice

2026

Managing World Heritage

World Heritage Centre manual: values, attributes and governance

Overview of the documents and reflections discussed in the speech: MONDIACULT 2022; Spirit of Naples Call for Action (2023); ICOMOS Charter and Guidance on Sites with Intangible Cultural Heritage (2024); reflections from the Second Naples Conference (2025); and the World Heritage Centre manual, Managing World Heritage (2026). The 2025 reflections illustrate the Call in practice and do not constitute a separate policy agenda.

Source: user-supplied speech, as retained in the presentation notes.

This people-centred shift does not blur the distinction between the two Conventions. Under the 1972 Convention, the central concern is the identification, protection, conservation and management of cultural and natural heritage of Outstanding Universal Value. Its working language is that of properties, values, attributes, authenticity, integrity, protection and management.

Under the 2003 Convention, the concern is the safeguarding of the viability of practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and skills that communities, groups and individuals recognise as their heritage. Its working language is that of transmission, community participation, continuing recreation and safeguarding measures.

These are not competing descriptions of the same thing. Synergy becomes relevant when a practice depends on a place, or when a place's meaning and care depend on continuing knowledge, use, custom or community life.

Source: user-supplied speech, speech_zadnje_za print.docx.

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MONDIACULT 2022

Culture as a

global public good

Cultural rights connect heritage to access, identity and transmission.

A broad policy context for sustainable development.

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The UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development—MONDIACULT 2022—provides the broad context for this shift. It is not technical site-management guidance. Instead, it places culture within the wider challenges of sustainable development, climate change, conflict, inequality, digital transformation and cultural rights.

Culture today faces multiple pressures: climate change and its effects on places and practices; armed conflict and intentional destruction; and insufficient support for the cultural sector itself. This sector is essential not only to the conservation and safeguarding of heritage, but also to what well-supported heritage can make possible: sustainable practices, social cohesion, meaningful livelihoods and wider economic benefits.

MONDIACULT's recognition of culture as a global public good, and its emphasis on cultural rights, change the context in which heritage decisions are made. Heritage is not discussed only as an object of protection or an economic resource. It is connected to identity, access to cultural life, knowledge transmission, the position of practitioners and communities, and the right of peoples to enjoy their heritage. Finally, MONDIACULT places culture at the centre of public policy, recognising its contribution to inclusion, education, health, employment, gender equality, sustainability, tourism and economic development.

Source: user-supplied speech, speech_zadnje_za print.docx.

User-supplied photographs: 7.3_EKOMUZEJ_BATANA_SPACIO_MATIKA.jpg.

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SPIRIT OF NAPLES CALL FOR ACTION, 2023

Places and practices

depend on one another

A place can retain its material form while losing the practices, skills, uses, knowledge or community relationships that give it continuing meaning.

Equally, a living practice can be weakened when access to its spaces, resources, routes or social settings disappears.

The connection belongs in management decisions.

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NAPLES 2025

Knowledge

and participation

Kyrgyzstan

Manas chanters’ knowledge helped identify a petroglyph site.

Fiji and the Arctic

Customary protocols and self-determination shape participation.

Naples creates space for dialogue through Napoli Ascolta.

Who defines priorities, access and the use of knowledge?

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The Second Naples Conference in 2025 made the Call for Action more concrete through several powerful examples. Gulnara Aitpaeva of Aigine in Kyrgyzstan presented work at the intersection of tangible and intangible cultural heritage through collaboration with the chanters of the Manas epic. In 2022, this collaboration led to the discovery of a previously undocumented petroglyph site. The case does not suggest that community knowledge replaces expert documentation. It shows how traditional beliefs, local knowledge and scientific approaches can work together to identify a place, interpret its significance and develop a more inclusive understanding of heritage.

An example from Fiji addressed the challenges that communities face when engaging with colonial heritage. It described how traditional vanua-based protocols, including forgiveness rituals, have helped local communities participate more meaningfully in site management. In a related reflection, Indigenous Arctic archaeologist Kirstine Møller proposed Eight Principles for Research in the Arctic Circle, placing confidence and self-determination at the centre of sustainable local development.

Together, these examples raise questions not only about who is consulted, but also about who defines research priorities, conditions of access and the use of knowledge. Finally, Laura Lieto, Deputy Mayor of Naples, observed that heritage is always contested. The city's Napoli Ascolta—Naples Listens—initiative was developed to create spaces for dialogue and representation of the city's diverse heritage practices. Its relevance lies in recognising that disagreement, unequal visibility and different claims to heritage cannot always be resolved through a single expert narrative. Listening becomes a practical part of governance: it creates the conditions in which diverse practices, memories and relationships can be heard before decisions are taken. Taken together, these reflections illuminate the Spirit of Naples Call for Action in practice; they do not constitute a separate policy agenda.

Source: user-supplied speech, speech_zadnje_za print.docx.

User-supplied photographs: kyrgizstan.jpg.

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ICOMOS CHARTER AND GUIDANCE ON SITES WITH ICH, 2024

Establish standards of ethical practice related to a community’s intangible cultural heritage, its identification, safeguarding, sustainability, management, transmission, sharing, commemoration and celebration.

Work with communities

and custodians from the outset.

Respect customary protocols

in planning and interpretation.

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Introduced in 2024, the ICOMOS Charter and Guidance on Sites with Intangible Cultural Heritage highlights that practices, knowledge and meanings may be inseparable from physical sites, and that the loss of either may affect the significance of the other. Its contribution is methodological. It asks conservation professionals to identify associated living heritage; work with communities and custodians from the outset; respect customary access, protocols and knowledge; and include relevant practices and relationships in planning, impact assessment, documentation, interpretation and training.

The Charter also establishes an ethical limit: communities are not simply sources of information about a site. Their authority over knowledge, access and representation must be respected, particularly where heritage is sacred, spiritual, contested or confidential.

Source: user-supplied speech, speech_zadnje_za print.docx.

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MANAGING WORLD HERITAGE, 2026

What gives a place

its meaning?

Values

Why a place matters, and to whom.

Attributes

What carries those values: fabric and landscapes, but also uses, practices and relationships.

Meaning needs more than material survival.

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The 2026 World Heritage Centre manual translates many of these ideas into management terminology. One central concern is values: why a place is important, and to whom. The Manual then distinguishes values from attributes—the elements that convey and enable an understanding of those values. Attributes may include physical structures, material fabric and landscape features, but also processes, social arrangements, cultural practices, associations and relationships. For cultural properties, the Manual refers to uses and functions, religious ceremonies, traditional building techniques, language and spiritual connections.

The Manual does not call all such attributes living heritage as understood under the 2003 Convention. Rather, it asks us to consider them where they convey Outstanding Universal Value or other significant values. The practical question becomes: what needs to persist for a place to remain meaningful, not only materially intact?

So the identification of heritage values and attributes is the critical first step for the effective management

of heritage places and we will see during the day the challenges regarding this first step.

Source: user-supplied speech, speech_zadnje_za print.docx.

User-supplied photographs: Screenshot 2026-10-06 at 19.25.37.png.

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GOVERNANCE

Rights-holders

hold formal legal and/or customary rights over the heritage place or resources within it.

Stakeholders

have direct or indirect interests, concerns and influence over the heritage place but do not

enjoy a legally or socially recognized entitlement to the heritage resources

Managers recognized, responisble and accountable

.

Customary frameworks can be part of that system.

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Principles need practical methods

2022

MONDIACULT

Systemic anchoring of culture in public policies

2023

Naples Call

Holistic approaches to safeguarding cultural and natural heritage

2024

ICOMOS Charter

Professional methods and ethical responsibilities

2026

World Heritage manual

Values, attributes, governance and management

Implementation still needs methods, governance arrangements and resources.

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A further point emerges when the documents are read side by side. They shift attention from heritage categories to relationships. MONDIACULT asks what cultural policy must attend to: rights, access, inequality, knowledge and participation. The Naples Call asks why fragmented responses can be insufficient when natural environments, material places and living practices depend on one another. The ICOMOS Charter asks what conservation professionals should do when a site is associated with intangible cultural heritage. The World Heritage Centre Manual asks how these questions can enter ordinary management language: values, attributes, actors, legal and customary frameworks, decision-making, planning and monitoring.

At the same time, these policy developments should not be read as if the question were already resolved. They provide important principles and entry points, but the practical integration of associated living heritage into site management still requires more systematic methods, governance arrangements and resources. The task ahead is therefore not to merge the two Conventions, but to develop workable ways of identifying reciprocal relationships and of reflecting them in planning, monitoring, impact assessment and decision-making.

This sequence matters because it avoids two opposite simplifications. One is to assume that all heritage must be treated in the same way because it is interconnected. The other is to protect each heritage category so separately that their relationship becomes invisible. The documents do neither. They identify points at which a decision in one field can have consequences in another.

Source: user-supplied speech, speech_zadnje_za print.docx.

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CLEAR TERMINOLOGY

Related ideas, different responsibilities

Intangible dimensions

of a site

Meanings, associations and uses

connected to tangible cultural heritage.

Intangible cultural

heritage

Heritage that communities recognise,

transmit and continually recreate.

Historical re-enactment does not automatically qualify as living heritage.

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Dubrovnik: the City and the Festa

What defines a city?

Even if the city collapses, the fiest will still happen.

The Festa expresses continuity even in events of disruption.

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Dubrovnik offers a particularly eloquent example of the reciprocal relationship between a World Heritage city and living heritage. The Old City is inscribed on the World Heritage List, while the Festivity of Saint Blaise is inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

For more than a millennium, the Festa has been continuously recreated by the people of Dubrovnik and the surrounding area. It is not simply an event taking place within the city; it is part of the city's living fabric. Its processions, banners, rituals, religious devotion, music, public spaces and social relations connect the urban form of Dubrovnik with the communities that give it meaning.

The historical reference here is the devastating earthquake of 1667. In local memory, the Festa's continuity has repeatedly been associated with the endurance of the city itself: the idea is that Dubrovnik might perish before the Festa does. The precise wording of this local saying varies, but its message is clear. The Festa is understood as a source of continuity even in moments of profound disruption.

Source: user-supplied speech, speech_zadnje_za print.docx.

User-supplied photographs: cropix festa1.jpg, Screenshot 2026-10-07 at 12.45.06.png.

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Crafts belong to everyday city life

Year-round workshops sustain skills, livelihoods

and working residents within Dubrovnik’s walls.

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ROVINJ, ECOMUSEUM BATANA

A place for

living heritage

Spacio Matika

Songs, stories, foodways

and conviviality continue

in a shared cultural space.

Safeguarding includes access, use and social continuity.

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A further perspective on the reciprocal relationship between tangible and intangible heritage comes from Rovinj, my hometown, through the idea of emplacement and the UNESCO good safeguarding pracyice- the Ecomuseum Batana. Emplacement helps us understand that living heritage is formed and transmitted through an inseparable relationship between people, practices and places. It draws attention to the need to consider spaces and environments when developing sustainable safeguarding measures.

Spacio Matika illustrates this clearly. It is not only a historic interior; it is a cultural space in which songs, stories, foodways, conversation and conviviality can continue to be enacted and shared. Its material character matters, but so do the social relationships and sensory experiences that take place within it. In this sense, safeguarding living heritage may also require safeguarding the conditions of place: access, use, social continuity and the possibility for communities to inhabit and recreate their heritage in everyday life.

Source: user-supplied speech, speech_zadnje_za print.docx.

User-supplied photographs: 7.3_EKOMUZEJ_BATANA_SPACIO_MATIKA.jpg.

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Heritage values endure through people

Practices, rights and relationships sustain meaning

alongside material fabric.

Coordination can protect these connections while respecting both Conventions.

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