The UNESCO Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage aims to protect and promote traditional sports, recognizing their role in fostering community spirit and cultural identity. It emphasizes the importance of safeguarding practices and engaging communities in preserving their heritage, facilitating international cooperation. The convention has been ratified by numerous countries, highlighting a global commitment to safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, including traditional sports.

1. The UNESCO convention
of the Intangible Cultural Heritage
New Ways and Opportunities to Strengthen and
Safeguard Traditional Sports in Europe
Albert van der Zeijden
scientific policy advisor
Dutch Centre for Intangible Heritage

2. Dutch Centre for Intangible Heritage
• Accredited NGO, ‘competent body’, responsible
for the coordination and implementation of the
ICH convention in the Netherlands
• Advise functions (national + international)
• Raising awareness
• Knowledge, information, advise, mediating
• Supporting the communities in their safeguarding
efforts (eg. Safeguarding methodologies)

3. and the sports
About the Sport Programme
UNESCO is the United Nations’ lead agency for Physical
Education and Sport (PES).
This programme focuses on the following diverse themes:
Sport for Peace and Development
Quality Physical Education
Traditional Sports and Games
Women and Sport
Anti-Doping

4. and the traditional sports
Traditional sports and games (TSG) can form the backbone of a
community, and UNESCO is driven to protect and promote
these sports to further community spirit, bring peoples
together and install a sense of pride in a society’s cultural roots.
In the Declaration of Punta del Este, in December 1999,
ministers emphasized the preservation and the appraisal of
traditional and indigenous sports from different regional and
national cultural heritages, including the establishment of a
World Heritage List of Traditional Games and Sports.

5. Importance ICH convention for the
traditional sports
• ICH convention most effective policy tool UNESCO
• Convention is about safeguarding: giving a future
to intangible heritage
• Traditional Sports are part of the Intangible
Cultural Heritage
• Convention ratified by most countries in the
world
• Goal: International cooperation and mutual
assistance

6. ICH Convention ratified by
• Austria
• Belgium
• Denmark
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Italy
• the Netherlands
• Norway
• Portugal
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Turkey
• several countries in
Eastern-Europe

7. Purposes of the Convention
The purposes of this Convention are:
(a) to safeguard the intangible cultural heritage;
(b) to ensure respect for the intangible cultural heritage of the
communities, groups and individuals concerned;
(c) to raise awareness at the local, national and international levels of
the importance of the intangible cultural heritage, and of ensuring
mutual appreciation thereof;
(d) to provide for international cooperation and assistance.

8. Definition
Intangible Heritage
The “intangible cultural heritage” means the practices,
representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the
instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated
therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases,
individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This
intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to
generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups
in response to their environment, their interaction with nature
and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity
and continuity.

9. Intangible Heritage
Domains
The “intangible cultural heritage” is manifested
in the following domains:
(a) oral traditions and expressions, including
language as a vehicle of the intangible
cultural heritage;
(b) performing arts;
(c) social practices, rituals and festive events;
(d) knowledge and practices concerning nature and
the universe;
(e) traditional craftsmanship.

10. Traditional Sports
as social practice
Social practices, rituals and festive events involve
a dazzling variety of forms: worship rites; rites of
passage; birth, wedding and funeral rituals;
oaths of allegiance; traditional legal systems;
traditional games and sports; kinship and ritual
kinship ceremonies; settlement patterns;
culinary traditions; seasonal ceremonies;
practices specific to men or women only;
hunting, fishing and gathering practices and
many more.
Toolkit Intangible Cultural Heritage Domains

11. Why is ICH important?
‘Considering the importance of the intangible
cultural heritage as a mainspring of cultural
diversity and a guarantee of sustainable
development,’
preambule UNESCO convention
‘provides them (=communities) with a sense of
identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for
cultural diversity and human creativity’.
Article 2 UNESCO convention

12. Communities first
Within the framework of its safeguarding activities
of the intangible cultural heritage, each
State Party shall endeavour to ensure the widest
possible participation of communities, groups
and, where appropriate, individuals that create,
maintain and transmit such heritage, and to
involve them actively in its management.
Article 15 – Participation of communities, groups
and individuals

13. Obligations States Parties
Each State Party shall:
(a) take the necessary measures to ensure the
safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage present
in its territory;
(b) identify and define the various elements of the
intangible cultural heritage present in its territory, with
the participation of communities, groups and relevant
nongovernmental organizations.

14. • Bottom up approach
• Safeguarding: heritage care
plan

15. Bottom up approach
• Communities / communtiy associations can
put forward their tradition for the Inventory
• In the form they should give a clear
description of the (history) of the tradition
and of the people participating
• The safeguardingplan starts with a swot
analysis of the tradition
• Weak and strong points and how to address
them

16. National Inventories
Krulbollen: Flemish Inventory
And on the Dutch ….

17. Other sports on the
Dutch Inventory

18. Sports on the Dutch Inventory
• Krulbollen Zeeuws Vlaanderen
• Valkerij
• Schoonrijden
• Vierdaagse Nijmegen
• Harddraverij Stompwijk
• Acht van Chaam

19. What makes a sport
intangible heritage?
• Heritage and cultural identity important
• It should be a ‘traditional’ sport with a history
and it should be important for a community
who wants to safeguard this tradition

20. With regard to criterion R.1, the Subsidiary Body was challenged
by nominations testing the limits of what can be considered as
intangible cultural heritage. The question was posed in particular
with regard to organized sports: given that many communities
worldwide identify with their local professional sports teams (or
even those from the other side of the globe), at what point might
organized sports lose any character as intangible heritage? The
Body reiterates the importance of providing sufficient explanation
under R.1 to demonstrate that an element constitutes intangible
cultural heritage in the sense of the 2003 Convention,
emphasizing in particular its cultural meanings and social
functions.
Report of the Subsidiary Body on its work in 2013 and examination of nominations for
inscription on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity ,
discussed by the Intergovernmental Committee, december 2013
Not every sport is ICH!

21. Classical horsemanship and the High
School of the Spanish Riding School
Vienna
In the proposal not enough mention of its cultural
meanings, social functions and communities involved

22. International Inventories
• Representative List
• Urgent Safeguarding List
• Register of Best Practices

23. Sports on International Inventories
Taekkyeon, a traditional Korean martial art
Representative List
Programme of cultivating ludodiversity:
safeguarding traditional games in Flanders
Register of Best Practices

24. Ludo diversity
The non-governmental organization Sportimonium, together
with local communities and associations, has taken measures
to safeguard the heritage of games and sports in Flanders,
Belgium, including twenty-three types of traditional games,
among them forms of shooting games, bowl games, throwing
games and ball games.

25. Ludo diversity:
interesting example best practice
Safeguarding measures undertaken by Sportimonium include:
• support to specialized and umbrella organizations
• publications
• festivals
• demonstrations
• exchanges of expertise
• promotion activities
• loan services providing people with traditional games
equipment
• Traditional Games Park.

26. International treaty
with international networks
• Bureau in Paris, General Assembly and
Intergovernemental Committee
• NGOs
• Communities: European Sint
Maartennetwork, Association Européenne des
jeux et sports traditionnels
• International cooperation and mutual
assistance

27. http://www.ichngoforum.org/spiritual-renewal-and-the-
safeguarding-of-religious-traditions-in-the-netherlands/

28. Things to do
(some of them already taking care off!)
• SWOT analysis
• specialized umbrella organizations
• festivals and demonstrations
• exchanges of expertise
• promotion activities
• International cooperation and mutual assistance
• Necessary measures to ensure the safeguarding
of the intangible cultural heritage

29. USE the national AND international
UNESCO inventories to safeguard
traditional sports