UNESCO works to attain quality education for all, focusing on women empowerment and literacy, to rehabilitate cultural heritage after the earthquake, promote cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue, to mobilize scientific knowledge, to promote press freedom, freedom of expression, media development and to advocate for the rights and safety of journalists.

In Culture sector, the Office is committed to strengthen the role of culture as enabler and driver of sustainable development, through its support to Nepal in promotion, protection, conservation and safeguarding of country’s unique tangible and intangible heritage by increasing the people’s awareness and strengthening national capacities at all levels.

Intangible Cultural Heritage – or ‘living heritage’ – is inherited from ancestors and passed on to descendants. It includes oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals and festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe, and the knowledge and skills, that are meaningful to the communities. It is continuously recreated as it is transmitted from generation to generation and evolves in response to our environment. Living heritage is important because it offers communities and individuals a sense of identity and continuity. Living heritage contains locally rooted knowledge and provides a source of resilience against changing climatic conditions as well as at time of emergencies. It promotes social cohesion, respect for cultural diversity and human creativity, as well as help communities building peaceful and inclusive societies.

As the United Nations specialized agency for culture, UNESCO is tasked with safeguarding living heritage and ensuring its transmission to future generations. The 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage encourages and supports countries to take the necessary measures to ensure that communities can safeguard their living heritage.

Safeguarding living heritage is important to address some of the most significant challenges of today and build inclusive, resilient, and sustainable societies for the future. However, the localized system and traditional mode of intergenerational transmission of living heritage, which is a dynamic interactive process, is often at risk and/or disrupted due to various reasons such as rapid urbanization, natural or manmade disaster, displacement, out-migration, globalization, the advent of the digital age and many more.

Education plays a key role in safeguarding intangible cultural heritage. The 2003 Convention recognizes the transmission of intangible cultural heritage ‘through formal and non-formal education’ as a key safeguarding measure. The Convention calls on States Parties to ensure recognition of, respect for, and enhancement of intangible cultural heritage through education programmes. These can include:

• programmes in formal learning environments such as in primary, secondary and post-secondary schools.
• non-formal opportunities such as short courses, community learning and capacity-building activities.

Experiences have shown that teaching core subjects such as mathematics, science, or literature by using students’ cultural backgrounds can make the learning process more relevant, as it creates better connections between what is taught in classrooms and the children’s everyday life and their surroundings. This also allows students to explore their identity, learn to respect cultural diversity and reflect on their heritage and that of others and help find local solutions to global problems related to climate change, health, etc.

Since the heritage bearers – the communities and groups concerned- are at the heart of safeguarding living heritage, reconnecting school (youth) with communities provides the opportunity for survival into the future.  This can provide rich resources as well as context-specific content and pedagogy for education programmes, thus act as leverage to improve the relevance of education and learning outcomes. In the meantime, this opportunity can help safeguard intangible heritage through education. For example, education for sustainable development uses indigenous knowledge and skills as a key resource for communities in understanding the environment, sustainably using its resources, assessing climate change impacts, and adapting to them. This linkage also promotes cross-sectoral and multi-level cooperation among diverse stakeholders. Therefore, UNESCO promotes learning and teaching through and about ICH in education programmes in all relevant disciplines.

Approaches to bring intangible cultural heritage into classrooms and non-formal education spaces can vary depending on the local context, needs and educational level.