Sake, henna, Aleppo soap or fairground culture… dozens of new traditions should join UNESCO’s intangible heritage this week, an ever more popular convention.
The Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage has been meeting since Monday in Asuncion, Paraguay. From Tuesday to Thursday, it should rule on the inscription of 66 new elements, presented from the angle of community traditions, it is explained within the UN organization.
Among the best known worldwide is sake, this rice alcohol made “from quality grains and water”whose manufacturing methods and consumption rituals are “deeply rooted in Japanese culture”according to Unesco.
There are also traditions around henna, a plant whose leaves are dried, crushed, then transformed into a paste used to tattoo the forearms and feet of women participating in a wedding, but also to dye hair or even bring luck to babies, explains the UN agency.

Female students tattoo their hands with henna, August 3, 2024 in Amritsar, India / Narinder NANU / AFP/Archives
“Henna symbolizes the life cycle of an individual, from birth to death, and it is present during the major stages of their life”continues the text defending its inclusion in the intangible heritage, which sixteen Arab countries defend.
Côte d’Ivoire, for its part, is seeking to have its “know-how linked to the manufacture of Attiéké”a cassava semolina, the Palestinian state those participating in the making of Nablus soap, in the occupied West Bank, when Syria wants the traditions around that of Aleppo, a city devastated by years of war, recently to be recognized in the hands of rebels.
Adopted in 2003, entering into force in 2006 after ratification by thirty member states, the convention on intangible cultural heritage, after a sluggish start, now constitutes a diplomatic success, with 183 signatories, almost the entire international community. Some 145 states have had one or more of their cultural elements recognized.
“Human experiences”
“This convention has reinvented the very notion of heritage, to the point that we can no longer separate the material from the intangible, places from practices”estimates the Director General of Unesco, Audrey Azoulay, for whom this text has “accomplished exploits”.
“The convention has proven its usefulness in raising awareness of the importance of cultural heritage”which reflects “the way we experience the world and how we experience it with others”enthuses his secretary Fumiko Ohinata, interviewed by AFP.
And to list: “music, dance, knowledge, food, clothes, how you address other people in your community, how you teach children, (…) basically everything that constitutes human experiences and that makes that we feel alive”according to Ms. Ohinata.
Among the goods or ecosystems of exceptional value recognized by UNESCO are Neapolitan pizza (2017), Brazilian capoeira (2014) or Spanish flamenco (2010) — or rather the traditions surrounding each of these elements.

A little girl poses in a nomad camp in the province of Ovorhangay, Mongolia, July 19, 2016 / JOEL SAGET / AFP/Archives
In Asuncion will also be decided the registration of nomadic migration in Mongolia, where nearly 250,000 families of breeders, following an ancestral tradition, accompany their herds towards the taiga, the mountains, or even the steppes and the Gobi desert, according to Unesco.
Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras and Venezuela, for their part, want recognition of the practices linked to cassava, a pancake made from cassava whose manufacture and consumption dates back several centuries.
France presents several files, including one relating to “know-how of roofers, zinc workers and ornamentalists”who restore and decorate the zinc roofs of Paris. Another, with Belgium, concerns fairground culture, which brings the eponymous festivals to the towns and villages of these two countries.