The seventh session of the General Assembly of the States Parties to the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage will take place from 4 to 6 June 2018 at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. The General Assembly is the Convention’s sovereign body and meets in ordinary sessions every two years.

There are currently 177 States that have ratified the Convention. New comers that have joined the Convention since the previous session of the Assembly are Cook Islands, Kiribati, Malta, Singapore, Suriname, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Tuvalu.

The main objectives of the session are: to elect 12 new members of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage; approve revisions of the Operational Directives; determine the use of the resources of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Fund; and decide on the accreditation of 29 non governmental organizations to provide advisory services to the Committee.

The adoption of an overall results framework for the Convention also forms part of an important item on the agenda. If approved, that framework will allow for effective monitoring and evaluation of the impact of the Convention at various levels. In parallel, this issue is closely linked to the reform of the Periodic Reporting mechanism which will be aligned to the overall results framework. The Assembly will examine the revisions of the Operational Directives that will allow such reform.

Documents of the session are available online in the six working languages of the Assembly.

All States Parties and participants attending are invited to register online.