On 29 September 2022, Mr. Hassan Chouikh, Director of Vocational Training and Continuing Education for Craftsmen, as well as two high-level officials from the Ministry of Tourism, Handicrafts, and Social and Solidarity Economy of Morocco and the UNESCO Rabat Office visited ICHCAP to discuss and seek opportunities for future collaboration.

Ministry of Tourism, Handicrafts, and Social and Solidarity Economy is a state agency designed to prepare and implement national strategies for tourism and to supervise various organizations and institutions specialized in vocational training and education for craft industries. The delegates visited ICHCAP office to learn about years of its experiences in ICH safeguarding in collaboration with Asia-Pacific countries, followed by a consultation with the National Intangible Heritage Center to look into Korea’s Living Human Treasure System and check its applicability to local settings and regional context in Morocco.

Mr. KIM, Jisung, ICHCAP Director-General, highlighted the importance of active participation from various ICH stakeholders in building and implementing ICH safeguarding systems, with particular focus on the role of communities throughout the processes. Mr. KIM also stressed that the strategic expansion into heritage education/cultural tourism as well as close partnership beyond traditional crafts would create a more socially and economically viable environment for ICH safeguarding.

Mr. Chouikh expressed his interest in the Asia-Pacific Higher Education Network for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage (APHEN-ICH), further indicating that the regional mechanism initiated for active ICH education would help expand the scale and scope of ecosystem for ICH safeguarding in Morocco.

As one of the pioneers, Morocco has played an active role for the adoption of the 2003 Convention, even before its ratification as it was actively engaged in the drafting of the Convention. The upcoming seventeenth session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage will be held from 28 November to 3 December 2022 in Rabat.