On the occasion of the 20th anniversary celebration in Egypt organized in cooperation with the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, the UNESCO Cairo Office released the publication ‘National capacity building on inventorying the intangible cultural heritage in the Arab Republic of Egypt.

This publication stands as one of the outcomes of the project “Strengthening National Capacities for Safeguarding ICH in Egypt for Sustainable Development”. It presents the process and outputs of the pilot inventorying exercise which took place in six different locations throughout Egypt (Cairo, Fayoum, Gharbeya, Aswan, Assuit, and Marsa Matrouh). This pilot was Egypt’s first step to establishing a national ICH inventory in collaboration with community practitioners.

As prefaced by Dr Nuria Sanz, Officer-in-Charge, UNESCO Regional Bureau for Sciences in the Arab States “The publication documents the process of the pilot community-based inventorying exercises with selected examples from the inventories, together with the guidelines developed explicitly for this exercise, analysis of lessons learned and way forward recommendation. The publication serves as a valuable reference for the ongoing ICH inventorying activities in Egypt and will allow the continuity of the actions until the national geography is complete.”