Intangible Cultural heritage and armed conflicts: the Colombian case

The protection of cultural heritage in times of conflict should not be confinedto material cultural heritage. After World Wars ended, cultural heritageexperts focused on protecting movable or immovable cultural property fromdamage, as reflected in the Hague Convention and its Protocols. This task isobviously quite important for preserving collective identity, but it is not the onlyone. The cultural heritage concept has expanded considerably in recent decades,and nowadays intangible cultural heritage is also considered very relevant inrepresenting a community's identity, and therefore it should be also protectedduring and after the emergencies.In addition, social experts in cultural heritageare only recently considered in a field which was exclusively a topic of architects,conservators and planners. That inclusion has generated a new perspectiveinto cultural heritage, focusing on the role of the communities and promotingthe study of intangible cultural heritage. In this article, we document the importancefor the developing countries to safeguard the intangible cultural heritagein times of conflict.