TALLINN 's At the conference in Paris on June 29 Estonia was elected as a member of the UNESCO committee for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage.
Estonia will appoint to the committee Tartu University professor Kristin Kuutma who has made a great contribution to the inclusion of the Estonian song and dance festival tradition and the Kihnu cultural space in the UNESCO list of masterpieces of intangible heritage, the Foreign Ministry said.
Other members of the committee elected at the conference of member states of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage are Belgium, Turkey, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, China, Japan, India, Vietnam, Nigeria, Senegal, Gabon, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates. The eighteen members of the committee were picked out of a field of 30.
The Estonian government ratified the convention in January and deposited the instrument of ratification with the UN director general at the end of the same month. After the 50th country joins the convention the committee will expand from 18 to 24 members.
