Intangible cultural heritage as a basis for resilience, reconciliation and construction of peace environments in Colombia’s post-agreements

Granted to Colombia in June 2018 under UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Fund of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, the emergency International Assistance project entitled ‘Intangible cultural heritage as a basis for resilience, reconciliation and construction of peace environments in Colombia's post-agreements’ aims to revitalize living heritage in Colombia’s Guajira Department, Conejo village, home to the Pondores ETCR – a temporary shelter for ex-combatants and their families during their transition to civilian life. The project responds to the third point of the Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army) in 2016, which aims to generate the conditions to help former combatants integrate into civilian life following a sixty-year armed conflict. In this context, ex-combatants in the village of Conejo asked for measures to reinvigorate their local culture. To this end, a participatory methodology was designed linking living heritage capacity-building strategies and inventorying with the ‘Memory and Heritage’ approach of the Colombian Ministry of Culture, directed at safeguarding living heritage and collective memory to reconstruct the social fabric, diagnose cultural damage and foster symbolic reparation and cultural healing among communities affected by armed conflict. The proposed project sets out to promote new forms of coexistence, reconciliation and integration around the community’s local intangible cultural heritage.