At the end of 2020, ICOMOS made the resolution that People-Centred Approaches to Cultural Heritage were to be promoted so that the diverse cultural, environmental, and socio-economic concerns of people and communities are taken into account when local, national and international heritage policies and practices are developed.
Amund Sinding-Larsen of Our Common Dignity Initiative was awarded the highest distinction of ICOMOS on the closing day of the recent 20th ICOMOS General Assembly, held online from 3-16 December 2020.
ICOMOS Latvia, in cooperation with the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the University of Latvia and the ICOMOS working group Our Common Dignity - Rights-based Approaches (OCB-RBA) held on 30 October 2020 an international online scientific conference “The importance of human rights in the heritage management: values, rights and heritage among the stakeholders’ interests”. The aim of the conference was to draw attention to the importance of human rights in the management of cultural heritage, as well as to look at Latvia's experience with issues connected to cultural heritage and stakeholders.
The team at Our Common Diginity and Icomos-Brasil are looking forward to offering a week-long workshop on Human Rights and Heritage Management 9-13 November 2020, where we will focus on what can be considered the two most difficult aspects of human rights theory: (1) how do we understand "culture" and (2) how can we deal with the fact that some rights are group-based or collective and others are individual? How can we balance conflicts between the rights of different communities?
ICOMOS Estonia and Estonian Academy of Arts hosted on 2-5 September 2020 in Tallinn and in the web the "Our Common Dignity" working group training course "Heritage Communities and Human Rights". Training course was held together with IUCN and ICCROM.