: Gabon - Information related to Intangible Cultural Heritage
- Date of deposit of instrument: 18-06-2004
- UNESCO Regional Officer for Intangible Heritage: Girard, Françoise
- Committee Member: 2006 / 2010
Following information is provided for easy reference, but has no official status. For comments or to update information, please contact the regional officer concerned via ich@unesco.org.
Ongoing activities
Assistance to Member States for inventory-making of their intangible heritage
Within the framework of an activity undertaken by the UNESCO Office in Libreville, a catalogue of intangible heritage in Gabon will be elaborate.
Past activities
Protection for linguistic heritage of the Pygmies in Gabon (2004-2005)
During the biennium 2002-2003, the UNESCO cluster office in Libreville undertook several activities relating to the protection of cultural resources of the Pygmies in Gabon, such as the project, “Protection for cultural resources of the Pygmies in Gabon and their integration into the process of development” which allowed, on the one hand, to better understand the culture of forest people and, on the other hand, to identify difficulties related to the safeguarding of the culture. Languages spoken by the Pygmies in Gabon are one of the elements which should be rapidely intervened so as to ensure their continuity.
Following this first project, another linguistic project was carried out during the biennium 2004-2005 to develop a lexicon (in the course of finalization) of the language of the Pygmies Bakoya (koya-French-koya) in cooperation with the University Laboratory of the Oral Traditions (LUTO) affiliated to the University Omar Bongo.
