UNESCO wishes to protect intangible cultural heritage, or ‘safeguard’ it. To protect, or secure, means: to give a future to intangible cultural heritage, to find a form that also appeals to future generations and to take away the bottlenecks that block the way to the future of this ICH.
Intangible cultural heritage is always dynamic and under development. Protection therefore does not mean: keeping it as it used to be in the past. UNESCO does not want to turn ICH into museum pieces.
Protection and safeguarding of intangible heritage is done by the practitioners themselves. In the Netherlands the Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage can offer support in this respect.