International Trade in Indigenous Cultural Heritage
Lucerne, 17 - 19 January 2011

The Exploratory Workshop on International Trade in Indigenous Cultural Heritage (IT ICH) was held in Lucerne, Switzerland, on January 17-19, 2011. It provided a forum for Indigenous and Non-Indigenous experts from relevant legal fields including international trade, intellectual property, human rights, cultural property and cultural heritage, to freely and fully examine the topic of Indigenous cultural heritage in trade, human rights and intellectual property from various jurisdictions.
The Exploratory Workshop included scientific participants from Australia, Canada, Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as representatives of the international organizations, WTO, WIPO and UNESCO and other Swiss authorities from the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the Swiss Federal Office of Culture (BAK) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IGE).
The participants discussed the workshop topic from 10 perspectives each of which corresponded to one panel. In each of the 10 panels, one scientific keynote speaker and one or two discussants (mainly practitioners) addressed specified scientific questions. This ensured coherence, facilitated comparability of the research results, and allowed testing of scientific solutions for feasibility and practicability.

Some visual impressions please find here. See the workshop’s programme here. And for the flyer of the held lecture of laboratorium lucernaiuris click here.

As a follow-up to the Exploratory Workshop, quality papers will be published in a professionally edited book by Edward Elgar in 2012. Please click here for the flyer.