Harare — Zimbabwe has reconstituted the National Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee to work towards the safeguarding and conservation of traditional practices and knowledge that are faced with extinction.

Initially formed in 2002, the committee had been dormant for years owing to lack of resources and proper coordination.

Intangible cultural heritage are practices, expressions, knowledge, skills and cultural spaces that communities, groups or individual recognise as belonging to their cultural heritage.

While they may differ with each region, some of these traditional practices include social practices such as rituals, performing arts and oral traditions in the form of language and this encompasses proverbs and riddles.

The chairman of the committee Stephen Chifunyise said the team would among other things establish the criteria for identifying cultural practices for the national intangible cultural heritage inventory.

"One of the major tasks of the committee would be to assist in the creation of awareness and development of institutional capacity on how important it is to safeguard these traditional practices.

"As a nation it is important that we need to safeguard such practices from extinction. This is what makes us who we are.

"We owe it to our children to explain were we came from as a nation and the practices that we can identify with," he said.

Made up of experts from various institutions that deal on cultural heritage issues, the committee is also expected to stimulate active participation in the implementation of one of UNESCO's important conventions, the 2003 Convention for the Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage that Zimbabwe also ratified.

After becoming part to the convention, Zimbabwe, which clearly showed a keen interest on heritage issues, then participated in UNESCO programmes that sought to identify masterpieces that could become added to the United Nation's body inventory on cultural heritage.

This development led to the proclamation of Mbende Jerusarema as a masterpiece by UNESCO in 2005.