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Graber, Christoph Beat --- "Using Human Rights to Tackle Fragmentation in the Field of Traditional Cultural Expressions: An Institutional Approach" [2008] ELECD 326; in Graber, Beat Christoph; Burri-Nenova, Mira (eds), "Intellectual Property and Traditional Cultural Expressions in a Digital Environment" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: Intellectual Property and Traditional Cultural Expressions in a Digital Environment

Editor(s): Graber, Beat Christoph; Burri-Nenova, Mira

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847209214

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Using Human Rights to Tackle Fragmentation in the Field of Traditional Cultural Expressions: An Institutional Approach

Author(s): Graber, Christoph Beat

Number of pages: 25

Extract:

5. Using human rights to tackle
fragmentation in the field of
traditional cultural expressions: an
institutional approach
Christoph Beat Graber*

1. INTRODUCTION: THE CHALLENGE OF DOUBLE
FRAGMENTATION
Academic scholarship and international policy making related to developing
legal safeguards for traditional forms of knowledge and creativity are faced
with and challenged by double fragmentation. The first type of fragmentation
is caused by collisions between competing regimes trying to develop legal
disciplines for effective protection of traditional knowledge and cultural
expressions. Manifold multilateral institutions and initiatives are engaged in
the protection of indigenous peoples' cultural and intellectual property (IP),
including the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and in partic-
ular its Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic
Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (IGC), the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP), the Convention on Biological Diversity,
the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the
United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the
International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Health Organization
(WHO), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), and the Open-ended Ad Hoc
Intergovernmental Panel on Forests.1 The international community has shown


* The author thanks Elizabeth Burns Coleman, Mira Burri-Nenova, Marion
Panizzon and Gunther Teubner for comments on earlier drafts, and Thomas Steiner for
research assistance. The support of the Ecoscientia Foundation is gratefully acknowl-
edged.
1 WIPO, Intellectual Property Needs and Expectations of Traditional

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