Safeguarding the indigenous people's intangible cultural heritage: looking for the most appropriate legal approach

Indigenous people are the people who had common history, bonds and traditions that was the reason why they stand out from the main society and enjoy their own specific systems and patterns of values and cultures. These people consider protection of their culture and intangible heritage that is mostly in oral form tantamount to the element of survival and continuation of their identification in the passing of time and preventing from integration in other dominant societies on surrounding world. Some legal approaches has been proposed to protect the intangible heritage of indigenous people that are divided into two categories: the first one is private and intellectual property laws that offers solutions relying on various dimensions such as copyright, patent, the law of contracts and the law of responsibility. Human rights rules is the second way that introduces new mechanisms to safeguard the indigenous people’s right to their intangible heritage and folklore based on the framework of “cultural rights” and human rights doctrines which has reflected well in international documents and tribunal’s case law. The right of indigenous people to protect their intangible heritage as a part of their identity is regarded as a customary human rights rule.