Intangible Heritage Law and Epistemic (In)justice: The participation of communities, groups, and individuals in safeguarding ICH

Taking into consideration the enactment of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2003, and the provision for the participation of communities, groups and individuals, this article aims to critically analyse the interactions between the right to intangible cultural heritage safeguard with the theory of justice, especially with the insurgent perspective of “epistemic justice”. The hypothesis states that the provision for the participation of communities, groups and individuals in the mentioned Convention, during the recognition of ICH or even when effectively safeguarding it, can be considered a new form of “epistemic justice”, in the scope of the participant perspective epistemic justice. The article is methodologically grounded in the field of legal theory, in dialogue with the theory of justice and International Law, and is divided into three topics: I – The 2003 UNESCO Convention: participation of communities, groups and individuals; II – Theoretical fundaments of epistemic Injustice; III – From epistemic injustice to epistemic justice in safeguarding ICH.