Morocco Moves to Protect Cultural Heritage Amid Regional Tensions

"In order to avoid the politicization of certain files related (heritage registration with UNESCO, editor’s note) to Moroccan culture, we will put in place legally recognized measures to protect our intangible heritage made up of many ancestral know-how," explains to Medias24 Mehdi Bensaïd, Minister of Culture, ensuring that the safeguards currently being developed are a brake on any foreign attempts to partially appropriate Moroccan know-how. The achievement of this objective will notably involve a synergy of actions between the Ministries of Crafts and Culture and the national industrialists. They will have to register a maximum of labels with the Moroccan Office of Industrial and Commercial Property (OMPIC).

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The office has already registered about sixty labels. The minister will specify that the artisans of the spiritual capital have been able to file an appeal against a German sports equipment company (Adidas) that wanted to use the pattern of the zellige of Fez. A way to follow to label "for the first time in the world" know-how, first at the national level at the OMPIC, then internationally. It will therefore be up to the two ministries to encourage artisans to multiply the filing of Moroccan appellations which, in the long run, will cover all the know-how of the intangible heritage of the kingdom. In the same dynamic, the OMPIC will also be called upon to recognize the know-how related to Moroccan customs, such as the way of organizing a wedding, the henna ceremony... of which neighboring countries could dispute the paternity in the future.

"Once we have put in place legally recognized international safeguards, the candidates for cultural appropriation will be less inclined to repeat the offense," is convinced the minister, who also intends to count on the mobilization of civil society. He recalled in this sense the role of whistleblower of a Moroccan personality. The latter had warned his ministry that the Algerian Office of Crafts had appropriated the photo of his mother to illustrate "the Algerian character" of a caftan.