On April 27, 2026, the International Scientific and Practical Round Table titled “How to protect cultural rights in motion? Safeguarding intangible cultural heritage amid displacement and migration” took place in the Romanian city of Iasi. The organizers — the Romanian Academy of Sciences (Iasi branch), the Institute for Cultural Research of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine, the Development Center “Democracy through Culture,” and the international CRAVT project team under the Erasmus+ program (Romania, Spain, Portugal, Moldova, and Ukraine) — selected the topic of discussion in response to the challenges currently facing culture and the international community. In particular, the discussion focused on the global phenomenon of forced migration caused by wars, armed conflicts, and economic and political conditions. According to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as of the second half of 2025, there were 117 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, 58% of whom were internally displaced persons. Among the other issues arising from this situation is the problem of ensuring cultural rights as an integral component of universal human rights.
Scholars from the Romanian Academy of Sciences, the National Heritage Institute of Romania, the International Program “Cultural Rights and Intellectual Property” (Australia), the Faculty of History and Heritage at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu (Romania), the Community Heritage Development Program (Portugal), and the World Alliance of Universities on Cultural Rights addressed current issues related to safeguarding the cultural rights of migrants. These included, in particular, the right to maintain a connection with their cultural heritage, the right to cultural memory, the right of access to cultural and natural resources, and the interrelationship with intellectual property rights.

The Director of the Institute for Cultural Research, Academician and Professor Hanna Chmil noted that one of the Institute’s fundamental research topics for the next three years will be “Cultural rights as an anthropological dimension of the 21st Century.” According to her, cultural rights are directly connected to the individual and encompass the full range of issues related to human existence in the modern world, including identity, dignity, memory, freedom, and creativity.

Valentyna Demian, a representative of the Institute for Cultural Research, demonstrated that the intangible cultural heritage of a particular community — even if that heritage has been devastated and nearly destroyed by war, and the community itself has been forcibly displaced — can restore the community’s resilience by ensuring its right to cultural memory and self-respect. This was exemplified by the tradition of pysankas from Mariupol, which was revived through the efforts of the staff of the Mariupol Museum of Local History and the renowned pysanka artist Zoia Stashuk.

Oleksandr Butsenko, adviser to the Directorate of the Institute for Cultural Research, stated that the global migration situation has given rise to a new term related to intangible cultural heritage — “travelling heritage,” referring to the heritage that displaced people carry with them on their journeys. According to him, this creates three major challenges: how such heritage will continue to exist in new circumstances; whether the rights of its bearers to practice it will be ensured; and how public authorities will shape policies for safeguarding both their own heritage and this “travelling heritage.”

Summing up the discussion, the participants of the round table agreed to continue joint research on the issues raised.