BASIC PRINCIPLES

• To promote respect for and appreciation of the various types of human cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, with a view to bringing peoples and cultures, whatever their origin, into contact with each other.

• In light of the current trend tending to make cultures uniform, to strengthen cultural identities themselves in order to achieve intercultural enrichment, and at the same time overcome the obstacles of historical lack of understanding, and search for factors in achieving rapprochement and harmony among peoples. This implies above all respect for different cultural interpretations of a given heritage.

• To seek to establish cultural openness and a professional interrelationship between the sciences and the humanities, promote the capacity for dialogue and the willingness to understand that no shore of knowledge, like no shore of culture, is remote from or alien to the sphere of knowledge as a whole.

• To understand cultural routes or itineraries as a means of strengthening the collective responsibility of peoples toward cultural assets.

• To enrich the domain of reflection and analysis in its historical and cultural aspects through cultural routes or itineraries.

• To recognize that knowledge is an ongoing process of cause and effect that should be continuously explored for the sake of achieving understanding of and respect for all aspects of human activity given concrete expression in cultural routes or itineraries, which form an integral part of cultural heritage.

WORK PROGRAM

TOPICS TO BE STUDIED AND PROBLEMS TO BE APPROACHED ON THE BASIS OF INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

• To define methods for the correct identification, enhancement, promotion, and knowledge of cultural routes or itineraries and their significance.

• To draft guidelines for ensuring the proper protection and preservation both of Cultural Routes or Itineraries as a unit of work to be considered as a whole and of the separate cultural elements that comprise these routes or itineraries, through global planning and specific programs harmoniously integrated into such planning.

• To foster the creation of a collective awareness of the universal value of cultural routes or itineraries to the extent that they represent the interrelationship and cultural and historical processes of different human communities. To design as a part of this awareness, teaching and information programs tailored to various levels.

• To emphasize the interrelationship of cultural heritage values, both tangible and intangible, as defined by Cultural Routes or Itineraries, and stress in each instance the need for study, protection, and dissemination of information on both aspects as they relate to each other, since the elements of intangible culture make up a substantial part of the meaning and value of those of a tangible nature.

• To identify cultural routes or itineraries, using the scientific methods now being developed, and establish criteria and principles that can contribute positively to their knowledge, enhancement, promotion, protection, and preservation, in keeping with the objectives set forth above.

• To search for ways of possible collaboration among the different countries and communities involved, with the assistance of and action by international organizations, the competent Public Administrations, private institutions such as associations and foundations, and citizen involvement. To continue in this spirit to find possible ways and means for international, national, regional, and local funding and for cooperation plans.

• To collaborate with the ICOMOS International Committee on Legislation in the search for and dissemination of suitable legal measures and to work to have these measures enforced within the framework of Cultural Routes. To collaborate also with other international and national ICOMOS Committees.

Tenerife, September 8, 1998