UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, created from the post-Second World War effort to build peace through education, science and culture. Its mandate includes protecting cultural heritage, promoting education and scientific cooperation, supporting cultural diversity and strengthening the conditions for intercultural dialogue. The UNESCO Special Committee in this simulation focuses specifically on the intersection of cultural heritage, Indigenous knowledge and rapidly changing digital technologies. It should approach heritage as both a material inheritance and a living system of languages, practices, knowledge and community relationships.
Agenda: Preserving cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge systems in the age of AI and digital globalization
Artificial intelligence and digital technologies create major opportunities to document, restore, translate and share cultural materials, but they also raise risks involving consent, ownership, misrepresentation, unauthorized extraction of traditional knowledge and the loss of community control over cultural data. The agenda should examine how digitization can strengthen, rather than replace, living cultural practices and intergenerational transmission. Delegates may discuss community consent, Indigenous data sovereignty, ethical digitization of archives, protection of sacred or restricted knowledge, cultural-property rights, language technologies for endangered languages, and fair attribution when AI systems are trained on cultural materials.
