Activating the potentiality of local community participation in preserving cultural heritage

The study is concerned with developing an integrative approach for the local community's role in preserving heritage hand-by-hand with institutions and experts concerned with heritage. This would be done in an exchange process with a dual-phase by investigating the development of concepts related to the local community according to international organizations concerned with world heritage. The growing interest that the local community can play led UNESCO in 2007 to adopt local and indigenous communities as a strategic principle within the five strategic principles of the Convention. It went beyond that to rely on the role of the community in the nomination process and not the opinion of experts for heritage sites, relying on the idea that the community’s recognition of the importance of the site is a guarantee of its continued responsibility in protecting this cultural heritage. The study includes three main axes. The first deals with the theoretical framework of the role of the local community in heritage preservation processes. The second axis specializes in reviewing pioneering experiences in conservation projects within the development perspective of the local community in light of the preservation of heritage resources. Then we discuss in the third axis the results reached by the research, which showed that there is a tangible role for the community in heritage preservation processes. The impact varies according to three stages: the planning stage, the implementation stage, and the evaluation stage. This can represent a work program for heritage institutions in Iraq and the role that the community can play in light of projects to preserve its cultural resources, where it is possible to provide protection and sustainability for these resources as well as developing the local communities to which this heritage belongs.