S'beiba, the ancestral ceremonies of  the region of Djanet (Illizi) was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the United Nations Organization for Science and Culture (UNESCO) announced in a release sent to APS.
The Unesco Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which met on Monday at the UN Agency Paris-based headquarters, decided to include the S'beiba on the list of intangible heritage of humanity, in addition to seven other elements proposed by several countries.
The feast of S'beiba celebrated every Ashura, in the first month of the Islamic lunar calendar by the population of Djanet (Illizi, south of Algeria), is a traditional festival drawing its origin in the ancient history of a war fought between the two main Tuareg tribes of Tassili n'Adjjers and they sign peace pact after years of fighting.
The Sebeïba ritual and ceremonies are an important marker of cultural identity for Tuareg people living in the Algerian Sahara. They reinforce social cohesion, symbolically warding off potential violence between rival communities by simulating and transposing it to the realm of artistic competition