China: The China Culture and Development Partnership Framework

The main aim of the programme was to support China in designing and implementing policies that promote the rights of its ethnic minority groups (106 million people) in the five provinces in which they are concentrated: Tibet, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Yunnan and Guizhou. This was achieved by building government capacity to undertake rights and culture-based development, and by building capacity of minority communities to participate.

It also enabled ethnic minorities to further exercise their rights in three key areas: education, maternal and child health, and employment. The second aim of the programme was to empower ethnic minority groups in the five provinces to better manage their cultural resources and thus to benefit from culture-based economic development. This was achieved by building capacity to manage minority cultural resources, and by supporting the pro-poor development of culture-based tourism and the arts and crafts and creative industries sectors.

This Joint Programme was launched in October 2008 and was closed in March 2012.