Special Issue Introduction

Cultural Rights and Global Development

Abstract

In our age of huge religious, political and territorial conflict, the essential cultural dimension of place, identity, values, and governance, is all too easily ignored. This special issue is given to the social and developmental significance of culture and cultural policies in a Rights framework. Since the 1966 UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, how far has the concept of culture as a ‘right’ been developed? Since the debates surrounding the UNESCO sponsored 2007 Fribourg Declaration, to what extent are Cultural Rights now accepted as an essential dimension of Human Rights? Perhaps using Human Rights law to facilitate Cultural expression and participation has been problematic and other legal instruments are more effective (such as cultural policies on access and equality, or heritage protections, or international treatises like the 2005 UN Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions). Or perhaps a sustained legal, social and development discourse on Cultural Rights by writers, research scholars and development agencies, has not been sufficiently consistent and robust in any area of development research and policy.