Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Belder, Lucky --- "The right of access to and enjoyment of cultural heritage – Report 2011 (A/HRC/17/38)" [2017] ELECD 1427; in Belder, Lucky; Porsdam, Helle (eds), "Negotiating Cultural Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 59

Book Title: Negotiating Cultural Rights

Editor(s): Belder, Lucky; Porsdam, Helle

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781786435415

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: The right of access to and enjoyment of cultural heritage – Report 2011 (A/HRC/17/38)

Author(s): Belder, Lucky

Number of pages: 20

Abstract/Description:

The Report on Access to Cultural Heritage, hereafter called the Access Report, was published in 2011 and constitutes an important step forward in the cultural rights debate. For the first time, the connection between the right to express one’s cultural identity and the right of access to cultural heritage was given centre stage in a United Nations document advocating a human rights based approach to cultural heritage. It was UNESCO that first addressed access to cultural heritage. This became concrete in a series of international conventions on the protection of objects, manifestations and expressions of cultural heritage: the 1970 Illicit Trade Convention on international trade in cultural objects; the 1972 World Heritage Convention on monumental cultural heritage; the 2001 Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage; the 2003 Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention; and the 2005 Convention on the protection and promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. At the same time, these conventions developed an approach to heritage conservation that increasingly recognized the importance of the relevant local communities and their cultural rights. The potential value to the local cultural communities by thinking about cultural heritage in terms of economic and social resources and how they can contribute to sustainable development goals is increasingly acknowledged in the more recent culture conventions. The UNESCO conventions thereby demonstrate a shift in emphasis from the protection of material cultural objects towards the protection of immaterial and material values connecting these objects to a diversity of individual stakeholders and their communities.