A Culture of Human Rights and the Right to Culture

Culture is critical to just about every area of society and especially law. From this viewpoint, the aim of the article is to focus on the concept of culture and its place in human rights law. This interdisciplinary theoretical understanding of the concept of “culture” serves to redirect attention towards a range of issues that have long been marginalised, but which warrant culture a central place in human rights research and on the international human rights agenda. As a consequence, the main argument developed throughout the paper consists in a summon for the human rights agenda on culture to reaffirm the universal and overarching importance of culture in advancing respect for human rights and to seek to rebalance the present agenda dominated by a right to cultural identity with an urgent emphasis on the fundamental importance of “cultural equipment” and cultural infrastructure for individual freedom.