Cultural Human Rights and the UNESCO Convention: More than Meets the Eye?

Abstract

Cultural rights form one of the “categories” of human rights. This categorization of human rights mainly stems from the titles of two international human rights treaties that were adopted in 1966: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR: UN General Assembly, 1966a, entry into force 23 March 1976) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR: UN General Assembly, 1966b, entry into force 3 January 1976). Although cultural rights are mentioned in the title of the ICESCR, the text of this treaty does not make clear which provisions in the treaty belong to the category of cultural rights. In fact, none of the international legal instruments provides a definition of “cultural rights” and, consequently, different lists could be compiled of international legal provisions that could be labelled “cultural rights”.¹