Cultural Rights - Ethnic Groups Cultural Preservation

Ethnic Groups Cultural Preservation

Cultural rights of groups focus on such things as religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous societies that are in danger of disappearing. Cultural rights include a group’s ability to preserve its way of life, such as child rearing, continuation of language, and security of its economic base in the nation, which it is located. The related notion of indigenous intellectual property rights (IPR) has arisen in attempt to conserve each society’s culture base and essentially prevent ethnocide.

The cultural rights movement has been popularized because much traditional cultural knowledge has commercial value, like ethno-medicine, cosmetics, cultivated plants, foods, folklore, arts, crafts, songs, dances, costumes, and rituals. Studying ancient cultures may reveal evidence about the history of the human race and shed more light on our origin and successive cultural development. However, the study, sharing and commercialization of such cultural aspects can be hard to achieve without infringing upon the cultural rights of those who are a part of that culture.

Cultural rights should be taken into consideration also by local policies. In that sense, the Agenda 21 for culture, the first document with worldwide mission that advocates establishing the groundwork of an undertaking by cities and local governments for cultural development, includes as cultural rights as one of the principles and states: “Local governments recognize that cultural rights are an integral part of human rights, taking as their reference the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)”.