[hr-education-na] Call for Essays on cultural rights

CALL FOR SHORT ESSAYS - Cultural Rights

www.cceia.org/page.php/prmID/114


HUMAN RIGHTS DIALOGUE (Spring 2005)

* CULTURAL RIGHTS *

Human Rights Dialogue, a semiannual publication of the Carnegie Council on
Ethics and International Affairs, is seeking short essays for its Spring
2005 issue. This issue of Human Rights Dialogue is devoted to the topic of
cultural rights-why they are important, their potential range of
application, and the tensions between cultural rights and other rights.

Since the early 1990s, conflict around the world has been marked by ethnic
tensions, and increasingly minorities are calling for political recognition
and respect for their cultural identities. Within the area of human rights,
the concept of cultural rights has the potential to address the injustices
these communities suffer. Yet scholars and practitioners have paid
surprisingly little attention to cultural rights, despite the fact that
they have been enshrined in international law since 1966 when the United
Nations adopted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(Article 27) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights (Article 15 a).

There are many reasons for the weak political commitment to cultural
rights. These include the international priority accorded to individual
rights. Although cultural rights are also individual rights, some
governments and majority populations have viewed cultural rights movements
based on intra-state or transnational self-determination as threatening to
the state-based model of sovereignty. More recently, minority and
indigenous peoples' rights to cultural heritage have collided with the
interests of transnational corporations in battles over intellectual
property rights. The question of cultural rights is further complicated by
claims that are perceived as violations of other human rights, as when
patriarchal practices are defended as "traditional" (e.g., female genital
mutilation). Moreover, there is the problem of clearly defining cultural
rights claims so that they can become an effective basis for legal action.
One part of this problem is the inconsistent application of the standards
for cultural rights at the state and international level. For these
reasons, cultural rights arguments have had their detractors across the
political spectrum, and even as they are defended, cultural rights are
perceived to be challenging arenas for advocacy.

Nevertheless, increasingly human rights activists, cultural advocacy
professionals, leaders of international institutions, and social scientists
recognize that the establishment and defense of cultural rights can provide
a means of, first, preserving cultural integrity and heritage, and, second,
achieving social justice for socially marginal groups. For example, more
and more minority groups consider cultural rights as a means to achieving
political recognition of their religious practices, traditional political
and legal systems, language and art. In this sense, a widening spectrum of
international conflicts is being characterized in cultural terms or as a
failure to take adequate account of cultural rights.

This issue of Human Rights Dialogue will focus on the evolving concept of
cultural rights and explore its potential effectiveness both in achieving
social justice and advancing the rights claims of ethnic minorities,
indigenous peoples and other cultural communities. We are interested in
articles from researchers, activists, and policy practitioners with
firsthand knowledge of an instance of the assertion of cultural rights
claims or cultural rights abuses, as well as the actions being taken to
address them. Where there is a cultural rights claim being made, the author
should identify the claimant, and succinctly describe the historical and
political context of the case, the nature of the claim, and the strategies
being used to press those claims. In cases where alternatives to cultural
rights claims are sought, the author should briefly describe the historical
and political context of the case and explain why a cultural rights claim
was not asserted.


Essays should shed light on one or more of the following questions:

- Given the widespread acceptance of other rights, including religious
freedom, civil and political rights, etc., why is the concept and mechanism
of cultural rights necessary? How relevant are cultural rights in
protecting the rights of the individual or the rights of groups?

- What are the linkages between cultural rights and other rights? How does
taking cultural rights seriously interrogate how we think about other rights?

- What are the tensions between cultural rights and other rights? Besides
women's rights, are there other rights that potentially conflict with
cultural rights?

- What are the policy dilemmas and obstacles to the advancement of cultural
rights?

- What concepts and strategies (e.g. "cultural citizenship," cultural
tourism, cultural diplomacy, etc.) have emerged in the promotion of
cultural rights? How effective are they?

- What is the relationship between "cultural rights" and "indigenous
peoples' rights" or the rights of ethnic minorities? As an advocacy
strategy for promoting cultural rights, is it better to focus on advancing
indigenous peoples' rights and thereby a definition of cultural rights
involving historical continuity and promoting "cultural heritage"? Or is it
better to broaden the definition of cultural rights to include the rights
of each person to create, practice and impart his or her own culture?

- Is the concept and mechanism of cultural rights available to any minority
community that has been historically excluded, including the gay community,
the disabled community, etc.?

- Do the various multicultural reform initiatives of states provide
promising means of attaining cultural rights? Is there any other role for
the state in promoting and protecting cultural rights? Are there examples
of national jurisprudence systems that have handled cultural rights in
innovative ways?

- How are cultural rights currently being addressed (or not) by the
international legal system?

- How effective has the cultural rights concept been in debates over
copyright, trademark, and intellectual property rights? How promising are
cultural rights in promoting more equitable standards for transnational
corporations?

- How do other regional or global advocacy campaigns, such as environmental
and anti-economic globalization advocacy, involve considerations of
cultural rights? Are cultural rights inherently incompatible with
globalization, or is it that the rules of globalization, in order to be
just, need to take cultural rights into account? If so, how should this be
done?

- How effective are transnational networks in promoting cultural rights in
specific places?

- Can cultural rights be used to address the claims of cultural majorities?
Is the concept of cultural rights compatible with the development of a
shared cultural commons?


* SUBMISSIONS *

Submissions should be in electronic form, no more than 1200 words, and
written in English. We seek essays written in an engaging, informal, and
testimonial style; footnotes should be avoided. Contributors are encouraged
to use excerpts from interviews in their essays. Please see
www.carnegiecouncil.org/dialogue for past issues of Human Rights Dialogue.

Publication in Dialogue is competitive. Authors whose submissions are
selected for publication must be prepared to subject their work to
substantial editing and respond to queries. Submissions that exceed the
word length will be shortened. The authors of selected essays will be asked
to submit:

-A short biographical note
-Full contact details for the organizations with which they are affiliated
as well as for organizations mentioned in their essays
-A photograph (head and shoulders)
-Photos or art to be considered for publication with the essay.

Authors whose work is published in Dialogue will receive an honorarium of
$100. Typically we feature 10-12 essays in the issue, which also appear in
Dialogue OnLine, the web companion to Dialogue available at the Carnegie
Council's website (downloadable in PDF or html); some essays are selected
for the online version only.


* DEADLINE *

Deadline for submissions is TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2004. Individuals
planning to submit an essay are encouraged to submit an abstract or
detailed outline as soon as possible. Inquiries should be directed to:

Joanne Bauer
Editor, Human Rights Dialogue
jbauer@cceia.org


* About the Carnegie Council and Human Rights Dialogue *

Founded in 1914, the Carnegie Council is a nonpartisan, nonsectarian
organization dedicated to research and education at the intersection of
ethics and international affairs. As a regular publication of the Carnegie
Council, Human Rights Dialogue promotes a global discussion of human rights
ideas and practices by featuring the perspectives of individuals and groups
around the world grappling with social injustices and the ways in which the
human rights framework can be used to address them. Presenting firsthand
accounts of human rights problems in specific contexts, Dialogue
contributors demonstrate how people around the world receive, respond to,
make sense of, and operationalize the human rights standards enshrined in
international law. In this way, the emphasis of the publication is on the
practice of human rights-and how the standards are being defined through
public action.



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