A/HRC/58/60 research and enjoyment purposes and to enrich understanding of cultural diversity and historical contexts, for example through digital archives.57 14. Digital technologies58 open new possibilities for experiences of cultural heritage and the engagement of individuals and communities, transcending physical and temporal limitations to create dynamic, immersive learning experiences. They enable the history of a heritage to be retraced and dispersed collections to be reconstructed, allowing for artefacts to be presented in their original contexts. Digital technologies may help to preserve a community’s collective memory of specific objects and practices, enabling better documentation of cultural artefacts, sites and practices with accuracy, including for reparation purposes in case of destruction during conflict or disaster. They may also assist practitioners in inventorying cultural heritage and enhance the work of archaeologists, architects, artists, curators and all sorts of cultural heritage professionals who cannot travel to gain on-site access to specific cultural heritage for various reasons, including economical, ecological and security concerns. Digital technologies provide crucial tools to disseminate information, raise awareness of the importance and significance of cultural heritage and of cultural diversity, while enhancing education on cultural heritage for all and promoting mutual recognition, understanding and respect. They can be used to ensure that those affected by crisis, in particular refugees and internally displaced persons, and migrants more generally, continue to have access through digital platforms to the cultural heritage from which they have been separated. Digital technologies may enhance monitoring of the destruction of cultural heritage through satellite imagery, especially during conflict and natural disasters, which can be useful for accountability or restoration purposes. They open up new possibilities to enhance the participation of communities in the interpretation of and meaning given to cultural heritage, thereby making their own narratives visible alongside those of cultural heritage professionals, and, more generally, enabling individuals to play a meaningful role in cultural heritage. 15. Such fantastic promises, however, can only be realized holistically and sustainably if implemented through a cultural rights-based approach, which brings with it the principles of the universality and indivisibility of rights, non-discrimination, equality, participation, and respect for cultural diversity. It means ensuring non-discrimination in selecting, identifying and protecting cultural heritage; equitable benefits; the real and meaningful participation of source and guardian communities to ensure that digitalization protects cultural heritage as a dynamic element of collective identity and memory; respect for cultural diversity in the protection and preservation of cultural heritage; and, finally, revisability and accountability. 16. Realizing these promises will not be possible without putting strategies in place to actually implement them. Goals should be set for each objective, towards which financial support and other efforts from States and relevant stakeholders should be directed, as a matter of priority. Otherwise, the potentials of digital technologies and digitalization may be used as a façade to disguise other goals, particularly economic goals, with no or little consideration given to the ascribed meanings of heritage or to the identities, justice and well-being of communities. 17. The present report certainly cannot provide solutions to all of the challenges posed by the digitalization of cultural heritage. Its purpose is to draw the attention of States and other stakeholders to a number of questions that should systematically be addressed from a cultural rights perspective, namely: who holds the decision-making power when it comes to when and what to digitalize for preservation purposes? Who has a seat at the table when making such decisions? In other words, what can be done to ensure that what is digitalized is what really matters to people? How do we take into consideration the diverse interests, views and narratives of individuals and communities according to their relationship to specific cultural heritages? 18. The Special Rapporteur stresses that by not addressing the above-mentioned challenging questions not only will the above-mentioned potentials of the digitalization of 57 58 GE.25-01705 Such as the European digital library platform, Europeana; and the Vatican Library platform, DigiVatLib. In the present report, the Special Rapporteur focuses on digitalization and digitization, two processes leveraging digital technologies in the field of heritage. 7