A/HRC/17/38/Add.1 United Nations General Assembly Distr.: General 21 March 2011 Original: English Human Rights Council Seventeenth session Agenda item 3 Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development Report of the independent expert in the field of cultural rights, Farida Shaheed Addendum Mission to Brazil (8-19 November 2010)* Summary At the invitation of the Government of Brazil, the independent expert in the field of cultural rights undertook a mission to Brazil from 8 to 19 November 2010. The present report examines aspects of the promotion and the protection of cultural rights in Brazil, with particular attention to the right to take part in cultural life, the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications, and the right to use one’s own language. It also refers to the cultural rights of indigenous peoples and Afro-Brazilians. The independent expert takes into consideration the universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated nature of all human rights, as stressed in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (section I, paragraph 5). Accordingly, the findings presented in this report concern human rights that are directly related to the enjoyment of cultural rights, including but not limited to, the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief. In this report, the independent expert is guided by available working definitions of culture, which stress that culture can be understood as a product, a process and a way of life. Such definitions are found in the preamble of the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, and general comment No. 21 (2009) on the right to take part in cultural life, adopted by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. * GE.11-12218 The summary of the present report is circulated in all official languages. The report itself, contained in the annex to the summary, is circulated in the language of submission only.