A/HRC/43/50 are considered traditional human rights defender spaces or roles. This can make it more difficult for Governments, international organizations and civil society to recognize them, but in no way undercuts their status as human rights defenders. They deserve the same level of attention and protection as other human rights defenders. 11. Many people may be cultural rights defenders, or function as such, without necessarily describing themselves in those terms. These include anthropologists, archaeologists, archivists, artists, athletes, cultural heritage professionals and defenders, cultural workers, curators and museum workers, educators, historians, librarians, media producers, public space defenders, scientists, staff and directors of cultural institutions, writers, defenders of cultural diversity in accordance with international standards and those promoting intercultural understanding and dialogue. 12. It remains important to respect a person’s right to characterize their own work and to recognize that, in certain contexts, people may fear they will be further penalized or stigmatized for being labelled a human rights defender, or they may prefer not to define themselves. However, in other contexts, there may be significant added value for being recognized as such, including funding, acknowledgement, protection and various forms of support. The relevant constituencies should be clearly consulted and engaged in participatory processes to discuss such labelling or status, and the implications for their work, based on their own understandings and needs, which may be diverse. Moreover, whether or not someone is or can be a cultural rights defender depends on the objective nature of their work, regardless of official restrictions, for example, on who is considered an artist, such as those requiring artists to be authorized or officially recognized, or members of a professional association. 13. Cultural rights defenders may work to protect and promote the cultural rights, including the right to take part in cultural life without discrimination, of specific constituencies, such as indigenous peoples; members of minorities; women; persons with disabilities; peasants and rural persons; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons; youth or older persons; or refugees and migrants. 14. Women human rights defenders who defend women’s cultural rights, including their rights to take part in cultural life without discrimination, not to participate in certain cultural practices or to change those practices in accordance with international human rights standards, and to enjoy equal access to cultural sites, including heritage sites (A/HRC/34/56, para. 77), are cultural rights defenders. Women cultural rights defenders promote feminist approaches to cultures, and the transformative and empowering nature of equality in cultural rights that can also lead to the realization of other human rights (A/67/287, para. 5). They enable women to embrace or reject particular cultural practices and identities and to revise and (re)negotiate existing traditions, values or practices (A/67/287, para. 28). The work of women cultural rights defenders strengthens the rights of women to participate in, have access to and contribute to cultural life in equality, and thus to arrive at gender justice within cultural systems. This aspect of the struggle for gender equality has received insufficient attention. A general recommendation by the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women on article 13 (c) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (guaranteeing women’s rights to participate in all aspects of cultural life), taking into consideration the relevant work of the cultural rights mandate, could make a significant contribution. 15. As the Special Rapporteur has stressed, all people and all peoples have culture, not merely certain categories or geographies of people (A/HRC/31/59, para. 8). Indeed all people have cultural rights, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes clear. Some have faced particular threats to such rights owing to histories of colonization, domination or exclusion, for which there has often been insufficient accountability. 16. Cultural rights are essential to the struggles of indigenous peoples for human rights, including the right to self-determination and land rights. In the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the General Assembly noted that indigenous peoples had the right to practise and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. Indigenous languages are a source of identity, belonging and knowledge systems that are critical to the 4