A/73/227 enables each person to freely develop and contribute to the creation of cultures, including through the contestation of dominant norms and values. 36 47. Universality is not meant to be a weapon against cultural diversity, nor is cultural diversity a weapon against universality. The two principles are mutually reinforcing and interlocking. IV. Cultural relativism: deconstructing humanity in the name of culture 48. Cultural relativism has been repudiated by international human right s law as codified and accepted by Governments from every region of the world. Such a stance is often adopted with regard to the rights of others, deemed to have lesser or different rights claims because of the collective to which they are assumed to belong . Almost no one would relativize her or his own rights. As Fatiha Agag -Boudjahlat asks, why should some women accept what others refuse for themselves and their daughters? 37 There can be no category of “second-class humans”. 38 Yet, cultural relativism regularly rears its ugly head in United Nations forums and in university classrooms, even in the field of human rights. Both some apologists for colonialism and some who consider themselves “post-colonial” have sometimes used similar arguments to justify their cultural relativism. This must be tackled through creative, contemporary and fully resourced human rights education. Cultural relativism is no mere theoretical construct; the exclusions from rights protection it seeks to create have grave, sometimes lethal, consequences. 49. Millions of people around the world, including the Special Rapporteur ’s grandfather, Lakhdar Bennoune, a peasant leader, died defeating colonialism, itself a form of relativism. The power dynamics of hegemony and the imposition associate d with this phenomenon are to be scrupulously avoided. However, those who laid down their lives to end colonialism were fighting for more freedom, not less; for more rights, not less; for the right to be considered equally human and entitled to equal rights, not inherently different and entitled to different rights. Misusing colonial history to justify contemporary human rights abuses insults their memory and undermines their achievements. “The idea that different peoples were endowed with separate rights would have seemed absurd in the middle of the twentieth century to those struggling against colonial oppression, or trying to build new nations. ” 39 50. Efforts to advance the universality of rights have been made in every part of the world, though some are more recognized than others. “It is too easy to forget that the movements and revolts against slavery, against colonization, for self -determination, independence … and anti-apartheid in South Africa were vitalized and articulated using the universal language of rights and equality, what we call human rights today.” 40 __________________ 36 37 38 39 40 18-12312 United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2004: Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World (New York, 2004), p. 4. Fatiha Agag-Boudjahlat, Le grand détournement: féminisme, tolérance, racisme, culture (Paris, Cerf, 2017), p. 86 (translated by the Special Rapporteur). Human Rights Watch, “70 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: closing the implementation gap”, 28 February 2018. Gita Sahgal, “Who wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?”, Open Democracy, 2012, available at www.opendemocracy.net/5050/gita-sahgal/who-wrote-universal-declaration-ofhuman-rights. Chetan Bhatt, “The challenges to universalism”, presentation at the Special Rapporteur’s expert consultation, 28 February 2018. 15/26