A/HRC/25/49 United Nations General Assembly Distr.: General 23 January 2014 Original: English Human Rights Council Twenty-fifth 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 Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Farida Shaheed Memorialization processes* Summary The Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Farida Shaheed, submits the present report in accordance with Human Rights Council resolution 19/6. In the report, the Special Rapporteur addresses memorialization processes of the events of the past in post-conflict and divided societies, with a specific focus on memorials and museums of history/memory. States exiting conflicts or periods of repression are increasingly propelled to engage in active memorial policies as a means of ensuring recognition for the victims, as reparation for mass or grave violations of human rights and as a guarantee of non-recurrence. The Special Rapporteur stresses the significance of actions in the cultural field for achieving the overall societal goals of transitional justice, while noting that entire cultural and symbolic landscapes are designed through memorials and museums, which both reflect and shape, negatively or positively, social interactions and people’s cognition of identities – their own as well as that of others. Addressing some difficult challenges encountered in memorializing the past, the Special Rapporteur makes a number of recommendations grounded in the principle that memorialization should be understood as a process that provides to those affected by human rights violations the spaces necessary to articulate their narratives. Memorial practices should stimulate and promote civic engagement, critical thinking and discussion regarding the representation of the past, but equally the contemporary challenges of exclusion and violence. * The annex to the present report is circulated in the language of submission only. GE.14-10501 *1410501*