A/HRC/40/53 United Nations General Assembly Distr.: General 17 January 2019 Original: English Human Rights Council Fortieth session 25 February–22 March 2019 Agenda items 2 and 3 Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development Cultural rights: tenth anniversary report* Report of the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights Summary To mark the tenth anniversary of the mandate on cultural rights and the seventieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Special Rapporteur provides an overview of the work of her mandate since its creation in 2009 and suggests strategies for advancing cultural rights during the next decade. She argues that the anniversaries are a critical moment for recommitting to the realization of article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees, inter alia, the right of all freely to take part in cultural life. That is vital because of the inherent importance of those rights within the universal human rights framework and so as to implement other rights in the Declaration and achieve other critical goals such as sustainable development, peace and inclusion. * The annex to the present document is reproduced as received, in the language of submission only. GE.19-00829(E) 