A/HRC/20/26 student exchanges, sharing information, exchanging equipment, ensuring technology transfers and entering into technical cooperation agreements (Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, Greece, Japan, Peru, Serbia, Spain, Uruguay). Measures have been taken to promote access to the Internet, open access to scientific knowledge, the dissemination of scientific knowledge among the public and public participation in science-related matters. Specific programmes address disparities in access to scientific advances by, inter alia, women and persons with disabilities,5 and in rural communities (Peru). Some States facilitate the participation of women in scientific enterprise (Germany, Greece, Japan, Serbia, Spain, Viet Nam). C. Relationship with other human rights 1. The rights to science and culture: a strong link 16. The rights to science and culture are interlinked. Importantly, the Human Rights Council, in its resolution 10/23, established the mandate on cultural rights. In resolution 19/6, the Council renewed the mandate, deeming it necessary to reaffirm “he right of everyone to take part in cultural life and to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications. 17. The two rights have interesting similarities. Both relate to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding and to human creativity in a constantly changing world. The preparatory work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights reflected the intention of the drafters to include a provision promoting universal access to science and culture. 6 In addition, it has been suggested that, at the signing of the Universal Declaration, “the United Nations had come to envision the sharing of scientific and cultural knowledge as something that could unite an international community – a common task that would contribute to cross-cultural understanding and yield a more secure world”7 and that these international norms require a public good approach to knowledge innovation and diffusion”. 8 This idea is reflected in the Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), mandated to protect “the world’s inheritance of books, works of art and monuments of history and science” and to encourage international “cooperation in all branches of intellectual activity”. 18. A prerequisite for implementing both rights is ensuring the necessary conditions for everyone to continuously engage in critical thinking about themselves and the world they inhabit, and to have the opportunity and wherewithal to interrogate, investigate and contribute new knowledge with ideas, expressions and innovative applications, regardless of frontiers. More precisely, the right to participate in cultural life entails ensuring conditions that allow people to reconsider, create and contribute to cultural meanings and manifestations in a continuously developing manner.9 The right to enjoy the benefits of science and its applications entails the same possibilities in the field of science, understood as knowledge that is testable and refutable, including revisiting and refuting existing theorems and understandings. Finally, both cultural and science-related rights encompass 5 6 7 8 9 6 See submission by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), pp. 11-13. See in particular Lea Shaver, “The right to science and culture”, Wisconsin Law Review, 2010, p. 134. See also Mylène Bidault, La protection internationale des droits culturels, Bruylant, 2009, p. 431. L. Shaver, “The right to science and culture” (see footnote 6), p. 141 Ibid., p. 128. A/HRC/14/36, paras. 30 and 51.