A/HRC/55/44/Add.1 I. Introduction 1. The Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights conducted a mission to Germany at the invitation of the Government from 28 November to 9 December 2022. She thanks the Government for the invitation to visit the country and for its cooperation, which allowed her to hold discussions on various aspects of her mandate. 2. During her mission, the Special Rapporteur visited Berlin, Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. She held meetings with several government officials, at the federal, regional and local levels, who hold responsibility in the areas of international human rights; combating discrimination, including against Sinti and Roma; culture and cultural cooperation; family affairs; gender identity and sexual diversity; migration, refugees and integration; and diversity policies and social innovation. In addition, she held meetings with members of Parliament and representatives of cultural institutions and agencies. She also met with artists, academics, representatives of civil society and of cultural communities, as well as with representatives of the German Institute for Human Rights and the German Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The Special Rapporteur thanks all those persons and institutions for their time, commitment and the wealth of information they shared with her. She also extends her thanks to the colleagues from United Nations agencies for their assistance. II. General context and framework 3. At the time of the Special Rapporteur’s mission, the three-party coalition Government had been in power in Germany for just over a year. The coalition agreement included several promising commitments of high relevance for cultural rights and diversity, such as the drafting of the Participation Act, recognizing migrants’ organizations as important partners; a review of the naturalization process to make it more accessible, by reducing the qualifying period to five years and allowing everyone to hold multiple nationalities; and campaigns for more acceptance of diversity and against various forms of racism and “anti-queer” sentiments. 4. The agreement also stated the intention of the Government to include culture as a State goal in the Constitution and referred to the need to foster arts, culture and diversity and to improve the social situation of artists and cultural workers. The Special Rapporteur hopes that, in drafting those important pieces of legislation, the Government will take the opportunity to include and implement cultural rights as enshrined – and as currently interpreted – in instruments of international human rights law. A. International human rights framework 5. Germany ratified both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on 17 December 1973; the covenants contain the most significant provisions for the protection of cultural rights. Articles 18, 19, 21, 22 and 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protect, respectively, the rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, to freedom of opinion and expression, including in the form of art, of peaceful assembly, and to freedom of association, as well as the rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion and use their own language. Articles 13 and 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights protect the right to education and the rights to take part in cultural life, to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications, and to benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which a person is the author. 6. Germany also has obligations with respect to cultural rights through other important international treaties, such as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination GE.24-01816 3