A/HRC/55/44/Add.1 and guidelines to ensure all people, regardless of their place of residence, can fully enjoy and exercise their cultural rights. She found the discussion with representatives of the Parliamentary Committees on Cultural and Media Affairs and on Internal Affairs and Community on these disparities and how to overcome them insightful. 26. According to the quadrennial periodic report of Germany to UNESCO in 2020, 3 public expenditure in culture and the arts represented 1.73 per cent of total public spending in 2018, with more than 80 per cent of it coming from the individual states. At the municipal level, however, securing consistent funding for cultural institutions and supporting free access to performance spaces to ensure artists could avoid the precarity inherent in their profession was still a major challenge. 27. Areas of competency at the federal level are stipulated in the Constitution or arise from the Government’s obligation to represent the State as a whole. The Minister of State for Culture and the Media, who reports directly to the Chancellor, has five areas of competency, including basic rights, promotion of the arts and culture, remembrance, including colonialism, and heritage and society, including diversity.4 28. The Office of the Minister of State for Culture and the Media provides funding for approximately 200 cultural institutions across Germany, as well as for the important 360° Fund for New City Cultures. This independent fund is aimed at supporting the development of, and cooperation between, artistic institutions and certain important festivals. It provides 50 per cent of the funding for diversity agents on the staff of participating cultural institutions and a continuing training programme to increase diversity in the structures of those institutions and in the content they present. The Minister of State is also invested in the recovery of the cultural sector from the impacts of budget cuts imposed during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. 29. Support for international cooperation in the performing arts, literature and film sectors is a significant part of the cultural relations and education policy of Germany. Artist mobility and exchange are promoted through artist residencies and fellowships from the municipalities, the states and the Federal Government, as well as from foundations. The Federal Foreign Office also has a sector dedicated to culture. The Special Rapporteur was introduced to the Martin Roth Initiative, which supports artists who are persecuted in their home country in reaching safer places, either in Germany or in a third country; to the network of Goethe Institutes; and to Kulturweit, a programme of the German Commission for UNESCO that organizes stays abroad for young people during which they volunteer in cultural and educational institutions. III. Realizing cultural rights in Germany: specific issues A. Awareness of cultural rights standards in all public bodies 30. Throughout her visit, the Special Rapporteur observed the need to strengthen the common messages that derive from the international standards on cultural rights at the national level. The specific obligations that Germany has undertaken by signing and ratifying international instruments are not always clear to the administration at various levels, and there is not always awareness regarding the role of each department in relation to implementing or monitoring those obligations. 31. Although the arts and culture are free according to the Constitution, rights and freedoms in the field of culture, and in particular the manifold implications of the right to take part in cultural life, are not explicitly recognized. Representatives of the Government indicated that one reason for that was to avoid the financial implications that would derive from recognizing such rights explicitly, including the need for the Government to provide means for their full realization. The Special Rapporteur stresses that Germany already has an obligation to respect, protect and fully implement cultural rights for all, including to ensure 3 4 GE.24-01816 Available at https://en.unesco.org/creativity/governance/periodic-reports/submission/6827. See www.kulturstaatsministerin.de/DE/startseite/startseite_node.html (in German). 7