A/76/178 I. Introduction 1. To paraphrase the words of Haitian poet Jacques Stephen Aléxis, we are all the children of “an infinity of cultures.” 1 As the Special Rapporteur concludes her mandate, she notes that the need to understand and respond to that reality is a critical task for the field of cultural rights. The task is nothing less than “conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism or multiculturalism of the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity.” 2 That is essential for realizing the cultural rights of everyone without discrimination. 2. Hence, in this, her final report to the General Assembly, the Special Rapporteur addresses the need for a human rights-based approach to questions of mixed cultural identities, cultural mixing and syncretism. Such an approach is grounded in interrelated commitments to the universality of human rights and cultural diversity (see A/73/227). In recent years, increasingly monolithic notions of culture and identity and purist views of the interrelationships of diverse cultures have taken hold in various sectors across the political spectrum around the world. Such views have been advocated by some Governments and even by some in the field of human rights. This has a range of negative consequences for internationally guaranteed cultural rights. In the present report, the Special Rapporteur calls for greater recognition of human rights-respecting cultural mixing and syncretism, and increased respect for mixed and multiple cultural identities, as well as for intercultural 3 ideas and spaces. She does so while recognizing that cultures do not always mix from a position of equality and referencing the contemporary debate about cultural appropriation. Finally, she will make some parting comments about the cultural rights mandate. 3. In preparing the present report, the Special Rapporteur held global virtual consultations, including one co-sponsored by the Institute of Development Studies and the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development at the University of Sussex, based in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and one organized with the Malaysian non-governmental organization Pusaka. The Special Rapporteur conferred with experts, cultural practitioners an d cultural rights defenders from many regions. She thanks them all. II. Cultural mixing and syncretism A. Concepts and examples 4. Cultural mixing and syncretism, or the blending, combining and merging of various cultural elements, representations and meanings, have been constants in the accretion of dynamic human cultures throughout history. Such phenomena have also been described as cultural borrowing, sharing or fusion, and “vernacular cosmopolitanism”. 4 The precise dynamics and results have been specific to context and time. However, the cross-fertilization and hybridity of human cultures are __________________ 1 2 3 4 21-10019 Jacques Stephen Aléxis, Du réalisme merveilleux des Haïtiens (Présence Africaine, 1956) pp. 8–10. Available from www.jstor.org/stable/24346904. Homi Bhabha, “Cultural Diversity and Cultural Differences”, in Atlas of Transformation (2011). Available at http://monumenttotransformation.org/atlas-of-transformation/html/c/culturaldiversity/cultural-diversity-and-cultural-differences-homi-k-bhabha.html. Defined in the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions as the existence and equitable interaction of diverse cultures and the possibility of generating shared cultural expressions through dialogue and mutu al respect. See https://en.unesco.org/creativity/convention/texts. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (Routledge, 1994). 3/22