A/76/178 identity categories, recognizes their internal diversities and their agenc y to engage in cultural exploration and development. This framework should promote the assessment of the impact of such dynamics on cultural rights and the other human rights enumerated above, be firmly grounded in equality and rights-based, be closely related to the rights-respecting teaching of plural histories (A/68/296), encourage the active participation and consultation of all affected constituencies and promote rights respecting transcultural interactions. 18. The human rights framework for addressing these issues also needs to be informed both by local and global dynamics, recognizing the way a debate in one place in the globalized world may significantly affect developments elsewhere. It should emphasize the importance of arts and culture education, but also prioritize lived experience and engaged theory informed by it. C. Stories and histories of cultural mixing and mixed cultural identities 19. Cultural mixing and syncretism have resulted both fro m positive human interactions, cooperation and sharing (A/HRC/14/36, para. 46), but also from inequalities, violence and domination (A/74/321, para. 8). Positive and negative interactions may commingle. The movement of people around the world has facilitated cultural mixing, and hostility to such movement is directly related to rejections of mixing. An honest appraisal of the relevant histories and the underlying structural questions is critical. In any case, if we now imagine pasts when there was no cultural mixing or fusion, or when there was a “pure” culture, we are denying human history. Syncretism and cultural sharing are among the usual forms of cultural production. 20. Although this fact is insufficiently recognized, the very idea and framework of universal human rights itself, of which cultural rights are an integral part, rather than deriving from any one region alone, has itself evolved from and borrowed from many cultures and traditions (A/73/227). Indeed, it is stronger for having done so and especially stronger when this widespread cultural borrowing is recognized. 23 21. Humanity cannot progress without syncretism and rights-respecting cultural borrowing. Cultures cannot flourish or reach their full potential if they are closed to other cultures. Rights-respecting mixing is “not predicated upon the idea of the disappearance of independent cultural traditions but rather on their continual and mutual development.” 24 As the former Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance ha s noted, “to extrapolate this lesson from biodiversity to harmonious coexistence among peoples we must construct a new social vision based on the understanding and promotion of the value of cross-fertilization between cultures, peoples, ethnic identities a nd religions as vital ingredients for the vitality, even the survival, of society as a whole ” (E/CN.4/2003/24, para. 15). Recognition of cross-fertilization within cultures is as deserving of understanding and promotion. 22. Despite the reality and necessity of cultural mixing and hybridity, what stories are Governments telling their populations, and the world, about who they are? What stories are we telling ourselves and each other? Who and what is left out? Our narratives, our social, legal and human rights categories may be too simple and fail to reflect our fluid lived realities. __________________ 23 24 21-10019 See Allison Assiter, A New Theory of Human Rights (Rowman & Littlefield 2021). See The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, p. 184, B. Ascroft, G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin, eds. (Routledge, London and New York, 2006). 7/22