ARE YOU A CULTURAL RIGHTS DEFENDER? Promoting, defending, or claiming your cultural rights may not be without risks. Those who claim the rights to artistic freedom or rights of minorities may face very strong opposition, or in some cases repression, persecution, threats and even imprisonment. You may not consider yourself as a ’cultural rights defender’, but let’s look at the UN SR definition of a cultural rights defender48: they “can be of any gender or age, from any part of the world and from any professional or other background. They can be found within non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations, but can also be government officials, civil servants or members of the private sector.” Accordingly, “cultural rights defenders are human rights defenders who pursue the elimination of violations of cultural rights and promote respect for and protection and fulfilment of these rights. They can be experts, activists and ordinary people who act in defense of cultural rights; they may specialize in working to these ends, and even certain cultural institutions may be considered as cultural rights defenders, or they may function as such, without defining themselves in those terms.” The SR adds that: “cultural rights defenders may be seen as challenging dominant cultural or religious arguments or symbols when those are used as instruments of domination or discrimination, including by authoritarian governments, fundamentalists and extremists, and both states and non-state actors.” 48 42 https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/CulturalRights/Pages/CulturalRightsDefenders.aspx