A/76/178 respect our mixed and multiple identities. We must heed the words of writer Salman Rushdie in his first public statement after the fatwa against him for his novel The Satanic Verses:93 Let us all sing “a love song to our mongrel selves.” 94 77. A central challenge for this mixed and diverse human family, endowed with universal rights and equality, is to find ways for our cultural borrowing and creative fusions to promote those human rights and our co-existence. Then we can all travel a global Silk Road together. B. Recommendations 78. To respect, protect and fulfil cultural rights for all without discrimination, States, and where relevant other actors, including international organizations, cultural institutions, and civil society should: (a) Ensure the right of everyone to participate in cultural life, including the rights to participate on a basis of equality in defining and redefining cultures, and specifically ensure these rights for those facing pervasive or historic discrimination, including indigenous peoples, minorities and women; (b) Create the conditions that enable everyone, including marginalized members of society, to participate in cultural life in a meaningful way, including by dismantling structural barriers, such as poverty and discrimination; (c) Constantly assess the impact of inequalities and human rights abuses on cultural life and cultural knowledge and work to avoid reproducing inequality in cultural spaces, such as museums and heritage sites; (d) Respect the value of hybrid artistic and cultural forms and ensure their adequate representation in cultural spaces; (e) Challenge absolutist and purist approaches to cultural identities; (f) Recognize and value cultural diversities, including within minority cultures and other groups, respect their free development within the framework of universal human rights and equality, and avoid abusively restricting their expression; (g) Recognize and respect rights-respecting cultural mixing and syncretism, and space for cultural dissent, as essential foundations of any open society (A/73/227, para. 73); (h) Ensure that cultural policies reflect and respect the hybridities of culture and mixed cultural identities; (i) Create frameworks to enhance grass-roots consultation and participation of all relevant actors in discussions and policymaking about cultural mixing and syncretism, including artists and young cultural practitioners; (j) Make available to all education about and documentation of the diversities and hybridities of cultural practices, cultural heritages and histories of cultural borrowing and mixing; __________________ 93 94 21-10019 This has been interpreted as a death sentence for expressing diasporic hybridity. Charles Stewart, “Syncretism and Its Synonyms”. Salman Rushdie, In Good Faith, (London, Penguin, 1990). 21/22