A/HRC/58/60/Add.1 projects across the territory and engage in good faith with the claims to protect heritage sites that are important for the people concerned. 60. The Special Rapporteur received less information about efforts invested in living cultures, in adopting positive measures to promote and protect the values, aspirations and priorities of all individuals and communities across Chile and include them in the public strategies, policies and practices. Chileans are very aware about the indivisibility of tangible and living heritage, and affirmed to the Special Rapporteur that the people themselves were the essence of heritage (“somos patrimonios”): the songs, the clothes, the food they ate every day was the heritage they cared for. The reform of the Law on Heritage should aim at better integrating the various dimensions of heritage, but also ensure that all heritage policies, concerning built or living heritage assets, are designed in such a way that the views and decisions of the persons and communities who are connected to heritage resources will be systematically solicited and integrated, in line with cultural rights. 61. The Special Rapporteur also warned against the use of Indigenous consultation to put to referendums or popular votes decisions regarding practices that manifestly violate human rights. The human rights obligations of States cannot be subject to consultation or vote. She was delighted to learn about the success of women-led activism in Rapa Nui to end tolerance for violations of girls’ rights and challenge the relativist justification that was being put forward to lessen sentences for various sexual crimes in the name of culture. Through their engagement, the Rapa Nui women succeeded in modifying article 13 and repealing article 14 of law 16.441, demonstrating how Indigenous cultures, like all cultures, evolve with the real participation and leadership of the people themselves. The Special Rapporteur encourages the Council of Elders to embrace this success and publicly declare that violations of the rights of girls and children in the name of culture are in stark contradiction to the values of the Rapa Nui people and international human rights values and standards. In the same vein, she encourages the local authorities in Rapa Nui to increase their efforts to challenge all forms of tolerance towards mistreatment of and violence against children. 2. Memorialization 62. How to appropriately memorialize human rights violations that occurred during the dictatorship is an important concern in Chile. Memorialization processes should provide the spaces necessary to those affected by human rights violations to articulate their narratives. Memorial practices should stimulate and promote civic engagement, critical thinking and discussion regarding the representation of the past, as well as the contemporary challenges of exclusion and violence that still exist today. It is a necessary form of reparation and a safeguard to guarantee non-repetition.12 63. The fiftieth anniversary of the coup d’état in September 2023 should have been an opportunity to define a new and improved policy on memorialization, to strengthen history teaching and public memory, but at the time of the Special Rapporteur’s visit, no political will in those areas had materialized. The State initiated the Sites of Memory Programme, 13 but the call for a law on memorialization to protect sites and proposals to preserve the memory of social unrest, including the movement of 2019, reportedly received little support from the Government. 64. The Special Rapporteur was disappointed by the weak involvement of public authorities in memorialization efforts and is concerned about the reported unrepentant and negationist sentiment of certain right-wing elements. Many sites are in precarious condition or have been vandalized with impunity. Despite the Government’s commitment to dedicate 1 per cent of its budget to memorialization, only 13 sites are supported by public funding, and more than 56 are pending official recognition. Most sites of memory are tended and preserved by private initiatives only, and those benefiting from public support receive shortterm grants that do not allow for continuous care. The Special Rapporteur stresses that what is needed is collective memory and reparations, not fragmented initiatives. 12 13 12 See A/HRC/25/49. See www.patrimoniocultural.gob.cl/fondos/programa-sitios-de-memoriapsm/convocatorias/programa-sitios-de-memoria-psm-2023 (in Spanish). GE.25-01340