A/67/287 the community, such as women, especially when that group is unable to participate effectively in decision-making processes. Combating cultural practices detrimental to human rights, far from jeopardizing the existence and cohesion of a specific cultural community, stimulates discussion that facilitates a reorientation of culture towards embracing human rights. Indeed, an engagement with culture does not erode or deform local culture but rather challenges its discriminatory and oppressive aspects. … Negotiating culture with human rights concerns inherently questions, delegitimates, destabilizes, ruptures and, in the long run, destroys oppressive hierarchies. It also contributes to harnessing the positive elements of local culture to advance human rights and gender equality, a process that also revalidates the culture itself (A/HRC/4/34, para. 53). 52 62. The justification for direct discrimination against women by reference to culture or religion — which, according to information provided to the Special Rapporteur, continues — should be eliminated. In particular, the Special Rapporteur considers that the time has come to question the existence of legal norms that authorize distinguishing between women and men, including in the internal affairs of institutions that are based on a religious ethos or cultural identity; in many instances, this may lead to excluding women from taking part in the interpretation or development of cultural or religious life. 63. Claims that such distinctions may not be based on the idea of inferiority or superiority of either of the sexes should be analysed with great scrutiny, for example, using the guidelines suggested in paragraph 68 below. In this regard, the statement made in article 13 (d) (ii) of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, according to which access to cultural heritage should be ensured “while respecting customary practices governing access to specific aspects of such heritage”, cannot be interpreted as permitting gender-based discrimination (A/HRC/17/38, para. 76). It is essential to ensure that distinctions do not lead to indirect or structural discrimination against women and girls. B. Asserting the principle of equality: essential but insufficient 64. Despite the near universal ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, a “deep schism” between the legal provisions of equality and women’s lives has persisted across time and cultures, including in the international sphere; women simply do not enjoy the universal human rights to which they are entitled globally or locally, in the West or the East, the North or the South. 53 The Special Rapporteur is of the view that this is at least partly because women do not enjoy equal cultural rights. 65. The principle of universality of human rights can be a vehicle for building consensus, pluralism and democracy to enable women’s attainment of full personhood through, inter alia, their cultural rights. The challenge, however, is that the complexities of gender inequality and the many layers and arenas it operates in cannot be addressed through a simple “one size fits all” theoretical model. Merely asserting the principle of “equality” is insufficient. Far greater and more rigorous __________________ 52 53 18 See also Holtmaat and Naber. Hernández-Truyol, p. 120. 12-45930