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Section 3

Section Three Introduction: Institutionalization and Standardization 04/22/05
In this section of Human Rights Dialogue: Cultural Rights (Spring 2005) we examine some of the latest efforts to recognize and institutionalize cultural rights, with essays that illustrate the problems encountered in setting clearly defined and judiciable standards for cultural rights claims.

The Distinctive Culture Test 04/22/05
In Canada, the application of a "distinctive culture test" is a well-intentioned effort to apply standards to cultural distinctiveness. Yet it is not without its shortcomings.
Author(s): Avigail Eisenberg

A European Experiment In Protecting Cultural Rights 04/22/05
Will Kymlicka argues that, as Europe continues to institutionalize its union, the cultural rights approach it has adopted falls short of comprehensively addressing the variable circumstances of minorities across different states.
Author(s): Will Kymlicka

The UN Human Rights Committee's Decisions 04/22/05
Over the past twenty-five years, virtually every time a cultural minority has petitioned the Human Rights Committee under Article 27 of the ICCPR, it has failed. Dinah Shelton explains why.
Author(s): Dinah Shelton

Cultural Rights And Intellectual Property Debates 04/22/05
Drawing upon the case of the appropriation of the music of Taiwan's Ami people by the band Enigma, Rosemary Coombe explores how best to protect the rights of cultural minorities amid debates about the ownership of intellectual property.
Author(s): Rosemary Coombe

About Human Rights Dialogue

Human Rights Dialogue promotes a global discussion of human rights ideas and practices by presenting firsthand accounts of human rights issues as they arise within specific real-life contexts. In so doing, it helps to clarify the significant and ongoing evolution that is taking place within the human rights movement to make the human rights framework more relevant and effective in addressing the social, economic, and political challenges of the twenty-first century.

The entire publication is online, or you may purchase individual print copies.

Series One (1993–1998)examines all sides of the Asian values debate—the argument that Asian cultural values imply different human rights standards and priorities from those in the West.

Series Two(2000–2005)addresses the problem of the “human rights box”—the constraints that have enabled the human rights framework to gain currency among elites while limiting its advance among the most vulnerable. Specifically, the essays aim to locate the barriers to greater public legitimacy of human rights and to demonstrate how those barriers can be overcome.