Professor Bennoune Presents First Report as Special Rapporteur to the United Nations

Professor Karima Bennoune presented her first report as Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights to the United Nations Human Rights Council on March 10, focusing on the intentional destruction of cultural heritage as a violation of human rights. Her presentation drew coverage from media including Voice of America and was broadcast on UN Web TV.

After reiterating key commitments and priorities, including the universality of human rights and cultural diversity, Bennoune's report goes on to highlight emerging areas of concern that she intends to focus on as Rapporteur, including the intentional destruction of cultural heritage, as exemplified by the demolitions of the Baalshamin Temple and the Temple of Bel in Palmyra in 2015.  

In the report, she frames the intentional destruction of cultural heritage as a human rights issue and calls on the international community to take a human rights approach to its defense.  She urges the universal ratification and good faith implementation of international treaties protecting cultural heritage.  Recalling the slain Syrian archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad, she exhorts the international community to do more to support at-risk cultural heritage professionals around the world.

Bennoune further states her intention to produce a "produce a body of work on diverse forms of fundamentalism and extremism, which have now reached devastating proportions in many regions of the world and have had grave repercussions on cultural rights, resulting e.g. in widespread attacks on art and artists, on schools, on curricula, on women, on cultural practices and heritage and on freedom of thought, conscience, and religion." The report also touches on issues including the protection of cultural rights of refugees, the cultural rights of children, gender discrimination, the need to safeguard education, and the influence of new technologies on the ability of individuals and groups to exercise cultural rights.

The full text of the report and a UN Web TV video of Professor Bennoune's presentation are available via the links below.

Karima Bennoune is an author, lecturer, teacher, and international law scholar as well as the first Arab-American to be honored with the Derrick A. Bell Award from the Section on Minority Groups of the Association of American Law Schools. She recently was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her book Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight against Muslim Fundamentalism, now available in paperback from W.W. Norton & Company. In October 2015, she was appointed UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights.

Report of the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights

UN Web TV

Voice of America

 

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