Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I'm Michael O'Flaherty. I'm Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission.
I'm here in Derry/Londonderry today to make our contribution to Derry City of Culture.
We were delighted to bring together a group of the world's leading experts on the human
right to culture to discuss with the people of this city some
of the most challenging issues around how you
honour, promote and respect the human right of culture in societies that are coming out
of conflict or are divided. I think events like this are really important
in terms of the networking that would happen here,
the understandings - hopefully they will be catalysed and continue to work in the future
and to link up people, but I think hopefully the people here who
are working on culture would get a better understanding
of what cultural rights are that you can apply. They are actually international human right
standards and norms and treaties that help us to move this forward.
And so that is the challenge before us: how do we interpret history, how do we teach history
in ways that everyone is included: that we hear the other voices, at least we
acknowledge the other voices and the other perspectives
and therefore, as I said, a bridge to the future.
I think what's critically important for me is to ensure that there is implementation
of the right to culture because we have too many examples of where
there is denial, either a denial of history or a denial of
an existence of a people, a denial of identity of people,
so I think once we begin to look at implementation of this collective right, and individual right
as well, from a human rights perspective, then I think
it will enrich the world. It will enrich humankind if I may put it that
way, to focus on the strengths of our diversities. We as the Human Rights Commission see it as
critically important that we reinforce that sense that
your cultural identity, the expression of your cultural identity, is your human right,
your entitlement. This is world class work that's being done
here in Derry over these few days and it will result in the production of a
set of recommendations that will go to the United Nations General Assembly for debate
and discussion. So we're making a contribution globally to
how we understand culture and human rights and we're also saying something of significance
as a contribution to the City of Culture celebrations.