The Incorporation of the ‘Right to Culture’ within the Categories of Individual and Collective Human Rights: A Comparative Analysis based on the Nature of Human Rights

Hifzul Rahman Fathima Rasha
Lecturer (Temporary), Department of Law, University of Peradeniya

The importance of the right to culture in the overall implementation of human rights is that culture executes the pre-set standards of human rights; it carries the norms and turns them into practices. By that way, whether we need to consider the right to culture as a collective human right or an individual human right is a question, as they impact differently in the sphere of international human rights. Collective rights are the rights shared by a community and individual human rights are the inherent rights of every human being. The opponents of collective rights claim that collective rights force the compromise of individual human rights and they affect the principles of universality and equality enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, since they prioritize the interests of a group of people. Since a collective right is defined as rights shared by a community, the right to culture automatically falls within its boundaries; yet its individual nature remains a question. To disentangle this question the author has used a qualitative research methodology using primary and secondary data sources including viewpoints from the members of the community, international human rights conventions, domestic and foreign statutes, legal treatises, and journals. Freedom of choice is enshrined within basic human rights such as the right to freedom of thought and conscience and the right to privacy. An individual’s freedom of making choices is a source of human empowerment and that is well encompassed within a cultural group. The identity associated with the group naturally defines the identity of the individual in the group and that identity makes him take control of how he is going to exercise his individual rights. Therefore, the realization and regular practice of individual human rights originates from the identity an individual derives from the group he is associated with. Hence, the author argues that the right to culture necessarily falls within the category of individual human rights, upon which Western liberal democratic ideology places a high emphasis and the author contends such added emphasis can crucially elevate the recognition of the ‘right to culture’ and facilitate the effective and dynamic implementation of the same.