ABSTRACT
This volume in the Key Issues in Cultural Heritage series investigates the linkages between conserving cultural heritage, maintaining cultural diversity and enforcing human rights. The three concepts of cultural diversity, heritage and human rights have been researched widely over the past 60 years since the United Nations Organization (1945) and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO 1946) were formed and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted (1948). In the scholarly world, however, the concepts have tended to be studied separately, with the various disciplines focusing more on one concept than the others, whereas, in fact, the concepts developed alongside each other and are inextricably linked. Recognition of these linkages influences the way in which the purpose of heritage conservation is seen and heritage protection work is carried out. These linkages are enshrined today in much of the agenda and discourse of the UN and its associated global bodies, such as UNESCO, as well as in some nation states and local governments and their agencies. The linkages appear to be well understood in the international committees and secretariats of the global heritage bodies. In 2008 the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), for instance, ranked human rights issues associated with heritage, both natural and cultural, as one of seven ‘new and complex global pressures’ impacting negatively on conservation outcomes (ICOMOS 2008: 5). But the linkages remain poorly understood by the heritage conservation profession in many countries, where too often heritage work is seen as merely technical. It is essential for those engaged in heritage conservation projects to understand the broader economic, political and social context of their work and to recognize that official heritage interventions can have many motives, be used to achieve political aims, and, at their worst, can undermine rather than strengthen community identity, cultural diversity and human rights.
