Cultural Rights and Discrimination: A New Direction for Cultural Policy

Cultural rights have recently become a significant topic of discussion in the field of international cultural policy, particularly in relation to cultural diversity and sustainable development. However, the discourse on cultural rights has largely focused on their conceptual aspects and declarative roles, rarely leading to concrete policy actions. Therefore, this article aims to redefine cultural rights that can be adopted in an actual policy environment by incorporating the existing discourse on rights. Furthermore, it reveals that the cultural rights perspective is a pragmatic approach that can address issues in both the cultural and general social realms. Additionally, this article views discrimination as a violation of cultural rights and strives to foster an environment in which cultural rights policies can effectively address discrimination that legal and social measures cannot. Methodologically, this article adopts Cultural Discourse Analysis (CuDA) and case studies to redefine cultural rights and examine discrimination from a cultural rights perspective. International human rights law and UNESCO-led cultural rights are the subjects of the discourse analysis, and two cities, Gwangju in South Korea and York in the UK, are used as case studies to illustrate how cultural rights discourse has been adopted and implemented in real-world policy environments. This article provides a practical approach for realizing cultural rights and promoting cultural policy discourse to design effective responses to discrimination.