The aim of this chapter is to explore issues around UNESCO World Heritage sites, especially relating to biodiversity in the MENA region. It discusses challenges to the effective conservation and protection of heritage sites and the need for a holistic approach to conservation. Sections address the following: the fifty-year institutional development of UNESCO World Heritage, leading to the current situation of urgent action needed on climate change and the Sustainable Development Agenda 2015–30; World Heritage in the MENA region, especially biodiversity issues; and related legal, policy, and regulatory issues of biodiversity protection, including prospects for reviving intangible knowledge, and their relation to the Sustainable Development Goals 11, 13, and 15. Conclusions and recommendations address prospects for biodiversity and World Heritage protection in the region.

Cultural property has always been a target in armed conflicts. Even with the development of a regime for the protection of cultural property in armed conflict, such destructions continue to be a reality in contemporary armed conflicts. The effectiveness of this regime comes thus into question. This chapter aims to analyse a case study on the application of this regime: the Preah Vihear Temple case. During a fifty-five-year border dispute between Cambodia and Thailand in the area where the Temple is situated, several international forums have been seized with the protection of the Temple, including: the International Court of Justice (ICJ), United Nations Security Council (UNSC), UNESCO and a Joint Border Commission established by Cambodia and Thailand. This chapter will assess the contribution of all of these processes and agencies to the protection of cultural property in armed conflict regarding this study.

Post-First World War intellectual relief failed; violence against intellectuals and sites of learning proved to be a reality of modern warfare, as demonstrated by attacks on universities in the Spanish Civil War and the Sino-Japanese War, and the flight of intellectuals both within and from Europe after 1933. The symbolically rebuilt library at Louvain was destroyed again in 1940 during the Second World War. Meanwhile, the rise of totalitarianism showed that intellectuals were not bulwarks of democracy as post-war rhetoric had implied. The epilogue shows how post-First World War intellectual relief influenced the rescue of intellectuals fleeing Nazi persecution as well as the way in intellectual life was rebuilt following the Second World War, notably through the establishment of UNESCO. The reconstruction of intellectual life after the Great War continues to resonate in the twenty-first century.

In his path-breaking 1954 monograph, Nations nègres et culture, the Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop denounced Western histories for providing false justification for European imperialism and perpetuating notions of the inferiority of Black peoples. Diop called instead for histories that revalorized the African past and demonstrated Black contributions to world history. By contextualizing Diop’s historiographical interventions in terms of his anticolonial politics and the work of other anticolonial and anti-racist thinkers, this chapter shows how, in the decades immediately following the Second World War, the terrain of history was a key battleground of anti-racist and anticolonial activism. The multiple sites in which anticolonial and anti-racist histories were developed – from museums like the Musée de l’Homme through journals such as Présence Africaine, and organizational initiatives funded by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) initiatives – are central to this story.

This chapter explores the emergence of a distinct right to artistic freedom in international human rights law. It starts with an exploration of the input of constitutional traditions, as well as State practice and arguments brought by delegates during the drafting process of article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with respect to freedom of creativity. It further provides an exhaustive examination of the legal instruments protecting freedom of enjoyment of the arts as an individual right, as well as its collective dimension. In particular, the chapter adopts a twofold approach to artistic freedom, viewed both as a component of freedom of expression (the ‘free speech’ approach) under article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and as a cultural right under article 15 of the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Finally, the chapter thoroughly explores the scope and institutional protection of artistic freedom in the practice of international and regional human rights bodies (including but not limited to the European Court of Human RIgths), as well as the UN Specialized Agency for Science Education and Culture (UNESCO).

This chapter explores the positive obligations accompanying artistic freedom, and discusses the linkages between artistic freedom and ‘participation’ in cultural life under article 15 ICESCR. It focuses in particular on obilgations related to effective judicial remedies concerning censorship of performances (e.g. Pussy Riot’s Punk Prayer) and demolition of art installations (e.g. the ‘Bridges of Memory’ installation in the Mapocho River in Chile), as well as those related to artists’ cultural mobility (e.g. artists living in a situation of occupation). In this respect, the chapter makes a parallel between international obligations to protect artistic freedom as part of the right to participate in cultural life with forms of artistic performance that require the participation of the public (as in the case of Kaprow’s work, and the ‘Reinventions of Yard’). It further examines the impact of non-discrimination and equality in the artworlds – including for instance discriminatory laws on male guardianship that have an impact on womens’ ability to work as artists, display their work or participate in artistic events and performances. Finally, the author wonders whether de facto equality is ever possible in the artworlds, discussing the application of affirmative action and the so-called special measures in the artworlds.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed as a ‘common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations’ and rests on the claim that persons are ‘endowed with reason and conscience’. The drafters were thus aligned with the claims of the natural law tradition that there are timeless principles of morality – true for all people in all places – and that these principles serve as a guide for lawmakers and a standard to evaluate positive law. Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain argued that the drafters did not need to agree on the philosophical or metaphysical foundations of morality in order to agree on formulations of practical principles in the language of universal rights. This key insight helped to overcome obstacles to the UDHR and to guide key drafters including Charles Malik. Maritain’s account of natural law in The Rights of Man and Natural Law highlights the notion of jus gentium: commonly agreed principles that are intermediate between the first principles of natural law and positive law. The UDHR can be understood as a successful attempt to formulate jus gentium principles in the aftermath of a war that had seen them disregarded and violated.

The pragmatic partnership among West European nations that has emerged since 1945 exemplifies how “win-win” strategies can bring powerfully beneficial results over time. Yet the EU model cannot be straightforwardly applied at the global level, for five reasons. First, the cultural and political differences among the world’s nations are much greater than they are within Europe. Second, the obscene divide between “haves” and “have-nots” is much starker and more intractable at the global level than it is within Europe. Third, rapid globalization has caused a political backlash in many nations, bringing to power leaders who seek a defensive retrenchment behind national walls. Fourth, global institutions of cultural integration, such as UNESCO, remain relatively weak. And fifth, racist prejudice and nativist xenophobia are on the rise in many nations. Nevertheless, the historical precedent set by the EU demonstrates that national sovereignty can be incrementally dismantled, yielding new forms of institutionalized cooperation among formerly separate and mutually hostile peoples.

The chapter centres on the notion of repetition and takes it as the key concept of practice theory. It explores the translocal character of practice with regard to transnational diplomatic negotiations in the UNESCO World Heritage Programme. First, the chapter addresses a widespread bias towards stability and reproduction of the social in practice theory, points towards the need to take account of the dynamics of the social, and develops a poststructuralist understanding of repetition. The second part outlines three related dimensions of repetition and spells out their methodological implications for practice theory. By thinking of practices in terms of repetitions that link different sites and instances, the methodology of practice theory is to follow the fragile relations which make up the (in)stability of the social, enabling it to grasp the specific contributions of bodies and material artefacts. Drawing on data from a long-term participant observation, the final part of the chapter puts this methodology to work by analysing continuity and change in international diplomacy, looking at the interwoven diplomatic practices of negotiating, drafting, and decision-making.

This chapter argues that the notion of human dignity provides an overarching normative framework for assessing the ethical and legal acceptability of emerging life sciences technologies. After depicting the increasing duality that characterizes modern technologies, this chapter examines two different meanings of human dignity: the classical meaning that refers to the inherent worth of every individual, and the more recent understanding of this notion that refers to the integrity and identity of humankind, including future generations. The close connection between human dignity and human rights is outlined, as well as the key-role of dignity in international human rights law, and very especially in the human rights instruments relating to bioethics. The chapter concludes by briefly presenting the challenges to human dignity and human rights posed by neurotechnologies and germline gene editing technologies.