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16.05.2023 Presentation of the book 'In Praise of Cultural Rights and Duties'.

#FestaEuVenezia2023

TUESDAY 16 MAY
Presentation of the book by Monica Amari

'In Praise of Cultural Rights and Duties'

ore 17, Consiglio d’Europa sede di Venezia San Marco 180C, Venezia

==> Event included in the Europe Day in Venice 2023

On Tuesday 16 May 2023 at 5 p.m. at the Venetian headquarters of the Council of Europe - Procuratie Vecchie in San Marco 180/c, the presentation of the book 'In Praise of Cultural Rights and Duties' was held in the presence of the author Monica Amari.

Introduced by:
Luisella Pavan-Woolfe, Director of the Italian Office of the Council of Europe
Introduces:
Cristina Vannini, Secretary General ICOM INTERCOM
Speaker:
Monica Amari, President ARMESProgetti and author of the book

Can knowledge be recognised as a collective right and be protected by a Guarantor? Monica Amari asks this question in her book Elogio dei diritti e dei doveri culturali (In Praise of Cultural Rights and Duties), in which she not only recounts the historical and normative foundations of this bill, on which the author collaborated with her own working group, but also identifies and explains what these rights and duties are that belong to the large family of human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights places them alongside economic and social rights (Art. 22), considering them indispensable for the dignity and development of each person's personality. Yet no Constitution mentions them, not even the Italian one. Why?
The author questions the causes of this inattention at the normative level by referring to the different positions of the fathers of modern European constitutionalism, Rousseau and Condorcet. If the former polemically combines contempt for women with contempt for culture, the latter is convinced that only education, combined with a just recognition of the female figure and an informed public opinion, can move society forward, to the point of being forced to commit suicide for having turned his beliefs into a political project.
Referring back to Norberto Bobbio for whom rights are born when they must and can be born, today it is necessary to include the cultural dimension within the fundamental principles of the Constitution, combining it with the economic and social dimension where the principle of solidarity is mentioned (Art. 2) and where the principle of equality is proclaimed (Art. 3). The recognition, also formal, of cultural rights and duties appears necessary to rethink an Italy based on knowledge, research, skills and merit in a society profoundly transformed by the digital paradigm, the fourth industrial revolution and migration flows.

Some pictures: