On ‘Cultural Liberty’ and its self-defeating implications: A critique of the UNDPHuman Development Report 2004

The global Human Development Report (HDR) was first commissioned in 1990 and has since been published annually by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). In a sustained attempt to set the international development agenda, the HDR has often framed development issues in new and unorthodox ways. The 2004 report continues this tradition by coining and promoting the notion of ‘cultural liberty.’ The central argument is that cultural liberty—being able to freely choose one’s identity without being discriminated against in the process—should be seen as a vital component of human development, and indeed as a fundamental human right (HDR, 2004, p. 6). From this the HDR goes on to assert that self-government rights for ethno-linguistic minorities, and their entrenchment in the institutional structure of the state, are crucial to the promotion of cultural freedom (pp. 7–8). I argue, however, that the contrary is probably closer to the truth: the political ‘recognition’ of ethnic identities through power sharing and federal arrangements on a communal basis, explicitly endorsed in the HDR (p. 51), reifies culture and thereby fosters phenomena of cultural essentialism. In situations of communal conflict, one particular ethno-linguistic or ‘national’ identity can thus easily become dominant over all other forms of individual belonging. Ironically, the institutional recognition of groupdifferentiated political rights may therefore narrow individuals’ cultural freedom and Ethnopolitics, Vol. 5, No. 2, 183–190, June 2006