Cultural Rights and the Rights to Development in the Age of AI: Implications for Global Human Rights Governance
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📝 Original Info
Title: Cultural Rights and the Rights to Development in the Age of AI: Implications for Global Human Rights Governance
ArXiv ID: 2512.15786
Date: 2025-12-15
Authors: Alexander Kriebitz, Caitlin Corrigan, Aive Pevkur, Alberto Santos Ferro, Amanda Horzyk, Dirk Brand, Dohee Kim, Dodzi Koku Hattoh, Flavia Massucci, Gilles Fayad, Kamil Strzepek, Laud Ammah, Lavina Ramkissoon, Mariette Awad, Natalia Amasiadi, Nathan C. Walker, Nicole Manger, Sophia Devlin
📝 Abstract
Cultural rights and the right to development are essential norms within the wider framework of international human rights law. However, recent technological advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and adjacent digital frontier technologies pose significant challenges to the protection and realization of these rights. This owes to the increasing influence of AI systems on the creation and depiction of cultural content, affect the use and distribution of the intellectual property of individuals and communities, and influence cultural participation and expression worldwide. In addition, the growing influence of AI thus risks exacerbating preexisting economic, social and digital divides and reinforcing inequities for marginalized communities. This dynamic challenges the existing interplay between cultural rights and the right to development, and raises questions about the integration of cultural and developmental considerations into emerging AI governance frameworks. To address these challenges, the paper examines the impact of AI on both categories of rights. Conceptually, it analyzes the epistemic and normative limitations of AI with respect to cultural and developmental assumptions embedded in algorithmic design and deployment, but also individual and structural impacts of AI on both rights. On this basis, the paper identifies gaps and tensions in existing AI governance frameworks with respect to cultural rights and the right to development.
By situating cultural rights and the right to development within the broader landscape of AI and human rights, this paper contributes to the academic discourse on AI ethics, legal frameworks, and international human rights law. Finally, it outlines avenues for future research and policy development based on existing conversations in global AI governance.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) represents a paradigm shift in human history that increasingly permeates culture, development, and human rights. From media and arts to language and identity, AI influences the ideas, expressions, moral norms, religious concepts, and other cultural artefacts that shape our societies. This influence extends beyond technological novelty and reconfigures the very foundations of cultural participation, creative expression, and societal development on a global scale. Ultimately, generative AI, immersive virtual realities, and agentic AI have become forces transforming how culture is produced, experienced and embedded in socio-technical systems across different developmental contexts.
In this changing landscape, cultural rights and the right to development, articulated and deeply rooted in international law, face unprecedented challenges and opportunities. 1 The growing capabilities of AI, specifically agentic and generative AI, to reproduce, alter, manipulate, and represent cultural knowledge raise urgent anthropological, ethical, and legal questions that the concern the very interpretation of human rights. These developments demand a critical examination of how power, equity, and consent operate in AI ecosystems, as well as the mechanisms required to safeguard cultural diversity, minority identities, labor rights, and collective heritage, but also to guarantee meaningful remedies for individuals and groups adversely affected by AI. 2 To address these emerging human rights challenge, the following paper aims to address the human rights impact of AI centering on cultural rights and the right to development, which have so far received little attention in human rights scholarship. In fact, most existing publications treat these issues rather as a side aspect of wider human rights impacts. 3 . Given their individual and collective dimensions, cultural rights and the right to development, however, represent a critical intersection between human rights conventions and principles articulated in international humanitarian law and the UN Charter. 4 They connect different dots of existing international law, but they also codify different legal interests of the international community.
To address this issue, the paper proceeds in three parts. The first section examines the existing role of cultural rights and the right to development in the existing normative context, including not only international legal norms, but also philosophical and cultural perspectives that shape the conversation 1 The following publication understands both types of rights as articulated in international legal documents, including Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenious People as well as other regional human rights instruments. Further relevant international instruments addressing collective cultural rights and development include the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005), Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954), Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (1995), and African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981). These codifications emphasize collective dimensions such as peoples’ rights and cultural self-determination, complemented by legal scholarship and philosophical contributions that have influenced the interpretation of both rights. 2 The academic community is increasingly aware of the wider systemic challenge AI poses to human rights as such. Many of the authors of the submission were involved in the Whitepaper “Promoting and advancing human rights in global AI ecosystems: The need for a comprehensive framework under international law.” (Kriebitz, A., & Corrigan, C. C. (edit.). (2025). Promoting and advancing human rights in global AI ecosystems: The need for a comprehensive framework under international law. Ethics Lab at Rutgers University. https://aiethicslab.rutgers.edu/publications/promoting-and-advancing-human-rights-in-global-aiecosystems/
3 See: Kriebitz, A., & Lütge, C. (2020). Artificial intelligence and human rights: a business ethical assessment. Business and Human Rights Journal, 5(1), 84-104. Risse, M. (2019). Human rights and artificial intelligence: An urgently needed agenda. Human Rights Quarterly, 41(1), 1-16. 4 Borelli, S., & Lenzerini, F. (Eds.). (2012). Cultural heritage, cultural rights, cultural diversity: new developments in international law (Vol. 4). Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Symonides, J. (1998). Cultural rights: a neglected category of human rights. International Social Science Journal, 50 (158). Sengupta, A. (2000). Realizing the right to development. Development and Change, 31(3), 553-578.
around culture and development. The second section centres on the impact of AI on these rights, considering both immediate and str
