The Legal Effects of Cultural Diversity as Human Rights and Citizenship Rights

The legal consequences of cultural diversity vary depending on the person it addresses. Given the fact that there is a huge difference between human rights and citizenship rights in international and national laws, accepting cultural diversity at the level of international law can be interpreted as fundamental human rights which needs an international agreement for its implementation; as a citizenship rights, however, cultural diversity can be identified based on the national and domestic laws, each of which (international/national dichotomy) has different requirements and consequences. One of the major legal consequences of identifying cultural diversity to be among the human rights is to agree with a fixed and equal value attached to every human culture at the global level, and to consider States to be obligated to preserve cultural diversity in the same way that they preserve biological diversity in nature. Such a hypothesis leads to the rejection of relativity of cultures, which is unnatural per se. Considering cultural diversity to stand among citizenship rights, however, leads to the fact that cultures are practically relative.