Welcome to this new website, or: serdecznie witamy!

In the coming months we will present, step by step, a range of background and service information relating to the new handbook Culture and Human Rights: The Wroclaw Commentaries. In addition, other news and comments about cultural dimensions of Human Rights will be issued in our Forum.

The WROCLAW COMMENTARIES were developed by ARCult Media (Cologne) in the context of Wroclaw - European Capital of Culture 2016 and have recently been published by De Gruyter (Berlin/Boston). Learn more about the handbook in:
English – French – German – Polish

Guided by a Scientific Committee, chaired by Yvonne Donders (University of Amsterdam), the editors Kalliopi Chainoglou (Thessaloniki), Anna Śledzińska-Simon  (Wroclaw) and Andreas Joh. Wiesand (Cologne) as well as 92 other experts want to bridge the gap between theory and practice, i.e. between dispersed, partly unspecific, references to "culture" (in the wider sense) in the human rights literature, in legal instruments, or in court cases and the daily needs of decision or law-making on different juridical, administrative and political levels in Europe. Read a message of the Mayor of Wroclaw, Rafał Dutkiewicz, in four languages. Recent events:

• On 14 November 2016, the official launch of the Handbook took place in the context of a Symposium held in Wroclaw. Here the opening keynote of Michał Jan Boni, former Polish Minister and Member of the European Parliament.
  Pictures of the event can be found here.
• On 10 May 2017, the Wroclaw Commentaries were presented by the Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Gabriella Battaini-Dragoni, and by the co-ordinating editor, Andreas Joh. Wiesand at a session of the Culture Committee (CDCPP) of the CoE in Strasbourg - watch their contributions on YouTube here and here.

Our picture shows G. Battaini-Dragoni with A. J. Wiesand and the CoE Director of Democratic Governance, Claudia Luciani, during the CDCPP presentation in Strasbourg.

New ideas? Updates? Want to contribute to this website? Contact the Editors!