A/HRC/16/37 underpinning human rights. Doing so meant rejecting those who would seek to juxtapose traditional values against human rights with a view to erode the universal authority and appeal of human rights. While the Vienna Declaration recognized that the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it reaffirmed that is the duty of all States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms. The High Commissioner concluded that understanding the common normative underpinnings of both sides of that equation was important for more effective human rights promotion, and, ultimately, more humane societies. 6. Subsequently, a keynote address was delivered by the Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Her address focused on human rights in a cross-cultural perspective, as reflected in the work of UNFPA worldwide. She pointed out that, in the experience of UNFPA, to internalize human rights, cultural values and beliefs must be clearly identified, contested, negotiated and eventually reconciled from within. 7. The Executive Director stressed that culture mattered because cultural traditions and beliefs were often more strongly rooted than laws: therefore, to get to the roots of human rights issues, there was a need to engage at a cultural level. For instance, discrimination and violence against women and harmful practices such as female genital mutilation and child marriage were illegal in many countries, and yet they persisted because they were deeply rooted within the culture. Violations of human rights happened in families and communities while systems of justice were often at the national level, far away from the violations. It was the mechanisms of the local value system that recognized or ignored such violations. To be effective in eradicating such practices, there was a need to engage at a deeper level to promote human rights in the context of individuals, families and communities at the local level. This required listening and promoting dialogue within communities. 8. The Executive Director offered examples and positive results of UNFPA work regarding women’s health, the reduction of high rates of maternal death, the eradication of violence against girls and women and female genital mutilation, the prevention of HIV infection, and humanitarian assistance in societies suffering from emergencies, in contexts where traditional beliefs posed obstacles to such goals. She concluded by stressing that change that contributed to universal human rights in diverse cultural settings could not be imposed from the outside: to be lasting, it must come from within. The principles of human rights must be internalized by communities and individuals, and the key to this was to find the positive values and agents of change that exist in all cultures. Culture was created by people and people could change culture. They could build on the positive and transform the negative aspects of their culture. There were people within every culture who opposed harmful cultural practices and violations of human rights. International actors in the field of human rights must be able to view the field from cross-cultural perspectives. By doing so, they should be able to engage in a dialogue with cultures and mobilize cultural agents of change for development and human rights. 9. The President of the Paris Office of the Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, Natalia Narochnitskaya, commended the Human Rights Council for engaging in a discussion of traditional values and human rights. In her view, the protection and promotion of diversity and equality between nations and cultures were the prerequisites for genuine harmony in the relations between civilizations and within any society of our time. The world was interdependent but not homogenous. There was no country or civilization where freedoms, human rights and equality were not of major importance, but there were different perceptions of these issues. She recalled that the Charter of the United Nations combined the recognition and protection of human rights with the recognition of noninterference in the domestic affairs of countries and their sovereign equality. She 4