Artistic expression helps define human rights and provides a platform for their critique.
Human rights are significantly easier to formulate then they are to enforce, and it is within the context of this problem that the arts have played one of their most significant historical roles. Artistic declarations of human rights constitute a deep tradition within the history of the more general field of cultural politics. But, as in the case of all cultural politics, including the politics of human rights, the success of the endeavors is frequently poised more on the means of persuasion than on the named or stated principles involved. It is significant that many human rights that are observed have been made to succeed by the moral authority of ideas that are culturally conferred through the arts and arts related humanities. More ambitiously, it works to encourage and facilitate new performance, exhibition, and written work that can highlight human rights issues.