Interconnecting through Culture | Interconnection of Arts and Human Rights

On February 22nd, the Naregatsi Art Institute hosted the second event of the Project “Interconnecting through Culture” being implemented thanks to the cooperation with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Under the general title "Interconnection of Arts and Human Rights ", lawyer Anahit Hakobyan and musicologist, publicist Daniel Yerazhisht presented a correlation of the principles of law and the arts.
The first question was “what are our rights?” The lawyer Anahit Hakobyan mentioned that “The most usual answer to this question is that the rights are the output of the system which regulates relationships between people by the legislative mechanisms”. Ms. Hakobyan spoke about the rights and the value system mentioning that she will convey the theoretical and practical side of the topics, creating the opportunity for young people to utilize this knowledge in real life.
In the context of natural and positive rights, the role of human beings in the society with their high moral character were presented.
Daniel Yerazhisht endorsed this approach, referring to Plato's work ''The State'', where the Greek philosopher emphasized that the state could collapse if people stopped listening to honest music. In this work, Plato recommends listening to music which instills pride and not rioting.
Ms. Hakobyan spoke about the notion of “natural” rights, which are the pure rights gifted to every person from the day of birth. And these rights are those ones which cannot be violated by any other person or state, except from the cases which are differentiated in the legislative documents. Ms. Hakobyan also talked about the “Positive rights” about the rights and obligations for both citizens and the state, highlighting that this is very important to understand that whether it would be citizens or state they both have rights and obligations.
Daniel Yerazhisht brought samples of comparisons from great composers, who used arts as a means to speak about the vital issues related to human rights and fundamental freedoms.