International Network for Cultural Diversity
Newsletter, February 2003
Vol. 4, No 2
Contents:
The INCD Steering Committee met in Paris February 5 and 6, 2003 in parallel with the mid-year ministerial meeting of the INCP (see Article 3 below). Decisions coming out of this meeting include the thematic content of the fourth annual conference and strategies regarding the WTO, UNESCO and the Convention on Cultural Diversity.
Members of the Committee met with French government officials to discuss greater collaboration and with key Ministers of Culture.
_____________________________________
The International Network
for Cultural Diversity
Fourth Annual Conference
Opatija, Croatia
The Cape Town Report is now available in Spanish – www.incd.net
INCD
South Africa:
The Visual Arts Network of South Africa
(VANSA) is set to be be launched in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban in March
as a prelude to a national launch later in the year. VANSA emerges
directly out of the INCD conference held in Cape Town in October last year, where
visual arts participants decided that they needed a national organisation to
represent their interests. VANSA, along with other nationally
representative organisations in a range of disciplines including film,
performing arts, heritage, community arts centres, etc, will launch an umbrella
body - the Network for Arts and Culture South Africa (NACSA), on June 7 in
Johannesburg. NACSA also arises directly out of the INCD Cape Town event
with South African artists and cultural activists reviving their organised
lobby of the early nineties to address the collective interests of
practitioners in all disciplines. NACSA will be the INCD's first African
national network.
Correction:
The submission by the Australian Coalition for Cultural Diversity to the Australian Government on the proposed
Australia/US Free Trade Agreement can be found at:
http://www.mca.org.au/pdf/accdsubmit15jan03.pdf
Also, in addition, there is a paper from the
Music Council of Australia for the same purpose. Whereas the ACCD submission
takes a general view of the risks to culture and utilises the INCD draft
convention to identify the rights to support culture that the government should
retain, the Music Council paper details what is to be lost for music should the
government not do so. The link to the music paper is:
http://www.mca.org.au/pdf/mcadfat31jan03.pdf
February 2-4 marked the Second International Meeting of Cultural Professional Organizations in Paris, France which brought together 300 representatives from some 30 countries to discuss the impact of ongoing trade negotiations on the cultural sector.
There was a strong focus during the meeting on the audio-visual sector and the current GATS negotiations given the push by a number of countries to liberalize A/V services (for more information on the GATS and culture see INCD Newsletter Vol. 3 No 1 – January 2003). There were detailed analyses of the WTO timelines and reports on the state of various bilateral negotiations as well as examinations of European A/V policies and an overview of the effects of media consolidation.
French president Jacques Chirac gave a speech underlining France’s firm commitment to the principle of cultural diversity and calling on UNESCO to assume the task of negotiating and implementing the Convention on Cultural Diversity.
INCD Steering Committee members were present at the meeting and congratulate the Vigilance Committee for Cultural Diversity on the success of their meeting.
http://www.comitedevigilance.org/
Full text of M. Chirac’s speech is available in French only:
http://www.elysee.fr/cgi-bin/auracom/aurweb/search/file?aur_file=discours/2003/D030202.html
The International Network on Cultural Policy, obeying a directive from the Cape Town statement, met in Paris Feb 5 and 6 to deliberate on the final text of the proposed Convention on Cultural Diversity. Culture Ministers from, Argentina, Belgium, Burkina Faso, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, Poland, Senegal, South Africa Sweden and Switzerland attended the meeting.
The ministers brought their draft of the Convention to the Director General of UNESCO who agreed to bring the Convention to the 32nd General Conference of UNESCO this October. It is hoped that they will move to adopt the Convention by the next General Conference in 2005, coincidentally, the same year that the WTO negotiations are schedule to conclude.
While the INCD applauds both the ministers of the INCP and UNESCO on this important step forward, we also understand that the task of building consensus will be far more challenging in the context of UNESCO. There are a number of factors which could present obstacles to the progress of the Convention: the difficulty of generating consensus within such a huge and varied body; questioning on behalf of many countries of the relevance of the Convention to their still-developing cultural sectors; and crucially, the recent re-entry of the United States into UNESCO. The onus will be on INCP member-states and civil society to ensure that the Convention does not get watered down or put on the back-burner.
The INCP Press Release is available in:
English
http://206.191.7.19/w-group/wg-cdg/news0206_e.shtml
French
http://206.191.7.19/w-group/wg-cdg/news0206_f.shtml
Spanish
http://206.191.7.19/w-group/wg-cdg/news0206_s.shtml
If we have missed your organization’s event, please contact the Secretariat at incd@ccarts.ca for inclusion in the next newsletter.
Culture: from Information to Knowledge
The role of culture in the knowledge based society
7-9 April 2003
Moscow, Russia
Contact:
Intellectual Property in the Knowledge Economy – WIPO Seminar
24-26 April 2003
China
Contact:
T:(022) 338 9547
F: (022) 338 88 10
Eculture: The European Perspective
Culturelink Network
24-27 April
Zagreb, Croatia
http://www.culturelink.org/eculture.html
Languages, Cultures, Ideologies and Identities in the Andes
51st
International Congress of Americanists
14-18 July 2003
Santiago, Chile
Contact: S.
Coronel-Molina
F +1 716 836 9375
www2.canisius.edu/~grabner
World Trade
Organization
5th
Ministerial Meeting
10-14 September
Cancun, Mexico
IFACCA World Summit
23-26 November,
2003
Singapore
Ph: +61
2 9215 9016
Fx: +61 2 9215 9111
ifacca@ozco.gov.au
http://www.ifacca.org/en/organisation/page02_summit.html
The World Summit on the Information Society
UNESCO
10-12 December 2003
Geneva, Switzerland
Contact: Secretary of the Executive Director
T +41 22 730 6317
F +41 22 730 6393
The Third International Congress of Culture and Development
9-12 June
2003
La Habana,
Cuba
Contact:
Ms. Mirtha Padrón, Executive Secretary, Centro Nacional de Superación para la
Cultura, Calle 15, #754, entre Paseo y 2, Vedado, Cuidad de La Habana, Cuba CP
1040
T (537)
55369/ 552300/ 552299
F(537)
552301/ 662283