Newsletter – January 2005

Vol 6 No 1

Contents:

INCD News and Announcements
Report from the INCD US Meeting
UNESCO Updates
Council of Europe Report on Transnational Media
Recommendations from Helsinki Process Support Diversity
Events and Announcements

INCD News and Events

Staffing update

The INCD is pleased to announce that Mr. Ibrahima Seck has been appointed INCD Coordinator for the West and Central African Region. Working from an office in Dakar, Mr. Seck will oversee preparations for the next annual meeting to be held in Senegal in October 2005. Mr. Seck will collaborate with INCD Steering Committee, members and funders, to build INCD membership in the region and to carry the concerns of local members to the international organization. We are pleased to welcome him and look forward to a successful year.

Further African staffing announcements will be made in the upcoming weeks.

World Social Forum

The INCD and Brazil’s Institute for Cultural Diversity (IDC) are presenting a series of talks at the upcoming World Social Forum taking place in Porto Alegre, Brazil from January 26-31, 2005. The INCD is programming a full day of presentations on the theme “Defending Diversity, Plurality and Identities” on January 29. A follow-up session on January 30 will synthesize the results and create goals and strategies for IDC’s work.

The program consists of presentations on:

Civil Society and Cultural Development;

Public Administration and Cultural Policy Development;

Cultural Impact Assessment on Economic, Political and Social Development and Cultural Assets;

Cultural Entrepreneurship and Cultural Assets;

Legal and Public Policy Framework for Cultural Development of Mass Media;

New Technologies and Cultural Development.

Speakers from Africa, Europe and North and South America will participate.

The INCD anticipates this will be a productive dialogue that will lead to concrete strategies for our partners in the region. Please attend and lend your voice to the debate.

INCD Program in Kenya

Peter Musa, an INCD activist from Cameroon, will be hold an information meeting in Nairobi next month to update local cultural representatives on the INCD’s work, with a focus on what African developments. The session will create networking opportunities and promote membership in the INCD. For more information on this project, please contact the secretariat, or directly to Mr. Musa at createartsorg@yahoo.com .

Report from INCD U.S. Meeting

James Early

INCD Steering Committee Member

Globalization, Cultural Diversity, and UNESCO: Imperatives for U.S Arts and Cultural Practitioners and Organizations

January 10-11, 2005

Washington, U.S.A.

More than 100 representatives from arts and cultural organizations, libraries, academics, cultural policy organizations, U.S. State Department cultural staff, intellectual property and media advocates, and artists attended the January 10-11, 2005 conference at the Smithsonian Institution. They came from across the United States (California, Colorado, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, and the Washington-metropolitan area, among others), several from Canada and a couple from Washington embassies, France among them. The Conference was organized under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and convened in partnership with INCD. Chaired by INCD Steering Committee member James Early, opening presentations were made by Americans for UNESCO President, Richard Arndt and INCD Coordinator, Garry Neil.

The goals of the Conference included:

to stimulate among U.S. civil society arts and culture organizations, a broader awareness, interest and participation in the global cultural diversity discourse, and in the deliberations on the UNESCO draft Convention for the protection of the diversity of cultural contents and artistic expressions;
to advocate a broader ongoing national discussion of the UNESCO process and to document this among various arts, culture and other networks across the country;
to advocate discussion and collaboration with arts and culture organizations around the world, and;
to advocate and facilitate the development of increased and ongoing involvement among arts and culture organizations with the new U.S. UNESCO National Commission. The goal of engaging with the Commission is to make policy recommendations and to ensure achievement of a useful UNESCO cultural diversity Convention, which can advance the integrity of culture and cultural diversity based upon intrinsic values, and protect and promote cultural diversity in the face of threats and erosion from market forces and trade liberalization.

Attendees participated vigorously in two days of thoughtful and well-presented arguments in response to questions such as - “Are cultural goods and services merely products like any other?” and “How do we ensure that cultural systems reflect the rich diversity of communities that exist in many countries?” and topics such as - “Threatened Cultures and Indigenous Peoples”.

The debate “Market forces alone cannot ensure cultural diversity nationally and internationally” provided a stark delineation of the cultural approach to the market, to protect and promote cultural diversity, and the trade approach to culture, which frames the official U.S. government position in the UNESCO deliberations. It brought together Professor Tyler Cowan, a member of the National Commission and the UNESCO Panel of Experts that drafted the Convention and Benjamin Barber, University of Maryland, School of Public Affairs and College of Behavioural Sciences, (Barber is the Gershon and Carol Kekst Professor of Civil Society and the Wilson H. Elkins Professor).

Although the real politick of the World Trade Organization regulatory purview over culture was discussed as the motive for the UNESCO instrument, conference participants expressed concern that the present Draft fails to make a strong case for the value of cultural diversity in its own right and is too focused in language, and structured in content, around trade.

The closing session “Where do we go from here?” outlined specific follow-up to extend Conference goals around the country. Conference papers and the recording of the debate between Cowen and Barber will be posted soon on a website. It is expected that sectoral and special interest meetings on these topics will be organized in the coming months throughout the United States.

UNESCO Updates

UNESCO has released an updated version of the Convention on the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expressions following the Drafting Committee Meetings which took place from December 14-17, 2004. This new version incorporates the written submission of member states and NGOs and the comments of the Drafting Committee on the Preamble and first 11 Articles. The next intergovernmental committee of experts meeting will be held from January 31-February 12, 2005 in Paris.

The INCD will be represented at the intergovernmental meeting by Coordinator Garry Neil, Steering Committee Member Yvon Thiec and possibly others.

All INCD Members are encouraged to write to their own government to support the amendments that INCD has put forward. These are available on the INCD website.

INCD representatives will attend a meeting of the International Network on Cultural Policy working group in advance of the UNESCO meeting. This is expected to be an opportunity to discuss ways in which governments and civil society can collaborate to promote and effective and timely Convention.

We will report on these meetings in the next newsletter.

Council of Europe Report on Transnational Media

Eva Majuntke

European Affairs Officer

ARD – Brussels

A report from the Advisory Panel on Media Diversity – a Council of Europe working group – observes there has been a significant increase in transnational media concentration throughout Europe. Since this trend is likely to bring serious risks for cultural diversity and democracy, the report suggests a number of actions to protect pluralism and promote Europe’s cultural and linguistic diversity.

In its research, the working group found that the phenomenon of transnational media concentration has intensified in recent years. The trend is fueled by a number of factors, such as:

the over saturation and concentration of national media markets, which provides an incentive to companies to expand beyond their original territory;
the liberalization of broadcasting markets in Western Europe and the collapse of the state controlled economy in the East;
the increasing acceptance of generic formats such as “reality TV” programs; and
the trend to plan a number of advertising campaigns on a transnational level.

Media concentration has taken place in three distinct patterns:

Media companies expanding by operating directly or through subsidiaries, joint ventures or shareholdings in other companies on the media market of more than one country.
Companies or individuals owning media companies in several countries.
Media companies distributing their products in many countries, including broadcasts targeted specifically at countries other than the country of their residence.

According to the Council of Europe report, the two main concerns raised by the development are the possible impact on democracy and the diminishing diversity of content production. While the new media environment has given viewers, listeners and readers a wider choice of media products and channels, this has not led to a wider diversity of opinion and content, as cheap programmes and formulaic series are offered throughout the channels in many countries, while high quality local content struggles to compete. The role of the media as a public watchdog tends to be compromised by less and less investigative and informative journalism, and the interference of media owners in the editorial independence of their journalistic staff.

To counter such developments, the report strongly recommends the ongoing monitoring of transnational media concentration, the creation and implementation of an international convention against the negative impacts of transnational media concentration, the strengthening of public service broadcasting, support for community media, the enforcement of a clear separation between political authorities and the media and new national legislation to effectively secure media pluralism.

A copy of the report is available at: http://www.incd.net/docs/transnationalmedia.pdf. INCD members in Europe should communicate with their governments about this issue and continue to encourage policies which will support increased media diversity.

Recommendations from Helsinki Process Support Diversity

Jennifer Heale

INCD Administrator

The Helsinki Process was created at the initiative of the Finnish government in co-operation with the Government of Tanzania. Launched in December, 2002 the aim of the Helsinki Process is to promote democracy and equality in international relations by promoting the involvement of Southern perspectives and civil society in forming global policies. The process is defined by two activities; a high-level advisory group of experts, consisting of 22 members and chaired by the Foreign Ministers of Finland and Tanzania and three sub-groups of experts who work independently to provide policy ideas and proposals. The three sub-groups of experts examine issues in three distinct areas: New Approaches to Global Problem Solving, Global Economic Agenda and Human Security.

The initial report of the first sub-committee is being released this month and it contains strong support for several positions the INCD has taken. The group was charged with examining why the current instruments of global governance are not resulting in progress towards finding adequate solutions to world problems. The group concludes there are several contributing factors:

· Democracy Deficit in global institutions – power is concentrated in the hands of a few governments, resulting in marginalization.

· Coherence Deficit – linkages between ministries within national governments are weak and ineffective, resulting in the creation of conflicting international obligations.

· Compliance Deficit – governments and international institutions are failing to implement those decisions which have been made.

In response to these problems, the report proposes 50 recommendations for ensuring transparency, accountability, effective leadership, inclusion and infrastructural development of the world’s leading international institutions such as the WTO and the International Labour Office.

In addressing the question of increasing democratization of world governments and inter-governmental procedures, the report puts forward a strong case in favour of the UNESCO Convention on the protection of the diversity of cultural contents and artistic expressions.

The report states: “Cultural diversity within and among countries is an essential component of a lively and democratic world society. Artistic creations and cultural expressions arise from and reflect the values and traditions of particular societies and are more than conventional goods and services. Promoting more balanced exchanges between cultures will enrich creative expression and expand the range of choices available to all citizens.”

The report makes recommendations concerning the content of the Convention:

· It must not be subordinate to other international agreements (including trade agreements).

· It must contain measures to assist developing countries to develop their creative capacity.

· It must support the sovereignty of states to create measures which support their local artists.

· It must ensure that cultural policies are adaptable to new media as these emerge.

The INCD has been advocating these principles in our work on the Convention and we applaud the experts group for their strong words in support of an effective Convention. We hope that the central working group of the Helsinki Process will include these recommendations in its final report.

The report also addresses several media issues and makes recommendations to increase accessibility including the creation of a Media Council as a part of the Helsinki Process and the establishment of a Media Institute, which would, among other activities, provide training opportunities for media professionals and assist with business planning for independent and indigenous-language media.

Finally, the report recommends the creation of a Media Watch Global initiative which would serve as an international citizen’s watchdog group with local and national chapters.

The INCD believes these recommendations would increase media diversity and facilitate greater public involvement in the dialogue about the responsibilities of the media.

The Helsinki Process is culminating in an international conference in September 2005 and we hope delegates will closely examine the preliminary recommendations on the UNESCO Convention on the protection of the diversity of cultural contents and artistic expressions and support the recommendations of this sub-committee.

Events and Announcements

Funding Announcement

“The Inter-American Civil Society Partnership Initiative”

OAS and the Open Society Institute

Funds up to US $20,000 for projects which monitor and implement summit mandates

For more information:

Website: www.civil-society.oas.org

E-mail: summit.cso@oas.org

Telephone: (202) 245-3127

Publication Announcement:

Draft Convention on the protection of the diversity of cultural contents and artistic expressions; Analysis and Commentary by Ivan Bernier, Commissioned by the Organization International de La Francophonie.

Available at:

http://www.mcc.gouv.qc.ca/international/diversite-culturelle/eng/pdf/draft_analysis-commentary_2004.pdf

Events:

World Social Forum

January 26-31, 2005

Porto Allegre, Brazil

www.forumsocialmundial.org.br

Transformations – Culture and the Environment in Human Development

An International Conference Examining the UNESCO Declaration on

Culture Diversity and the Human Development Report 2004, UNDP

February 7-11, 2005

Canberra, Australia