Newsletter – April 2005

Vol. 6 No 4

Contents:

INCD at the WTO

2. UNESCO Process

3. Culture and GATS

4. Cinema and Cultural Diversity.

5. Events and Announcements

INCD News

INCD at the World Trade Organization

Implications of the UNESCO Convention for WTO Trade Rules

A delegation from INCD put the case for an effective Convention before key government and WTO officials in Geneva, April 20-22. At its seminar held as part of the WTO’s Symposium and in a series of bilateral meetings, the INCD pointed out how the multilateral trading rules and the current negotiations under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) continue to restrict the right of governments to support their own artists and cultural producers and ensure diversity in the media.

The seminar attracted more than 100 WTO delegates and NGOs for a lively three hour discussion. Jane Kelsey, INCD Steering Committee member and professor of law from the University of Auckland outlined how the GATS has significant direct and indirect consequences for culture and media policies. In addition to the continuing challenges to audiovisual policies, current negotiations on telecommunications and computer services can represent a significant threat if they fail to take into account the cultural content that is an integral part of both. A copy of Jane’s presentation is published below.

Jacques Béhanzin, INCD Steering Committee member and head of the African Federation of Filmmakers, discussed the concerns of Africa’s developing countries, the need for a strong Convention and increased support for developing cultural capacity and creative industries.

Roy Mickey Joy, rotating representative of the Permanent Delegation of the Pacific Islands Forum and Director of External Trade for Vanuatu, discussed how his country was pressured to liberalize audiovisual services during its negotiations to join the WTO. As Chief Negotiator in the talks, he reported how the U.S. required commitments in audiovisual services and how his country withdrew its accession request at the last moment, believing that the price of entry was too high. Vanuatu is now seeking to re-open accession discussions on the basis of making no commitment in cultural services. Jane Kelsey called the accession process, “WTO’s dirty little secret,” since the pressure on Vanuatu is common to other states seeking to join the WTO. One element of China’s accession involved an agreement to import an increasing number of Hollywood movies each year.

Garry Neil, INCD Executive Director and cultural policy expert reviewed the developments at UNESCO to conclude a legally-binding treaty on cultural diversity. While he admitted there is much work remaining to ensure the Convention can be effective, he was optimistic an agreement will be reached on terms that will make the Convention equivalent in status to the trade treaties. During the discussions there were some reservations expressed about how effective the Convention can be given the current state of the Paris negotiations.

INCD delegates also met with a number of key players, including Canada’s Ambassador to the WTO and officials from South Africa, Croatia, France and other countries. Among the significant meetings were sessions with Ambassador Alejandro Jara of Chile who is chair of the body overseeing the GATS negotiations, Ambassador Claudia Uribe of Columbia, newly elected Chair of the Council on Trade in Services and Hamid Mamdouh, Director of the WTO’s Trade in Services Division.

Among the key observations of the INCD delegation are the following:

1. Supporters of cultural diversity in Geneva continue to see it almost exclusively in terms of the audiovisual industry, there is limited awareness of the implications of digital issues and the links to telecom services commitments. The European Union and the U.S. seem to have reached an agreement to keep the issue of audiovisual services off the table in the current talks and thus each will be free to pursue their own interests. For the U.S., this is primarily in the bilateral forum where they hope to make gains that can be subsequently locked-in multilaterally.

2. The European Union is not agreed on the music sector since some of its members have an interest in opening markets, although the E.U. will not take an offensive position for the time being. The E.U. also seems to be primarily interested in protecting its own cultural interests, not in educating and supporting developing countries that are under pressure to make commitments.

3. Bringing the issue of cultural diversity into the WTO is seen by the major players, and others, as having the potential to increase political opposition to the overall WTO efforts to liberalize trade in goods and services. In many respects, all sides are happy to have the discussions of cultural diversity shifted to UNESCO. This applies equally to supporters and opponents of the Convention, as they both have their own interests to pursue in the WTO and do not want this political problem stalling progress. INCP members seem to have little interest in working together in Geneva to support the UNESCO process.

Copies of all presentations made at the INCD seminar will be available soon on the INCD website.

2. UNESCO Process

Chair’s Consolidated Draft Released

On April 21, UNESCO’s Director General, Mr. Koïchiro Matsuura, presented to the UNESCO Executive Board the consolidated draft text of the proposed Convention on the protection of the diversity of cultural contents and artistic expressions prepared by the members of the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Committee. At the meeting in February, Dr. Kadar Asmal, Chairman of the Committee, was directed to prepare a text that would bring together all of the elements of the discussion along with recommendations for moving forward.

This draft was prepared at a meeting in Cape Town involving Dr. Asmal; Jukka Liede of Finland, the Chair of the Drafting Committee; Artur Wilczynski of Canada, the Rapporteur of the Committee; Mounir Bouchenaki, UNESCO’s Assistant Director General for Culture; and Katerina Stenou, Director of the Division of Cultural Policies and Inter-Cultural Dialogue.

This new draft is available as Appendix II of the following report: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001392/139257e.pdf.

The Chairman’s Draft represents a significant milestone in the process of developing a possible Convention. The text effectively is a recommendation on all of the remaining issues. The INCD will prepare an analysis of this draft prior to the Intergovernmental meeting which will begin in Paris on May 25.

3. Trade in Cultural Goods and Services: Assessing the Compatibility between WTO trade rules and UNESCO's cultural diversity convention

World Trade Organization Symposium, INCD Seminar

By Jane Kelsey

INCD Steering Committee Member

Geneva, April 20, 2005.

I come from New Zealand. Most people here will know that New Zealand has three main objectives in international trade and the WTO – they involve agriculture, agriculture and agriculture. However, despite two decades of neoliberal policies that have radically changed our country, there is still more to life in New Zealand than butter, sheep and export markets.

Our current Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Helen Clark, is a culture buff and has held the portfolio of Minister of Culture since the Labour Party was elected in 1999. Their policy platform also talked of the need for nation building after a soul-destroying period of market-driven government. A central plank of her government’s election policy was to introduce compulsory local content quotas for free to air radio and television because the volume of New Zealand content in the media was the lowest of any western industrialized nation. Shortly after the election Helen Clark was told she couldn’t do that because New Zealand had make market access and national treatment commitments in the GATS. Her reply:

‘We have unilaterally disarmed ourselves on trade but very few others have been so foolish. We’re now left with perfectly legitimate calls for local content and people saying ‘You can’t do that because of Gats”. This seems a bit ridiculous so we’re just working out the best way to handle it’. (NZ Herald, 10 April 2000)

Like our Prime Minister, very few of those who are involved directly with the culture sector as practitioners and patrons, or who simply value the diversity of culture as enriching of our identities, communities and our individual lives, know that these trade commitments even exist. Those who become aware express the same sentiments to those expressed by Helen Clark. Culture is more than the livelihoods of practitioners or the profits of cultural industries. It is a reflection of diverse civilizations and vehicle for the history, language, poetry, music and stories that weave our identities and relationships, provide ways to reflect our uniqueness and share the richness of diversity. All of these elements are to be both celebrated and contested - but which is only possible in a milieu that nurtures the value of culture for its own sake.

As Helen Clark said, the idea that trade agreements should constrain the legitimate policy choices of governments as they promote and defend genuine cultural diversity is ridiculous. Unlike Helen Clark, however, we are not prepared to accept that cultural policies should be subordinated to securing market access for agriculture.

What form does this threat take? Let me talk here solely about trade in services, but many of these comments could just as easily apply to investment and government procurement. Intellectual property agreements raise somewhat different issues.

First, how does culture come within agreements on trade in services? Services commitments are scattered across over a hundred technical product descriptions – CPC. There has been a tendency in the culture debate to focus on the most obvious classification of audio-visual services and its subheadings of production, distribution, exhibition and broadcasting. Yet Recreational, Cultural and Sporting Services apply to entertainment, news agency, libraries, museums, archives, sporting and recreational, and other cultural services. Professional services include architecture, urban planning and landscape. Research and development has a subcategory for social sciences and humanities. Other business services include advertising, photography, printing and publishing and translation.

So what people experience as a unitary and integrated service, such as a novel can be disaggregated across a range of sub-sectors that include writing, editing, printing, publishing, photography, translation, news agencies, advertising, finance, retail, distribution and transport. When they are asked to make full commitments to national treatment and market access in these sectors governments are asked to guarantee unimpeded access and rights to operate for foreign firms in all those activities.

Even this list is misleading because it ignores the spectrum of financing, production, distribution and exchange through which transnational corporations and investors dominate the cultural domain. Corporate strategies and policies in generic service sectors such as retail, franchising, distribution, information technology, real estate, consultancy, financial services, telecommunications and e-commerce increasingly determine practices within the culture sector. Of most particular relevance here is e-commerce. Because virtually all cultural goods and services are now created, produced, distributed, exhibited and preserved digitally.

An example of the power of corporate strategies is the US retail giant Walmart, which chooses what music, books, magazines and videos it wants to sell. By dominating market share in the US it can effectively dictate the content of those products. One EMI music executive quoted in BusinessWeek (6 October 2003) claimed it is impossible to take an artist to a mainstream audience without the biggest retail player onside. Major music companies supply Walmart with sanitised versions of the raunchy CDs that they provide to radio stations, while magazines and book titles are vetted to meet the corporation’s self-defined ethical code. Walmart’s international reach, including inroads into China, give it potentially enormous power over culture internationally. Yet the most relevant CPC for Walmart is Distribution services: retail.

It is therefore technically impossible to isolate cultural services within the GATS classifications. It is also very difficult to predict the future implications and applications of any commitments that are made. There are many examples I could use to illustrate this from Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Vanuatu. Let me give just one example that also highlights the growing importance of the bilateral agreements as negotiations to extend the GATS rules and schedules remain largely paralysed.

It involves the emerging dominance of digital technologies. Few governments anticipated this back in 1994 when they made their first GATS commitments – as the US itself has claimed in relation to Internet gambling! Governments who were concerned to protect their culture sector focused mainly on the CPC categories of audio-visual services. Digital technologies were covered at that stage by ‘other telecommunications services’ and the intellectual property rights agreement (TRIPS). In 1998 the agreement on e-commerce that was brokered by the US, as a pre-condition for President Clinton attending the Second WTO ministerial meeting in Geneva, placed a moratorium on customs duties on e-commerce transactions. This was complicated for those wanting to maintain some national control over digitized cultural representations. But it was also far from optimal for US corporations.

US demands for binding commitments in digital media have intensified, especially in bilateral negotiations where it can exert direct pressure and create cumulative precedents. In the Chile-US free trade agreement signed off in 2003 the US was prepared to accept the grandfathering of existing protections for cultural sectors (known as a ‘standstill’). But it demanded full guarantees of access, non-discrimination and market-driven regulation for its companies in the rapidly expanding digital sphere. The e-commerce aspect of that agreement was drafted so broadly that all products traded or delivered digitally, including cultural services, were covered. This is the first concrete evidence of a changing US industry and government strategy. At an INCD sponsored conference in Washington this January, Bonnie Richardson of the Motion Picture Association of America stated that the industry and government are no longer seeking the removal of existing content quotas and broadcasting regulations. Rather, they are seeking to restrict these to their current scope. The primary battleground in culture is culture is therefore shifting to telecommunications and electronic commerce debates.

Similar proposals were strenuously opposed by the Australian culture sector in negotiations for an Australia-US free trade agreement (AUSFTA) that concluded in 2004. While the US argued that digital is a different product from analogue, the Australian government insisted that it was the same product supplied through a different mode of delivery. The Australian Coalition for Cultural Diversity objected, unsuccessfully, that even agreeing to a standstill would tie the hands of Australian governments in adopting any innovative new policies, including strategies to promote digital cultural industries, and effectively outsource the creation of Australian cultural policies to Hollywood. In the words of the US Trade Representative, the final agreement ‘calls for each government to adopt state-of-the-art protection for digital products such as software, music, text, and videos, and encourages adoption of measures to promote trade through electronic commerce’.

The AUSFTA also imposed onerous standstill provisions on Australian governments. They could not increase existing local content quotas. If the quotas were cut they could not subsequently be restored to their earlier levels. Caps were applied to quotas in free to air radio and television. Provision was made to introduce expenditure-based quotas for ‘pay TV’ of up to 10 percent for arts, children’s, documentary and educational programmes, with the possibilities of increasing those for drama to 20 percent provided this was ‘non-discriminatory’ and ‘no more burdensome than necessary’.

This was a concession to the sustained pressure from the cultural lobby, supported by the broader campaign against the agreement. But the Australian government stressed that including these provisions did not indicate a current intention to use them, unless subscription television became significantly more influential or the dominant form of media. Quotas could not be introduced for interactive audio or visual services unless the government proved that local content was not readily available. Again, any rules had to be transparent and the least trade restrictive option. There was no exception for public broadcasting, aside from a general exclusion for grants and subsidies. The standard definition that is cited as protecting public services – ‘services supplied in the exercise of government authority’ - would only apply where there was no commercial element and no competitors in the market. Today, no public television or radio and very few libraries and museums could satisfy that test.

In New Zealand, we look with real envy to Australia with its public broadcasting and current affairs, SBS international news and programmes, vibrant film making, drama, music, arts and museums. Often we go there to ‘consume’ it. We know the risks of ideologically driven governments making services commitments that are designed to lock in neoliberal policy agendas that see culture as a dispensable tradeable commodity. Many more governments have little understanding of the implications or in the case of acceding countries have to concede to unconscionable demands or remain outside the WTO, as Vanuatu has experienced.

This year the GATS negotiations and the deluge of regional and bilateral arrangements have intensified the pressure on governments to sign away the right to make policies and laws that promote and protect genuine cultural diversity. It is essential to strengthen the ability and willingness of governments to say no – not just to audio-visual services but to the whole panoply of commitments that close their policy space and the sustainability of cultural diversity. I will pass over to my colleagues to discuss some of the ways in which that is being approached.

3. Cinema and Cultural Diversity.

By H.E. Mohamed Tangi

Ambassador of the Kingdom of Morocco in Canada

Diverciné Festival

Ottawa, March 2005.

Le cinéma, la culture, la francophonie, l’amitié : tels sont les quatre mots-clés de notre rencontre d’aujourd’hui. Ces thèmes, ce sont des réalités qui nous rassemblent et des valeurs que nous partageons.

Le cinéma d’abord. Oui le Maroc, tout comme le Canada et la France et d’autres pays francophones, est un pays de cinéma. Ce cinéma qui fait rêver, et qui jette un regard sur les fractures, les souffrances et les cicatrices de nos sociétés, ce cinéma qui est aussi une immense ouverture sur le monde qui nous entoure, sur le monde où nous vivons.

L'image, le cinéma ont le don de faire naître le rêve, d'appeler au dépassement de soi, de rendre possible, accessible et probable l’ouverture, l’évasion et la gaieté. Elles peuvent révéler le pire, engendrer les spirales de la haine, mais elles savent également forger les volontés, créer les solidarités, jeter les bases d'une prise de conscience mondiale.

Allié et instrument de la diversité culturelle, le cinéma, prouve sa vocation à illustrer l'évolution des sociétés, la richesses de leurs cultures. La culture, parce qu’elle repose sur ce que la philosophe française Simone Weil appelait “ l’enracinement ”, est au cœur de cette identité collective, une identité venue du fond des âges, mais une identité qui est tout autant un projet qu’un héritage, un projet fondé sur des valeurs, des valeurs communes, qui transcendent les différences.

C’est en tant que représentant d’un pays convaincu de l’importance fondamentale de la culture et de la diversité des cultures que je m’adresse à vous. La diversité des cultures exprime la singularité même de l’aventure humaine faite à la fois d’unité, unité sacrée du genre humain, d’universalité, universalité des Droits de l’Homme et de diversité, diversité des cultures, des langues, des usages, des coutumes. Cette diversité n’est pas une invitation à l’enfermement des cultures sur elles-mêmes. Elle est incitation à l’échange, au dialogue, à la circulation, dans un monde ouvert, des œuvres, des idées, des artistes.

Le Maroc aime le cinéma et lui accorde une grande importance. Le Maroc affiche clairement sa ferme volonté d'aller de l'avant dans la consolidation de ses acquis dans le domaine cinématographique, considéré comme l'un des principaux vecteurs de promotion de l'activité culturelle, pilier essentiel du projet de société démocratique et moderniste conduit, avec détermination, par notre Sa jeune Roi Mohammed VI.

De l’avis de plusieurs observateurs, le cinéma marocain a enregistré ces dernières années un développement considérable. La production cinématographique au Maroc, aux débuts trébuchants des années 50, a connu une grande évolution. De 1999 à 2004, la moyenne de production a atteint huit films par an, au moment où la sortie de deux films par an constituait, jusqu'à un temps très récent, une grande réalisation en soi.

Le Maroc projette d'atteindre une production de 20 films par an dans les trois années à venir. Cette augmentation quantitative est due notamment à la création du Fonds d'aide à la production cinématographique qui consacre annuellement la somme de 30 millions de dinars pour la production de 7 films.

Au Maroc, on est de plus en plus conscient que le Cinéma, en plus d’être une expression et un vecteur culturel, peut générer une plus value économique, des études ayant démontré que le 7ème art fait partie des industries qui contribuent à la promotion économique et culturelle ainsi que touristique.

Le Maroc, lieu prisé également de tournage des films internationaux. Depuis quelques années, plusieurs réalisateurs de renom ont choisi de tourner leurs films dans le Royaume, tels que le film américain «Gladiateur» avec un coût de 130 millions de dollars. Le budget consacré au tournage dans le Royaume a atteint 17 millions de dollars, somme dépensée dans sa totalité au Maroc. Les attraits des sites naturels et culturels du Royaume et l’existence des studios, bien équipés sur place, permettent actuellement de tourner au moins 20 films par an. La ville de Ouarzazate est devenue, ainsi, depuis quelques années, le principal lieu de tournage de films dans le monde arabe, en Afrique et au Proche-Orient et un pôle cinématographique d’envergure internationale.

La ville de Marrakech, pour sa part, est honorée de recevoir depuis quatre années un grand festival de cinéma. Marrakech, cité millénaire, carrefour séculaire de brassages de diverses cultures et civilisations, dédie son festival à la diversité culturelle et s'inscrit dans cette perspective historique qui a toujours été la sienne. Ce festival, conçu pour être une agora pour un débat pluriel et enrichissant, aspire à prendre place dans l'agenda des grands rendez-vous internationaux dédiés au 7e Art. Aussi, le Maroc ne se contente pas de rester uniquement un lieu de tournage, mais a décidé d'accorder des subventions à la production nationale, de mettre en place des laboratoires, d'assurer la formation des cadres, d'encourager la coproduction et de participer aux différents festivals du monde.

Tenja, le film marocain présenté dans ce festival, offre une nouvelle image d'un cinéma marocain, tourné résolument vers l'universel et illustre bien le renouveau de l’industrie cinématographique marocaine. C’est le premier long métrage de Hassan Legzouli.

Né au Maroc en 1963, M. Legzouli arrive en France au début des années 80 pour étudier les mathématiques. Mais, pour notre bonheur, le jeune homme s'oriente bientôt vers le cinéma, et intègre l'INSAS, prestigieuse école bruxelloise. Après plusieurs courts-métrages, il signe en 1998 un moyen-métrage présenté au Festival de Namur, Quand le soleil fait tomber les moineaux. Hassan Legzouli a presente son premier long-métrage, intitule, Tenja.

Mais au fait, que signifie Tenja ? "Il y a une légende au Maroc qui raconte que Noé, perdu au milieu du déluge, a vu une colombe se poser sur son arche. Constatant qu'elle avait de la glaise sur les pattes, Noé s'est mis à crier : "Ten ja !", ce qui en arabe signifie "la terre est là, la terre est revenue". C'est la légende que racontent les Tangérois pour expliquer l'origine du nom de leur ville. Voila pour la légende.

Events and Announcements

Mid-Annual INCP Meeting

May 9, 2005

Brussels, Belgium

Cultural Diversity in Knowledge Societies

Saint-Petersburg, Russian federation

May 17, 2005

http://portal.unesco.org/culture

National Conference for Media Reform

Free Press

May 13-15, 2005

St. Louis, U.S.A.

http://freepress.net/conference/

Intergovernmental Meeting of Experts on the Preliminary Draft Convention on the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expressions

May 25-June 4

Paris, France

http://portal.unesco.org/culture/

Americans for the Arts

June 11-13, 2005

Austin, USA

www.artsusa.org/services/events/eventsa.asp?id=1521

World Culture Forum

June 4-7, 2005

Amman, Jordan

Dynamics of Communication: New Ways and New Actors

Culturelink Network