International Network for Cultural Diversity

July 2006

Vol. 7 No 3

Contents:

1. INCD News and Events
2. UNESCO Convention Ratification
3. WTO Talks – Last Legs or Nearing Completion?
4. Cultural Heritage Policy in South Africa and Mozambique
5. Developments in Brazil
6. Events and Announcements

1. INCD News and Events

Steering Committee Election

INCD is a democratic membership organization managed by a Steering Committee elected in a web-based process. This process is now underway and we are inviting any INCD member interested in serving on the Steering Committee, or nominating a colleague for election, to contact the secretariat.

INCD Seventh Annual Meeting, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 20-22 November 2006

Please note the dates have changed slightly. Later in this newsletter you will see that Steering Committee member Leonardo Brant and Executive Director Garry Neil recently attended a series of meetings in Brazil. As a consequence of agreements with the World Culture Forum-Brazil 2006, the INCD meeting dates have changed to the following;

INCD Steering Committee 19 November 2006

INCD Annual Conference 20, 21 and 22 November

INCD/INCP Dinner 22 November

INCD Presentation to INCP 23 November

All activities will take place in Rio de Janeiro, where the World Culture Forum will open on 24 November. Look for more details about the meeting, including the agenda, in upcoming editions of the newsletter. Information about the World Culture Forum in Rio should be available soon on the Internet.

Conference on Creative Industries in Africa, Dakar, Senegal, 11-13 December 2006

Planning is underway for a major conference on creative industries in Africa. The primary organizers of the Conference are INCD and the Danish Center for Culture and Development, in partnership with HIVOS (Netherlands), Strommestiftelsen (Norway) and Interarts (Spain).

The objectives of the conference are to:

• Strengthen the recognition of, and support for, creative industries as a vector for development in Africa and a means to achieve poverty reduction, social development, democratization and promotion of human rights, and

• Support networking and sharing of best practices from creative industries, demonstrate the social and economic impact of creative industries and advocate for an enabling policy environment for creative industries in Africa

For further information about the Conference, please contact the secretariat or Ibrahima Seck, INCD West and Central African Coordinator, iseck@yahoo.fr.

2. UNESCO Convention Update

Progress toward ratifying the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions has been modest since the UNESCO General Conference overwhelming adopted the terms in October 2005.

To date, only Canada and Mauritius have deposited instruments of ratification or accession with the Director General. Three months after the thirtieth such instrument is deposited, the Convention will come into effect. A number of other countries, such as Croatia, Burkina Faso, Mexico and France have completed the legislative process necessary to authorize the executive branch to accede to the Convention, but have yet to take the final step. The delay in Mexico results from the recent presidential election in which there is a disputed result. In the case of France, the European Commission has decided that the European Community will deposit its ratification together with those of member states sometime in the future.

The process to obtain the necessary legislative approval is already underway in Belgium, Mali, Moldova, Spain, Japan, Senegal, Switzerland and elsewhere. Many other countries, including South Africa, Venezuela and Cuba are expected to soon join the movement.

INCD continues to urge all governments to move quickly to ratify the Convention and to urge UNESCO to step up its efforts to encourage ratification. In a recent statement, Executive Director Garry Neil said, “While the process has been rather slower than we would have liked, we remain confident that a large number of countries, from every continent, and of every size and shape, will ratify this important new international instrument.”

INCD is working with its members in 74 countries to develop a support campaign that is appropriate for each. Mr. Neil concluded, “We expect that our ratification campaign will be fully operational within the next 10 weeks, at which time governments around the world can expect to hear from local, national and international organizations about the critical importance of this Convention for the world’s artists and cultural producers, and for citizens everywhere.”

If you have authoritative information about the ratification process in your country or would like more information about the INCD ratification campaign, please contact the INCD secretariat.

3. WTO Negotiations – Last Legs or Nearing Completion?

Garry Neil, INCD Executive Director

As reported in recent editions of the newsletter, the deal reached in Hong Kong last December seemed to provide impetus to the Doha Round of WTO trade negotiations, which had been stalled heading into that ministerial meeting. The effective deadline for a satisfactory settlement of the remaining issues is the end of the current year, since the “fast track” negotiating authority of the U.S. President, essential to obtain Congressional approval of any deal, is set to expire in July 2007.

However, the WTO has suffered some setbacks in recent weeks. Negotiators have missed several deadlines and an informal meeting of trade ministers from the key countries which concluded in Geneva on 1 July, failed to make any progress on the critical issues – agricultural subsidies, non-agricultural market access and services. Any deal in services could have negative consequences for cultural policies, since there is pressure to open up the audiovisual, telecommunications and other services sectors relevant to culture.

The negotiations on domestic regulations, which were also given a boost by the Hong Kong agreement, may also have a substantial impact on culture. Many governments maintain (GATS Article VI:4) “measures relating to qualifications requirements and procedures, technical standards and licensing procedures” in the cultural field. The Hong Kong agreement provides that WTO Members will negotiate rules to ensure that such measures “do not constitute unnecessary barriers to trade in services.”

The next opportunity for a breakthrough will occur at the meeting of the G8 leaders being held in St. Petersburg, Russia, 15-17 July. The leaders of the world’s eight largest economies will be joined at this meeting by Brazil’s Lula da Silva, China’s Hu Jintau, India’s Manmohan Singh, Mexico’s Vicente Fox, and Thabo Mbeki from South Africa. Since all of the key WTO members will be represented by their leaders at this meeting, some expect it could be a forum for negotiating the framework of a final WTO deal.

There are presently two widely held views among civil society groups about what these developments mean. All agree that organizations concerned about the potential negative consequences of a comprehensive trade deal should continue to monitor the negotiations for the rest of 2006. Some believe that a deal is still possible, if only on the basis of confirming the offers that have already been made. Others believe that no deal is possible and the Doha Round will simply be continued, with a new deadline set for after the U.S. presidential election in November 2008. These is a smaller group which believes the focus will shift to services issues, since the negotiations on GATS were mandated as part of the 1995 agreement which created the WTO.

4. Cultural Heritage Policy in South Africa and Mozambique:

Reflections on INCD Challenges

James Early

Smithsonian Institution

INCD Steering Committee

I was recently in South Africa to attend a meeting of the Freedom Park Pan-African Archives International Advisory Committee. This provided me with an opportunity to meet in early May with civil society arts and cultural industries, and cultural heritage and policy practitioners in Pretoria and Johannesburg to discuss INCD and the UNESCO cultural diversity convention. May 8-22, I was in Maputo, Matola, Nampula, and Iha-Do, Mozambique, at the invitation of the U.S. Embassy, to present a series of talks and seminars on Participatory Museology, Cultural Democracy Policy, and New Relations between Africa and the Diaspora and Implications for Development.

The following information, reflections, observations, and recommendations are drawn from a broad array of engaging encounters with artists, cultural workers in professional and service organizations, ordinary citizens motivated by and involved in grassroots arts and culture projects, and museums, schools and universities in South Africa and Mozambique. I also met with a wide range of local and national government officials directly involved in cultural/heritage policies including a brief exchange with President Thabo Mbeki; an extended discussion with South African Minister of Culture Pallo Jordan about a variety of topics including the UNESCO Convention; Mozambique's Minister of Tourism, Fernando Sumbana Junior; and Salomao Julio Manhica, Chairman of the Board Instituto Nacional Comunicacoes de Mocambique.

Unexpectedly, but happily, I was invited to attend the launch of the African World Heritage Fund in South Africa, a key theme of which was Africa's under-representation among designated world heritage sites despite the size and population of the continent, and its global distinction as the cradle of human origins. Sub-Saharan Africa is severely under-represented on the list of World Heritage Sites; despite great cultural and natural diversity, only 65 of the 812 global sites are found here, and they constitute 43 percent of sites on the List of World Heritage in Danger.

I had a lengthy and far-ranging discussion with Mbuyamba Lupwishi, Executive Director of the Observatory for Cultural Policies in Africa (OCPA) located in Mozambique, on topics as diverse as copyright, traditional language preservation and usage, integration of traditional knowledge systems and technologies among the cultural-epistemological bases for cultural policy and national development, stronger linkages among the many African and Diaspora cultural heritage agendas and projects underway in organizations and nations, including the African Union cultural heritage initiatives, and local/national and "Pan-African" Afro-Centric cultural and socio-economic and political development initiatives by civil society and States in various countries.

Among my observations and conclusions from the meetings that INCD might more centrally focus and effectively pursue are:

1. The UNESCO Convention on cultural diversity does not appear to be

broadly or directly engaged through African government overtures to civil society (artists, cultural producers and workers, and intellectuals);

2. Leadership among African countries to coordinate ratification of the

UNESCO Convention seems disbursed and not strategically directed in relationship to citizen participation or with other countries, especially key developing countries like Brazil;

3. Cultural policy and diversity ramifications of the UNESCO Convention

in Africa are directly and urgently bearing on the life-ways of large segments of citizen-artisans, especially women, and are not as focused on the immediate concerns of individual artists and cultural producers as elsewhere;

4. The UNESCO ratification process should engage INCD in active, ongoing work about resource transfers and cultural policy agendas that might/will in many instances diverge from policy concerns in the North and West;

5. Despite identifiable and productive network collaborations in Africa, INCD lacks more strategic planning and collaboration with stable Southern African contacts with the visions, plans, projects, and human and resource capacity to make the UNESCO Convention work for African cultural realities, challenges, and solutions. Candid review and evaluation of INCD network relations throughout the continent should be a high priority.

5. INCD 7^th Annual Meeting, Cultural Diversity and Copyright

Developments in Brazil

Leonardo Brant,

Institute for Cultural Diversity

INCD Steering Committee

The first preparatory meeting for the Seventh Annual Conference of the INCD was held 20 May 2006 at the ArteCidadania, in São Paulo (www.artecidadania.org.br). An old metallurgical plant, ArteCidadania has been transformed into a cultural centre, run by five cultural institutions, including the Instituto Diversidade Cultural, the Brazilian arm of INCD. The centre works with 300 children of the cracolândia (Crackland) district, named for the problems facing local youth, including drugs and prostitution.

Almost one hundred people attended a seminar on cultural diversity sponsored by the IDC and engaged in a spirited debate around the contemporary cultural diversity issues. Garry Neil and I spoke several times during the session that ran from 9:00 am to 7:00 pm. We provided detailed background on the INCD, discussed the UNESCO Convention and cultural development issues, and reviewed plans for the upcoming meetings of INCD, INCP and the World Culture Forum. There were also sessions on Brazil’s film industry and about the copyright issues.

In developing the agenda of the meeting, local organizers met several times with the technical team of the Ministry of Culture, which has been trying to encourage discussions at the November Brazil meetings on the issue of how copyright intersects with access to culture. Brazil has many experiences which point to the need to discuss this issue. Like other South American and African countries, independent production has developed informal channels of distribution as an alternative to the markets dominated by the major companies. Last year, we connected with Nigerian colleagues who reported that the Nigerian film industry produced 1,200 films last year, all of which were successfully distributed outside the formal cinemas.

A contemporary challenge for the cultural diversity movement is to consider how to democratize the production and distribution of arts and culture and how to increase cultural participation. Like many other countries, Brazil’s media is dominated by one communications company, Rede Globo, which controls 80 percent of television advertising and has substantial interests in other media, including radio, magazines, newspapers and the Internet. Civil society lost important battles around the approval of Ancinav (the audiovisual agency) and the adoption of rules for the introduction of Digital TV, when President Lula appointed a former Globo employee as Communications Minister. Even the intervention of Culture Minister Gilbert Gil failed to change the decisions. Information on these issues is available at www.culturaemercado.com.br. Many believe that Lula, who is in a fight for re-election, needs the strong support of Globo to win in October.

Other recent developments include the merger of Sky and DirecTV (Globo and Murdoch) to create a new monopoly in satellite television. Globo also dominates Brazilian film production through distribution deals and shares theatre space with the Hollywood majors.

It is important to review these developments, since it is necessary to explore alternatives for production and distribution, including community media, informal centres of distribution and the Internet, as a new paradigm for creating viable local cultural diversity. In Brazil, we are no longer fighting for space in the existing markets dominated by the majors, but are seeking new ways to guarantee cultural rights and access.

Garry Neil, INCD Executive Director and I attended the meeting of the Contact Group of the INCP held in Brasilia just before INCD seminar. (I attended as an expert of the Brazilian Government.) There was extensive discussion in INCP about the copyright issue as the Brazilian Government attempted to convince other delegations of the importance of considering this a cultural issue, rather than an industrial or development one.

While these discussions will continue in INCP, we do know that preparations for the Seventh Annual Meeting of INCD to be held in Rio de Janeiro in November are progressing well. We have final dates, an excellent venue and are seeking local resources to help ensure broad attendance by INCD members. We continue to enjoy effective collaboration with the culture ministers organized in INCP.

6. Events and Announcements

If you would like to read more about current development at the WTO, you might be interested in reading this paper which is available free of charge.

Crunch Time in Geneva: pressure tactics in the GATS negotiations

Scott Sinclair, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, June 2006.

Global civil society should not be lulled into complacency by gloomy media reports about the deadlock in the Doha Round negotiations.  While agricultural and other important issues remain serious obstacles to a deal, negotiators continue to work non-stop in Geneva.  The decision whether to close a deal this year is a political one that will be made, as in past rounds, by a small group of powerful governments.  

If there is a breakthrough on agriculture, the pressure will rapidly intensify for a large package of GATS commitments.  Even if a deal can not be concluded by year-end, negotiators are now making key decisions, including writing the text of new GATS rules restricting domestic regulation.  These threatened rules would seriously curtail the right to regulate services and weaken governments’ ability to protect the public.

At the December 2005 Hong Kong ministerial meeting, developed countries forced through a controversial set of services demands that prepared the ground for a final push to expand the GATS.  This new paper analyses benchmarks, plurilateral request-offer, domestic regulation and other pressure tactics so that non-governmental organizations, elected representatives, developing countries and ordinary citizens can intervene to counter them. The publication can be obtained free of charge at: http://www.policyalternatives.ca/Reports/2006/06/CrunchTimeGeneva/index.cfm?pa=6104ea04.

If we have missed your organization’s event, please contact the Secretariat at incd@ccarts.ca for inclusion in the next newsletter.

Fourth International Conference on Cultural Policy Research

ICCPR

July 12-16, 2006

Vienna – Austria

http://www.iccpr2006.com

International Conference on the Arts in Society

Common Ground

August 15-18, 2006

Edinburgh – Scotland

http://arts-conference.com

Seventh Annual Conference

International Network for Cultural Diversity

November 19- 22, 2006

Rio de Janeiro – Brazil

http://www.incd.net

Conference on Creative Industries in Africa

December 11-13

Dakar – Senegal

http://www.incd.net

The INCD would like to thank the Government of Canada for on-going financial support. We wish also to thank the Swedish International Development Agency and the Flemish community for providing important contributions to our work.

INCD/RIDC

804-130 Albert St

Ottawa ON K1P 5G4

Canada

Tel 1 613 238 3561 Ext 17

Fax 1 613 238 4849

incd@ccarts.ca

www.incd.net

Please post and/or distribute. When reprinting INCD Newsletters, please give appropriate credit.