International Network for Cultural Diversity
November
Vol. 6 No
8
Contents:
1. Report from INCD 6th Annual Meeting, 17-20 November
2005
2. INCD position on the UNESCO Convention
3. INCD organizes at the
WTO Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong
4. The ongoing negotiations on the
General Agreement on Trade in Services
5. Events and Announcements
1. Report from INCD’s 6th Annual Meeting,
Dakar, Senegal
Almost 140 delegates from more than 40 countries and
all parts of the arts and cultural community converged on Dakar, Senegal for the
6th Annual Conference of the International Network for Cultural Diversity. The
November 17-20 meeting, Cultural Diversity, Social Cohesion and Sustainable
Development: Cultural diversity for human development, alleviating poverty,
overcoming inequality and promoting empowerment, was co-hosted by the Senegalese
Coalition for Cultural Diversity and the Senegalese Network of Socio-Cultural
Actors. There was a rich and lively exchange of views on key issues concerning
the future of the global cultural diversity movement.
The many papers
presented by activists and specialists provided a valuable focus for the
discussions. Key papers will be posted over the coming weeks on the INCD
website. The Dakar Declaration, adopted by the delegates and presented 21
November to the culture ministers organized in the International Network on
Cultural Policy, is available there.
Delegates discussed the new UNESCO
Convention and resolved to work for its speedy ratification and to work to make
it as effective as it can be. INCD’s official response to the Convention is
provided below. The INCD also resolved to reinvigorate efforts to encourage
governments to resist demands in the WTO and regional and bilateral trade and
investment agreements to make commitments that undermine the objectives and
principles of the Convention. Information about an INCD event being held during
the WTO’s Hong Kong ministerial meeting can be found in section three of this
newsletter.
A central theme of the discussions was that culture is an
essential life force of our communities and delegates rejected approaches that
treat culture only as an instrument for market-driven economic growth. INCD
commissioned a major research project, undertaken by Burama Sagnia, an African
culture and development specialist. Burama’s paper, Strengthening Local Creative
Industries and Developing Cultural Capacity for Poverty Alleviation, will be
posted on our website, together with a Roadmap for the INCD, which summarizes
the study and outlines a course of action for INCD to pursue its objectives in
this field.
2. INCD Position on UNESCO Convention
on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural
Expressions
a) INCD supports the Convention. It confirms the
sovereign right of States to implement and modify the policies and measures they
need to support their own artists and cultural producers. It provides a focus
and a forum for States to work together to accomplish the objective of carving
out cultural goods and services from the trade and investment agreements. It
provides a model of what measures and programs can be used by States to support
their own artists and cultural producers.
INCD urges all member States
of UNESCO to ratify the Convention and to engage actively in the ongoing
work.
b) INCD urges UNESCO to make the Convention as meaningful as
possible by convening a meeting of the Conference of Parties as quickly as it
can, and by facilitating the collection, exchange, analysis and dissemination of
the necessary information.
c) Since the existing bilateral and
multilateral trade and investment agreements and ongoing negotiations for new
agreements represent a continuing threat to policies and measures that promote
cultural diversity, INCD will reinvigorate its campaign to raise awareness of
the cultural implications of the WTO, regional and bilateral agreements and of
the ongoing free trade talks. INCD also reinforces its call for governments to
refrain from making commitments in the context of trade talks that would
negatively affect their ability to promote cultural diversity.
d) While
the Convention generally does not obligate countries of the North to support the
development of creative industries and cultural capacity, INCD will work to
ensure that its strong principles of promoting international cooperation,
integrating culture in sustainable development, cooperating for development and
providing preferential treatment for developing countries are transformed into
practical programs and measures that will make a difference.
3. Defending Cultural Diversity from the
WTO, Room 502, Boys and Girls Club 3 Lockhart Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong, 14
December 2005
Co-presented with the Department of Cultural Studies at
Lingnan University, this seminar is one of the civil society events taking place
during the WTO’s ministerial meeting in Hong Kong. The WTO meeting is the latest
effort to move forward the Doha Round of international trade talks.
Maori
film-maker Toby Mills and singer songwriter Moana Maniapoto will introduce and
screen their new documentary Guarding the Family Silver, which looks at the
impact of intellectual property laws on Maori and indigenous peoples. It
explores the misappropriation of traditional symbols, images and words by
companies around the world. And looks at indigenous cultural and intellectual
property as the last bastion for indigenous people who have already had their
land, spirituality and livelihood seized during colonization.
Jane
Kelsey, INCD Steering Committee member, will chair the meeting and will be
joined by Yvon Thiec, INCD Vice-Chair for Europe. Together, they will explore
how the WTO impacts on cultural diversity and the culture sector and the INCD’s
campaigns at UNESCO and elsewhere to promote genuine diversity at local,
national and international levels. Cultural activists from Australia, the
Philippines and Hong Kong will discuss their experiences and what they are doing
in response to the WTO threats and the new UNESCO Convention.
For more
information, please contact Albanela Pérez-Suárez, albanela@ccarts.ca
4. The ongoing negotiations on the General
Agreement on Trade in Services
By Professor Jane Kelsey, Law School, University of Auckland, New
Zealand
While the attention of the culture sector is focused on
developments at UNESCO, the assault on genuine cultural diversity and the right
of governments to support the local culture sector has gathered momentum at the
World Trade Organisation.
The ongoing negotiations on the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (‘the GATS’) aim to extend the right of foreign
firms to run a country’s services, ranging from health, education and pensions
to railways, postal services and broadcasting, and prevent their governments
from giving preference to local providers of such services.
These talks
were supposed to conclude by 2005. Like everything else in the Doha round, they
became paralysed through a combination of ‘civil society’ campaigns and
challenges from Southern governments within the WTO. The next WTO ministerial
meeting will take place in Hong Kong from 13 to 18 December. There is a real
risk that its Members will fail to reach agreement, as occurred in Seattle in
1999 and Cancun in 2003 and that this will be another nail in the coffin for the
WTO.
Now the European Commission is insisting that any concessions on
agriculture (cosmetic or otherwise) depend on more commercial opportunities
under the GATS for their corporations in water, banking, telecommunications,
shipping, retail and more. A number of governments, including US, EC, Japan,
Australia, Switzerland, South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand, have been pushing a
scheme that would require all countries, rich and poor, to lock open a minimum
number of their services to foreign firms.
Some proposals suggest groups
of like-minded (richer) countries should reach more far-reaching deals on
priority sectors, which others (mainly developing and least developed countries)
are “invited” to join. In practice, these invitations are likely to be backed by
direct or indirect threats of loss of trade or aid for those who don’t accept.
One such area is audio-visual services. Pressure is coming from the
so-called “friends of audio-visual services”, led by the US and including Hong
Kong China, Taiwan, Chile, Japan, Mexico, at the same time as some governments
continued their attempts to dilute the UNESCO Convention even further. But the
threat to culture is not only in the audio-visual sector, but also from similar
demands that involve telecommunications, advertising, retail, publishing, theme
parks, events management, and more.
For years cheerleaders of the GATS
have insisted that the rules allow countries to decide for themselves which, if
any, services they lock open to foreign firms under the ‘free trade’ rules of
the GATS. Sovereign governments retain the right to regulate and protect their
cultural services, they said. The development needs of poorer countries would
continue to be recognised, allowing them to make fewer commitments than their
richer counterparts and assisting them to participate in the global services
economy. Today, that thin veil has been stripped away. The GATS negotiations are
an arena driven by the self-interest of more powerful countries, on behalf of
their services transnationals and/or as a trade-off for their agribusinesses.
This pressure will continue, with or without the UNESCO Convention. For
this reason, it is essential that people are vigilant about what is happening in
the current talks in Geneva and what their governments are being pressured to
sign up to before, at and after the Hong Kong ministerial
conference.
INCD is planning to have a presence at the Hong Kong
Ministerial in December and will be organising an evening discussion of the
culture/trade nexus. This is intended to provide an opportunity to interact with
the local Hong Kong culture sector, as well as to publicise the negative impacts
that the trade agreements are having on cultural diversity and the culture
sector internationally. Participants have been invited from Hong Kong SAR,
Taiwan, South Korea, Philippines and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Local people involved
in campaigns around the recent opening of Disneyworld and the proposed West
Kowloon Cultural District will also be sharing their research and concerns.
5. Events and Announcements
If we
have missed your organization’s event, please contact the Secretariat at incd@ccarts.ca for inclusion in the next
newsletter.
World Summit on the Information Society
December, 2005
Tunis,
Tunisia
www.itu.int/wsis/
World Culture Forum -WCF
December 4-7, 2005
Dead Sea, Jordan
www.meccad.org/wcf
Conference of African Ministers of Culture
Commission of the African
Union
December 10-14, 2005
Nairobi – Kenya
http://www.africa-union.org/
INCD Seminar
December 14, 2005
Wan Chai, Hong Kong
http://www.incd.net/
Third World Summit on the Arts and Culture
June 14-17
2006
Newcastle Gateshead, England
http://www.ifacca.org/
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, the Government of France and the Flemish community for
providing important contributions to our work.