International Network for Cultural Diversity
Newsletter – December 2005
Vol. 6 No 9
Contents:
1. Season’s Greetings
2. Why Culture Activists Should be Concerned about Trade Agreements
3. World Culture Forum 2005
4. Hong Kong Trade Deal Keeps the Pressure on Cultural Policies
5. African Culture Ministers Meeting in Nairobi
6. Events and Announcements
1. Season’s Greetings
In many parts of the world and in many cultures, this is a time of celebration.
The INCD Steering Committee and secretariat extend warm wishes to all those who
will gather with friends and family this month and next. May your festive season
be filled with joy and happiness. We also send best wishes for a peaceful and
prosperous new year.
2. Why Culture Activists Should be Concerned about Trade Agreements
Professor Jane Kelsey, Law School, University of Auckland, New Zealand
(Presentation to INCD Annual Meeting – November 19, 2005)
The rich discussion yesterday and again this morning embraced a vision of
culture as an organic and indivisible entity, the source of spiritual, social
and material wellbeing, and the matrix or framework for guiding social and
economic development. We have also referred to another paradigm that is peddled
by the institutions, agencies, and propagandists of neoliberal globalisation.
Burama Sangria described this in his report as reducing culture to ‘an
instrument at the service of economic expediency’. Another participant this
morning called it cultural imperialism.
While we, as INCD, as creators and as human beings, celebrate the first
worldview, we know that it is threatened by corporate drivers of globalised
culture symbolised by Time Warner, Sony, Bertelsmann, Guggenheim, Central News
Agency, Disneyworld, Club Med, AT&T or Wal-mart. Their reason for existence -
the quest for profit - requires culture to be defined narrowly as a tradable
product in a commercial marketplace. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) and
related free trade and investment agreements are their vehicle.
Yet when we look at Article 20 of the Convention, it tells us that the parties
to the Convention ‘shall foster mutual supportiveness’ with all other treaties
they have signed. In theory, these two paradigms are supposed to live together
even though we know that, in practice, the neoliberal, market-driven approach to
culture squeezes the life out of culture as we know it.
Despite the claim in Article 20 that the Convention will not be subordinated, it
provides no legal protection against the WTO and other free trade and investment
agreements. At best it is a political tool that can be used imaginatively to
limit the harm these agreements can cause and undermine the hegemony of the
model it represents. I would like to explore two examples today, one involving
the WTO and the other the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries
negotiations with the European Union under the Cotonou Agreement.
Since the 1970s, the US government has been demanding international rules that
guarantee such corporations can dictate production and consumption in those
‘cultural markets’,
and that prohibit government policies which aim to protect and promote local
culture and genuine diversity. The main US goal was for governments to lock open
their audio-visual services to its ‘entertainment’ industry – a neo-colonial
vehicle which, as our friend from Egypt noted yesterday, also services as the
primary marketing tool for Coca Cola or Levi jeans and for US ideology.
These demands, and similar demands on other services, resulted in the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), an international agreement that was
created in 1995 as part of the new World Trade Organisation. These rules
restrict government policies in several key ways: once they have made a
commitment in a particular subsector, the government is not allowed to close off
foreign firms participation in that sector or give preference to locals who are
involved in supplying that service.
Resistance from the global South (especially India, Brazil and Argentina) as
well as the French and Canadians was a key factor in ensuring that governments
retained some control over what services they committed to the GATS rules. As a
result, relatively few WTO members made commitments in audio-visual or other
services directly related to culture.
However, the US secured a written requirement that a new round of negotiations
to extend its coverage would begin in 2000.
The US has maintained its previous demands. The Convention offers an irritant,
more because of its existence than its content; but it is not an obstacle. To
promote its position the US created the so-called ‘friends of audio-visual
services’ among like-minded WTO members to lobby for liberalisation of
audio-visual services on behalf of their corporations. But it has also cast the
net more widely. The primary goal is to allow US corporations to control the
digital delivery of services, from music, television and film to education,
health and e-commerce by securing commitments from governments to subject
telecommunications to these rules. It has already created such precedents in its
bilateral free trade agreements with countries like Chile and Australia. In 2004
the US also led the creation of a group of governments at the WTO that was
perversely named the ‘friends of cultural diversity’, who strategised to
undermine the Convention. Other governments involved were Chile, Hong
Kong-China, Taiwan, Mexico and Japan.
The new negotiations began in 2000 and crawled along slowly. Governments from
the global South, and some in the rich North, have been reluctant to lock open
more of their services to transnational corporations. That situation is largely
a tribute to international and local campaigns that have exposed the GATS as a
vehicle for corporate plunder and worked with Southern negotiators to increase
their knowledge and technical expertise.
INCD members have played a role in this. Nationally, INCD members, including a
number of the Coalitions, have lobbied their trade and cultural ministries and
ministers, as well as a pressing for a coherent all-of-government approach to
cultural policies. We have supported collaboration between cultural sectors who
are involved campaigns against bilateral and regional agreements. We presented a
panel on culture during the WTO Symposium in Geneva describing the assault of
the WTO from the perspectives of Benin, Vanuatu, New Zealand and Canada. We have
met with ambassadors and negotiators in Geneva, including South Africa, Croatia,
France and Canada to inform and lobby them, as well as the Chilean chair of the
services negotiations and the Colombian chair of the Services Committee. Local
and international INCD members are organising an evening event as part of the
activist activities during the WTO ministerial meeting (in December) in Hong
Kong to educate others and highlight the threat of the WTO to culture.
These negotiations have moved too slowly for the major powers. However, in the
past couple of months there has been a renewed GATS attack. This time it is
being led by the EU, the ally that many countries relied on in the process of
creating the Convention. EC Trade Commission Peter Mandelson has said there will
be no movement in agriculture unless more of the world’s services markets are
opened to Europe’s transnational firms in services like water or transport. It
wants every WTO member government to be required to make commitments on a
minimum number of service sub-sectors – 85% of the total of 163 subsectors for
the ‘developed’ countries and 57% of the total for ‘developing’ countries.
In the typical power politics that pervade the WTO, there will be enormous
pressure on governments of the South to agree. To date, there has been strong
resistance led by a group of 14 countries (Argentina, Cuba, Dominican Republic,
Guatemala, Kenya, Malaysia, Paraguay, the Philippines, Thailand, Uruguay and
Venezuela). The Caribbean countries also issued a strong statement of
opposition.
The EU has ignored this and maintained its demand as a base line. The position
is outrageous even in the GATS own terms – it breaches promises of flexibility,
undermines the often-repeated right of governments to decide how to regulate
their own services, and contradicts commitments in the GATS to promote the
priorities of developing countries.
It also exposes the hypocrisy of the EU in relation to cultural diversity and
the Convention. True, a government could withhold audio-visual services and meet
this proposed formula. But it would have to include many subsectors from the
range of services that come within the definition of Cultural Policies and
Measures in Article 4.6 of the Convention:
“Cultural policies and measures” refers to those policies and measures related
to culture, whether at the local, regional or international level that are
either focused on culture as such or are designed to have a direct effect on
cultural expressions of individuals, groups of societies, including on the
creation, production, dissemination, distribution of and access to cultural
activities, goods and services.
Cultural activities, goods and services are defined in Article 4.5 as
“Cultural activities, goods and services” refers to those activities, goods and
services, which at the time they are considered as a specific attribute, use or
purpose, embody or convey cultural expressions, irrespective of the commercial
value they may have. Cultural activities may be an end in themselves, or they
may contribute to the production of cultural goods and services.
Just consider the range of activities that directly come within the Convention’s
definition: publishing, music, translation, film distribution, dance,
exhibitions, museums, libraries, archives, photography, printing, architecture,
landscape design, theatre management, humanities and social science research,
leisure venues, hotels, tourism services. Add to that the impact of seemingly
non culture-related services - commitments on ‘distribution services’ enhance
the ability of giants like Wal-mart to dominate cultural content of and markets
for books, films and magazines or film distribution companies like Miramax, or
telecommunications commitments that would intensify existing transnational
monopolies over digital technologies. Add to that another key target for the EC
in tourism, which is the removal of other countries’ restrictions on foreign
ownership of land.
The contradictions between the Convention and EU GATS formula appear stark and
untenable. This situation seems impossible to reconcile with the Objectives in
Article 1 of the Convention. In particular,
‘(h) to reaffirm the sovereign rights of States to maintain, adopt and implement
policies and measures that they deem appropriate for the protection and
promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions on their territory;
(i) to strengthen international cooperation and solidarity in a spirit of
partnership with a view, in particular, to enhancing the capacities of
developing countries in order to protect and promote the diversity of cultural
expressions’.
The ongoing stalemate over the GATS negotiations is contributing significantly
to the predicted failure of the WTO ministerial conference in Hong Kong in
December – that would be the third such failure of six two-yearly meetings. It
is essential that we keep pressure on our governments to ensure that they do not
concede under pressure to the demands of the EU and its allies in this, such as
Australia and Taiwan.
At the same time, we also know the WTO is only one manifestation of this
neo-colonial agenda. Post Cold War, the US and EU are competing for hegemony
over the rest of the world and the resources and markets of parts of Africa are
once more a major prize.
One key example involves the negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements
between the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states and the European Union
under the Cotonou Agreement 2000. Like most of these regional negotiations and
the WTO Doha round itself, this is mispresented as a development agenda. The EU
has insisted on splitting the ACP into separate sub-regional negotiations where
it can divide and rule between, say, ECOWAS, ESA, the Caribbean and the Pacific
Islands.
This presents a threat, given that the EU can be expected to take a position
that is consistent with its demands at the WTO. Even though the Cotonou
Agreement does not require negotiations on services, the EU is demanding that
they begin by 2007.
At the same time, this also presents an opportunity for us to explore a creative
use of the Convention that could create a precedent for use elsewhere. In
Section 2 of the Cotonou Agreement 2000: Social and Human Development, Article
27 on Cultural Development reads:
Cooperation in the area of culture shall aim at:
a. integrating the cultural dimension at all levels of development cooperation;
b. recognising, preserving and promoting cultural values and identities to
enable inter-cultural exchange;
c. recognising, preserving and promoting the value of cultural heritage;
supporting the development of capacity in this sector;
d. developing cultural industries and enhanced market access opportunities for
cultural goods and services.
This is contained in a separate section of the Cotonou Agreement from the
section that mandates Economic Partnership (free trade) negotiations. The EC has
apparently proposed that audio-visual services should be the subject of separate
treatment under specific cultural cooperation and partnership agreements. But,
even if that did occur, it would do nothing to address the impact of the EPA on
cultural policy in its broader sense, let alone the consequences of Europe’s
latest development agenda for the rest of the world on life – the essence of
culture - itself.
What is needed, to quote Senegal’s Minister of Culture Mame Birame Diouf at the
meeting of ECOWAS Ministers of Culture in August 2005, are strategies that aim
at ‘strengthening cultural cooperation between communities as a bulwark against
uniformity and letting the economy dictate relations between peoples and
states’. For example, it should be possible to develop model provisions that can
be used in the sub-regional EPA negotiations and coordinate culture activists to
promote this across the ACP as a concrete form of cooperation across the ACP,
and with the EU, of the kind the Convention envisages.
In conclusion, these are threats and opportunities which we can help to shape.
What steps can we take as the ‘network of networks’ that are the INCD to reduce
this threat and defeat the neoliberal paradigm?
1. Educate ourselves and develop creative ways to educate others on the threat
of the trade agreements and to mobilise resistance.
2. Educate our culture policy ministers to challenge our trade ministers and
demand a coherent response from our governments whereby culture takes priority
over trade.
3. Directly lobby the trade ministers.
4. Organise regionally in relation to trade negotiations and develop consistent
positions and tools that can be used to lobby governments who are involved in
regional negotiations, and to strengthen their resistance take a united position
at the WTO.
5. Build links to social movements and activists, academics and other
intellectuals, and journalists to educate and mobilise the people, expose the
implications of the agreements and pressure or support governments, as
appropriate.
6. Develop model provisions to promote for use in negotiations and share
innovative strategies to use the Convention and other reference points.
3. World Culture Forum 2005
Jordan
The second edition of the World Culture Forum, Investing in Culture for Social
Justice and Development, was held at the Dead Sea, Jordan, 4-7 December 2005.
First organized in 2004, the Forum is conceived as: a consultative process to
stimulate creativity; an action program to develop creative enterprises; and a
global platform to bring together representatives of civil society and
governments.
At a session moderated by UNESCO’s Jordan representative Angum Hague, INCD
Executive Director Garry Neil reviewed the history and development of the new
UNESCO Convention. He provided a critical analysis of the content and urged
delegates to work with their governments to seek its early ratification.
Steering Committee member James Early reinforced the importance of ratification
and spoke about the need for the cultural diversity movement to work in other
arenas and on other issues. He discussed how civil society must engage with
culture ministers, trade ministers and heads of state; the importance of media
issues; the need to promote culture-driven development; and how to encourage
South-South collaboration.
The Jordan WCF was no doubt hampered by the recent unfortunate events in Amman,
and security for the meeting was tight. The agenda lacked focus and covered a
wide range of often unrelated topics. The large number of sessions about
“cultural branding” of nations, including discussion of how individual countries
are “branding” themselves, seemed of little relevance to the broader themes and
to the NGOs, producers and cultural activists who attended.
While there were delegates and speakers from every continent, most attendees
came from the Arab world. This did provide an opportunity for a rich dialogue
among activists from different cultural traditions.
4. Hong Kong Trade Deal Keeps the Pressure on Cultural Policies
Garry Neil, Executive Director
At the recent WTO Ministerial meeting in Hong Kong, ministers from the WTO
member countries reached an agreement to conclude the Doha round of negotiations
in 2006. While far less ambitious than originally contemplated, the agreement
does address the contentious issue of agricultural subsidies and this may
provide impetus to the ongoing negotiations in Geneva.
INCD will provide a more detailed analysis of the potential cultural
implications of the Hong Kong agreement in the future, but a cursory review of
the text highlights several areas were cultural policies may be threatened by
the renewed work plan of the WTO. Related background articles on culture and the
trade agreements can be found in the last two editions of the Newsletter and on
the website.
The Hong Kong agreement provides that countries will continue to push for
liberalization of trade in services and all services sectors continue to be in
play. “New and improved” offers are to be tabled by 31 July 2006, with the final
draft of commitments to be submitted by the end of October. While it is expected
that the uneasy truce between the United States and the European Union which has
brought a reduction in pressure on audiovisual policies will continue, there is
likely to be pressure on many countries to commit other cultural services in
this negotiating process.
The agreement provides for a discussion of the removal of the exemptions from
the GATS most-favoured nation provisions, including the many bilateral film and
television co-production treaties. It also states there will be discussion of
the issues of subsidies of services and other rules, potentially affecting the
right of countries to support their own artists and cultural producers.
Discussions about ownership rules in telecommunications are on the table at the
WTO, and this may well have implications for similar rules that many countries
maintain on broadcasting, cable and satellite companies which deliver films and
television programs.
In the intellectual property articles, there is continuing discussion of
expanding what are called “non-violation complaints” to the TRIPS Agreement. If
agreed, this would create the potential for a challenge to content quotas and
other regulations designed to provide a space for domestic content. Finally, the
agreement commits countries to “reinvigorate” work on electronic commerce
issues, including the “trade treatment, inter alia, of electronically delivered
software.”
5. African Culture Ministers Meeting in Nairobi
For the first time in 12 years, African culture minister gathered in Nairobi,
Kenya on 13-14 December 2005 to discuss current developments and prepare for a
meeting of the African Heads of States, being held in Sudan in January 2006 and
for a Summit on Culture and Education being held later in the year.
The ministerial meeting was preceded by a meeting of 350 experts and
professionals. The theme of both meetings was Culture, integration and African
renaissance.
During the Meeting of experts, Jacques Béhanzin, Steering Committee member and
INCD Co-Chair from Africa, made a presentation on the work accomplished by the
INCD and its role in the development and the adoption of the UNESCO Convention.
This Convention, he indicated, is a major asset for Africa in its search of
cultural identity. His intervention, which underlined the urgency for the
African States to ratify the Convention, held the attention of various
delegations, which immediately supported the motion.
After the opening ceremony, chaired by the Vice-president of the Republic of
Kenya, the Ministers’ Conference started its work with interventions from
ministers. Once these concluded, Jacques Béhanzin expressed the concern of the
cultural civil society for the urgent need of ratifying the UNESCO Convention
and addressing the cultural contents of the NEPAD. He received the support of
the Ministers of Senegal, Mali and Libya, and the Assistant General Manager of
UNESCO.
In the final declaration, the ministers call on all African states to ratify the
UNESCO Convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural
expressions “in order to promote cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue
as a tool for integration and development.” They concluded that culture is a
foundation for socio-economic development and committed to “promote the
integration of cultural factors in development goals and use culture in
addressing present-day challenges.”
The ministers discussed the importance of developing cultural industries and
cultural producers, the need to promote African languages and the need to
address “harmful and gender bias cultural practices which impede the active
participation of women in development.” They also resolved to “sponsor regional
networks of cultural creators, practitioners and professionals.”
6. 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.
The politics of Arts & Culture: International Perspectives
Columbia University
May 23 to June 08, 2006
New York – USA
www.tc.edu
Third World Summit on the Arts and Culture
June 14-17 2006
Newcastle Gateshead, England
www.ifacca.org
22nd European Group for Organisation Studies Colloquium
European Group for Organisation Studies
July 06-08, 2006
Bergen – Norway
www.egosnet.org
32nd Annual Conference on Social, Theory, Politics and the Arts
July 09-11, 2006
Vienna – Austria
www.fokus.or.at
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
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.