Canada will Host Important UNESCO Intergovernmental Meeting in December 2007

CCA Bul­letin 28/07

August 1, 2007

Just the facts

As reported pre­vi­ously (CCA Bul­letins Jan­u­ary 24, 2007 and April 10, 2007), inter­est among states in the UNESCO Con­ven­tion on the Pro­tec­tion and Pro­mo­tion of the Diver­sity of Cul­tural Expres­sions remains high.  Sixty-three states, as well as the Euro­pean Com­mu­nity, have now joined.  The first Con­fer­ence of Par­ties to the Con­ven­tion was held in Paris from 18 to 20 June 2007, the sec­ond will be held in June 2009.

While the Con­fer­ence was pri­mar­ily pro­ce­dural and tech­ni­cal, it did make some impor­tant deci­sions on how the con­ven­tion will be imple­mented.  This in turn will deter­mine how effec­tive the Con­ven­tion will be as a bar­rier to the trade and invest­ment agree­ments and as a tool to encour­age cul­tural poli­cies and the devel­op­ment of arts and culture.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, there was lit­tle space for non-governmental orga­ni­za­tions.  NGOs were given only one chance to speak.  Solange Drouin, co-chair of Canada’s Coali­tion for Cul­tural Diver­sity, deliv­ered a joint state­ment on behalf of eight NGOs, includ­ing the Inter­na­tional Net­work for Cul­tural Diver­sity.  The state­ment touched on three issues: the need for par­ties to work together to encour­age addi­tional rat­i­fi­ca­tions; the need to inte­grate cul­ture into sus­tain­able devel­op­ment strate­gies and the impor­tance of the new fund for cul­tural diver­sity; and the impor­tance of civil soci­ety to and for the process.

The most sig­nif­i­cant deci­sions made by the Con­fer­ence were those con­nected with the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Com­mit­tee (IC), the oper­a­tive body of the Con­ven­tion. It was agreed that the first meet­ing would begin on 10 Decem­ber 2007, in Ottawa at the invi­ta­tion of the Cana­dian government.

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The Con­fer­ence also elected 24 mem­bers to the IC, although they agreed that one-half would serve only a two-year term while the remain­der will serve a full four-year term, in order to per­mit early rota­tion and to ensure broader geo­graph­i­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion of mem­bers as the num­ber of rat­i­fi­ca­tions from coun­tries in the under-represented regions grows.

4 Year Term:     Croa­tia, Ger­many, Greece, India, Lithua­nia, Lux­em­bourg, Mau­ri­tius, Mex­ico, Oman, Saint Lucia, Sene­gal, South Africa

2 Year Term:     Alba­nia, Aus­tria, Brazil, Burk­ina Faso, Canada, China, Fin­land, France, Guatemala, Mali, Slove­nia, Tunisia

The Con­fer­ence also con­sid­ered the work pri­or­i­ties of the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Com­mit­tee.  The res­o­lu­tion directs the IC to work on issues sur­round­ing Arti­cle 7 (poli­cies at the national level), Arti­cle 8 (forms of cul­tural expres­sion at risk of extinc­tion), Arti­cle 11 (role of civil soci­ety) and Arti­cles 12–17 (co-operation for devel­op­ment, pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for devel­op­ing coun­tries and the new Inter­na­tional Fund). Dur­ing the dis­cus­sion, sev­eral del­e­ga­tions noted the impor­tance of the arti­cles which address the rela­tion­ship of this Con­ven­tion to other treaties and nego­ti­a­tions, although these were not enun­ci­ated in the res­o­lu­tion. Europe and Chile made spe­cific ref­er­ence to the trade agree­ments. In sum­ma­riz­ing the dis­cus­sion, the chair stressed the impor­tance of this ele­ment and noted that, in any case, the IC is free to deter­mine its own agenda.

Inter­na­tional Fund for Cul­tural Diversity

The admin­is­tra­tions pro­vi­sions for the Fund were approved by the Con­fer­ence and this will enable UNESCO to estab­lish it.

The chair for­mally invited Mem­ber States to indi­cate the com­mit­ment they would make to the Fund and more than 20 del­e­ga­tions took the floor, includ­ing Canada.  All said they would make a con­tri­bu­tion, includ­ing some devel­op­ing coun­tries which admit­ted their con­tri­bu­tion would be sym­bolic only.  Sev­eral coun­tries stated they intend to make annual con­tri­bu­tions to the Fund, in the amount of 1% of their annual con­tri­bu­tion to UNESCO.  France com­mit­ted €150,000 and Ger­many made the 1% per­cent promise which would trans­late into €50,000 in 2008.

Sev­eral del­e­ga­tions, includ­ing Canada, spoke about issues related to the pur­poses and prin­ci­ples of how the funds would be allo­cated, but there were no res­o­lu­tions on this issue, nor any dis­cus­sion about a poten­tial role for civil soci­ety in the fund’s administration

CCA and the Convention

Since the idea of the this Con­ven­tion first emerged in Canada almost a decade ago, CCA has been active in the cam­paign and is a mem­ber of both the Coali­tion for Cul­tural Diver­sity and the Inter­na­tional Net­work for Cul­tural Diver­sity.  A detailed analy­sis of the Con­ven­tion can be found on the CCA website.