[Ecommerce] FYI: UNESCO draft Convention on Cultural Diversity

[Manon Ress]

UNESCO is working on a Draft International Convention on the Protection
of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expressions for its
next session (October 2005).  There are two stages: firstly, three
meetings of independent experts between December 2003 and May 2004 for
preliminary deliberations and production of a first preliminary draft
convention along with a preliminary report. Secondly, starting in
September 2004, a series of intergovernmental meetings will be organized
in order to finalize the preliminary draft Convention and report.

You will find the pre-meeting First Draft of convention here:
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=21972&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

You might want to look at Art. 7 and 19.
States shall ensure that "intellectual property rights are fully
respected and enforced according to existing international instruments,
particularly through the development or strengthening of measures
against piracy.(art7) and option A and B in Art.19.

Here's an interesting account of the recent September UNESCO meeting
from Steve Buckley (AMARC and CRIS).  It is a good summary of what is
happening, and the dynamics.  It is from the CRIS list for the Working
Group on Media Diversity.

Manon

From: Steve Buckley <steve@commedia.org.uk>

Dear all

The intergovernmental conference finished early, at noon on Friday 24
September, with the rapporteur's summary of the debate. Governments are
invited to submit their formal comments by 15 November. It is not fully
clear whether NGO comments will also be accepted and included in the
Secretariat report. The next intergovernmental will be two weeks long,
commencing 31 January 2005. Clearly this will be the critical meeting
for negotiation on the text and the one around which CRIS should mobilise.

Governments have appointed a bureau and a drafting committee, the latter
will be an important focus for lobbying. It includes USA, France,
Switzerland, Finland, Japan, South Africa, India and others. The oral
report of the rapporteur was a rather bland summary and seemed to ignore
all of the NGO interventions. Main points were that the draft formed a
good basis for discussion, that the preamble and the principles need to
be fine tuned, the definitions section is rather wordy and there were
differences of opinion on how this should be approached included the
definitions of culture. Some delegations wanted greater attention to
language and/or religion. In the main issues of the draft there were
different views on Options A and B and an aspiration to find a "third
way" that would achieve greater consensus. The relevance of Annexes A
and B were questioned, these could well be dropped entirely. There was a
tension between countries that see the convention as primarily asserting
a right to defend their national culture in the face of globalisation
and those that see the convention as significantly about cultural
diversity within countries. Many delegations spoke positively about the
importance of involving civil society. There were several reservations
about creating new institutions such as the proposed observatory however
others noted that the absence of any dedicated monitoring mechanism
would substantially reduce the efrfectiveness of the treaty.

A final list of participants was distributed and should be available
electronically shortly. It has full contact details, including emails,
for most delegates including government representatives. This will be
important for lobbying. 132 governments were represented at the meeting.
International organisations listed as present were UNESCO, WIPO, UNCTAD,
WTO and UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, plus 4 regional
bodies. 20 NGOs were listed although a smaller number took part in the
daily NGO meetings convened by the UNESCO-NGO Liaison Committee.

The UNESCO-NGO Liaison Committee took the lead role in convening NGO
meetings. In addition to focusing on issues of procedure the Liaison
Committee see itself as having a role in developing substantive common
position statements. It issued two sets of amendments during the week
and will revise and refine these before submitting formally to the
UNESCO Secretariat. The UNESCO-NGO Liaison Committee is elected from the
300 or so NGOs with consultative status at UNESCO although it seems to
have consulted with a smaller selected list in developing its
preconference position. Its position was rather closely based on INCD
drafting.

At the final meeting of the NGOs we agreed a number of issues around
process and tactics. NGOs are strongly encouraged to submit their own
proposals to the UNESCO Secretariat by 15 November (although they should
be published earlier if they are to influence government positions). The
Secretariat will be asked to include NGO responses as an Annex to the
compilation document for the next conference. There is a need for an
open list for NGOs to share papers and proposals. I offered to assist
with getting this set up. Decision to be taken by the Liaison Committee
next week. It was also agreed to call on the sponsoring governments
(Canada is sponsoring the January/February 2005 meeting) to provide
financial support for south participation.

As a general conclusion I would say civil society participation was
rather weak and rather narrow - few participants, lack of experience
among many, predominance of artist/producer groups, almost complete
absence of south participation. Even INCD were not sure they would get
into the meeting since they don't have formal consultative status with
UNESCO. The UNESCO-NGO Liaison Committee has a very broad constituency
including business perspectives such as that of the Independent
Publishers Association. INCD is also trying to bridge civil society
interests with the small producer end of the private sector. There is
certainly an opening for CRIS to play at least an equal role with groups
like INCD and the Coalitions and I am sure a communication rights
perspective will broaden the basis of debate.

On the substance of the convention it seems to me the outcome will be
significant but it could as easily be negative as positive. A weak
convention, subsidiary to other treaties, with no powers of sanction and
no monitoring and enforcement bodies could still provide the diplomatic
fig leaf to bring culture into GATS. This, as the International League
on Human Rights state, would be worse than no convention.

Steve





--
Manon Anne Ress
Consumer Project on Technology
www.cptech.org
PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
manon.ress@cptech.org, voice: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176