[Ecommerce] Zaman online on UNESCO CCD

[Manon Ress]

http://www.zaman.com/?bl=3Dinternational&alt=3D&hn=3D25542

UNESCO Takes Historical Step Against Cultural Invasion
By Ali Ihsan Aydin
Published: Thursday, October 20, 2005
zaman.com

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) is preparing to adopt an international convention to protect
cultural diversity around the world. The convention envisages the
exclusion of cultural products from the category of commercial goods
and confers expansive rights to countries to enable them to protect
their cultures. The document will be put to vote on October 20,
Thursday, at a UNESCO general assembly in Paris. In a preliminary
vote held last week, 151 countries supported the convention while
only the US and Israel voted against it. To put an end to the
cultural expansionism of powerful countries is set as another
objective. If the draft convention comes to effect, it would be
possible for states to impose restrictions on the imports of foreign
cultural content and to subsidize the domestic cultural production.
Turkey has dropped its reservations on the draft upon the European
Union=92s demand, adopting a joint-attitude with the Union and backing
the convention, the approval of which is regarded as certain.

The Convention on the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural
Contents and Artistic Expressions, drawn up after a two-year process
of extensive study and discussion, aims to end cultural expansionism
of powerful countries in order to protect cultural diversity in the
globe. The UNESCO charter envisages excluding cultural products such
as movies, music records and artworks from the category of commercial
goods and confers ample rights on countries to take measures to
protect their cultures and languages. If the draft passes and comes
into effect, then a country that signed it can impose limitations on
the imports of Hollywood movies, force radios to broadcast a certain
percentage of domestic musical content and impose high taxes on the
imports of foreign cultural content.

The United States, which has control over 80 percent of the culture
industry as well as the cinema sector, is fighting =93a diplomatic war=94
against the enterprise, which was pioneered by France and Canada two
years ago. Although the US takes the position that cultures can best
flourish in the free market economy, it opposes UNESCO=92s interference
in economic strategies with the argument that the World Trade
Organization (WTO) is entitled to be involved in economic matters.
The culture commission, however, took a vote on Monday, with 151
votes for the agreement. Only Israel took sides with the US against
and Austria and Kiribati were the abstentions. US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rica reportedly wrote a letter to the UNESCO foreign
ministers, threatening them with the US=92s departure from the UNESCO.
The Americans previously abandoned the organization in 1984 on the
pretext of its being politicized, but then returned to the
organization in 2003.

The convention on cultural diversity is likely to be ratified at
UNESCO=92s 33rd general assembly meeting which opens this Friday. Then
will start the ratification process of the convention in parliaments
of the member states. For the document to come into force as in the
status of an international agreement, the votes of at least 30
countries are required. The power of the convention will be dependent
on how many countries will ratify it. The US has been reported to
have launched initiatives to render the power of the convention
limited and involved in a process of signing bilateral agreements
with several countries before the convention comes into force. Even
though the convention comes into effect among a limited number of
countries, leading the cultural diversity initiative, France, and
other countries struggling against American cultural hegemony will
have obtained certain opportunities they have demanded.

One of the most remarkable elements of cultural diversity UNESCO
tries to protect is language. A total of 6,000 languages exist in the
world according to UNESCO; however, 94 percent of the world
population speaks only four percent of them. Fifty percent of these
tongues are about to disappear. Ninety percent of them have no
presence on the Internet. Cultural industries are dominated by only
five countries in the world. Eighty-eight out of 185 countries have
never produced any movies, even amateur ones, so far.



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Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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