<nettime> Governments, NGOs to discuss first draft of UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity

[Sasha Costanza-Chock <schock@riseup.net>]

 From Free Press Global - original article includes links:
http://www.freepress.net/global/update.php?id=59


Governments, NGOs to discuss first draft of UNESCO Convention on 
Cultural Diversity

September 9, 2004
Government reps from around the world will be meeting September 20-25 at 
UNESCO headquarters in Paris to discuss the first draft of the proposed 
Convention on Cultural Diversity (CCD). The CCD (formally known as the 
International Convention on the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural 
Contents and Artistic Expressions) would be an international legal 
agreement to implement the principle that culture cannot be reduced to a 
commodity. Concretely, it would potentially allow each country to 
exclude its cultural policies, including 'audiovisual services' - 
otherwise known as media - from 'free trade' deals like the WTO.

Progressive NGO networks like the International Network on Cultural 
Diversity and the campaign for Communication Rights in the Information 
Society are calling for broad civil society support for the CCD, but 
warn that the Convention must not be subordinated to the WTO and must be 
written to support cultural and media diversity inside countries, not 
only between them. Otherwise, the Convention, even if it successfully 
fends off an attack from the trade ministers, will only serve the 
interests of national media companies against the biggest 
transnationals, rather than true, bottom-up media diversity.



More information:


UNESCO portal on the CCD: 
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=11281&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

International Network on Cultural Diversity: www.incd.net

CRIS campaign: www.crisinfo.org

www.mediatrademonitor.org


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net