Global Policy Forum

By Armand Mattelart*

A large majority of countries last month approved a Unesco motion that seeks to counter the commercial treatment of cultural goods as promoted by the World Trade Organisation. Now the motion must be ratified by at least 30 countries - and implemented.

A convention on the protection of the diversity of cultural contents and artistic expressions was approved by member states at the Unesco general conference last month. It intends to provide a legal framework for the universal declaration on cultural diversity, unanimously adopted soon after 11 September 2001. By making cultural diversity part of humanity's common heritage the declaration opposes "inward-looking fundamentalism" and proposes "the prospect of a more open, creative and democratic world" (1). Its key principle of diversity in dialogue is deliberately contrary to Samuel Huntington's claim that a clash between cultures and civilisations is inevitable.

In 2001 all the governments, without exception, were keen to uphold lofty principles, lauding the plurality of difference "capable of humanising globalisation". But agreement was not so easy two years later when it was decided to draft the convention. The United States was among the few to abstain. It had not forgotten the double blow it suffered 10 years earlier in its fierce opposition to the principle of protecting cultural exceptions, subsequently redrafted as the protection and promotion of cultural diversity.

The first setback came in 1993 when it opposed the European Union in the final Uruguay round of Gatt, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that was forerunner of the World Trade Organisation. It suffered another defeat, at the hands of Canada, when it signed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. Both negotiations, in recognising the special status of cultural goods, vindicated public policies, especially in the media.

Canada and France, which played a key role in framing the cultural exception doctrine, are the prime movers behind the convention. France mobilised countries in the Franco-phone world. Canada set up its international network on cultural policy and succeeded in bringing together about 60 arts ministers and many NGOs for an informal discussion on promoting diversity. In September 2001 Ottawa, and the state government of Quebec, provided financial support for an international coalition of professional cultural organisations in favour of cultural diversity, backed by a network of Canadian groups.

The scope of the convention reaches beyond media and broadcasting to "the manifold ways in which the cultures of social groups and societies find expression". It may concern policy on language and ways of capitalising on the knowledge of native peoples. Public opinion believes that the film industry and broadcasting provide the worst examples of the risks that an unbridled global market represents for cultural diversity. The State Department in Washington and the Motion Picture Association, which represents US media giants, have pressured countries such as Chile, South Korea, Morocco and former members of the Soviet bloc in negotiations on bilateral trade agreements. In exchange for compensation in other sectors, they have encouraged these countries to waive their right to independent policies on film production.

To finalise the text

It took three intergovernmental meetings to finalise the text submitted to the conference. Its authors sought to steer a middle course between two positions. A majority group, including the EU, defends the principle of international legislation confirming special treatment for cultural goods and services as "vehicles of identity, values and meaning". A second group, led by the US, Australia and Japan, sees the text as an attempt to maintain protectionist policies in a sector that should be open to free trade.

Disparate points of view fall between the extremes, including the fear expressed by some countries that the principle of diversity may jeopardise national unity. The convention establishes rules for the rights and obligations of states, in article 5: "The parties reaffirm their sovereign right to formulate and implement their cultural policies and to adopt measures to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions and to strengthen international cooperation to achieve the purposes of this convention." Sovereignty is the keystone of the legal structure, which means that, regardless of past mistakes, a state should be able to recover the right to decide cultural policy.

The definition of how the convention ties in with other international instruments is crucial if it is to serve as a valid reference in future disputes. The final draft of article 20 is important: it confirms that the relationship to other treaties shall be guided by "mutual supportiveness, complementarity and non-subordination . . . when interpreting and applying the other treaties to which they are parties or when entering into other international obligations, parties shall take into account the relevant provisions of this convention". Article 21 makes consultation and coordination "with other international forums" a key element in the application of article 20.

The other international forums play a decisive role in the fate of cultural diversity. Deregulation of audiovisual and cultural services is on the agenda of the WTO general agreement on trade in services, in preparation for December's ministerial conference in Hong Kong. The World Intellectual Property Organisation is concerned by increasing private appropriation of knowledge and learning, depriving humanity of sources of creativity. Perhaps the weakest point of the convention is its inadequate provision for its implementation and sanctions should it be infringed. Nor is it clear how disputes will be settled.

Guiding principles

Certain guiding principles govern the concept of sovereignty: respect for human rights; the equal dignity of all cultures; international solidarity and cooperation; complementarity of economic and cultural aspects of development; sustainable development; balance, openness and proportionality. In support of these principles, articles 14 to 19 provide for "preferential treatment for developing countries" and the setting up of an International Fund for Cultural Diversity, paid for by public and private voluntary contributions.

The authors of the convention could have made better use of experience from similar projects in the past. The most obvious example is the world summit on the information society (WSIS), organised by another UN agency, the International Telecommunication Union. The first phase was held in Geneva in 2003 and a second one is planned in Tunis this month. The WSIS has had difficulty mobilising public resources in large industrial countries to fund a Digital Solidarity Fund to combat unequal access to the net. But it has also become clear that charitable foundations sponsored by information technology giants (such as Microsoft) will gain by filling the gap left by governments.

It seems inconceivable to attempt to design cultural policies without raising the issue of policy on media and communication. Yet the convention, and indeed the rationale behind Unesco's approach to cultural diversity, tends not only to dissociate the two issues but to ignore the second completely.

Media diversity?

The final draft of the document contains two references to media diversity. The first affirms that "freedom of thought, expression and information as well as diversity of media enable cultural expressions to flourish within societies". The second includes "measures aimed at enhancing diversity of the media including through public service broadcasting" among forms of intervention. But it makes no attempt to explain what it means by diversity of the media. There is no mention of such sensitive topics as the concentration of media ownership. Perhaps the authors are afraid of upsetting the US, which contributes 20% of Unesco's budget and only returned in 2003, after walking out in 1984 in response to demands by non-aligned countries for more balanced exchanges, based on a new world information and communication order. It may also reflect the separation of tasks between divisions of a large bureaucratic machine.

In the 1970s debate on cultural policy went hand in hand with discussions on communication policy; the key concerns of the media industry hinged on pressure towards economic and financial concentration accentuated by an international market (2). The international commission for the study of communication problems, appointed by Unesco's director-general, Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, and chaired by Sean MacBride, winner of a Nobel peace prize, focused on the dialogue between cultures and harmonious development in diversity and mutual respect. The members of the commission were as diverse as Hubert Beuve-Méry, the founder of Le Monde, and the novelist Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez. The MacBride report, endorsed by the Unesco general conference in 1980, and published under the title of Many Voices, One World, was the first document on the global imbalance of information flows published by an international body. It explained the urgency of considering the right to communication as an expression of new social rights (3).

Now that the convention has been approved despite US hostility, it will become a baseline and private and public players will have to come to terms with it. This is why it is so important for new players to become involved, to ensure it is implemented and to stretch its limits. While its authors drafted the convention and gained support for the idea of a legal instrument, a broad coalition helped raise the awareness of governments, encouraging them to support the project. Intense national and international mobilisation drew in a broad spectrum of networks, including representatives of civil society and members of the anti-globalisation movement, as well as national groups of media professionals.

These pulled together the strands of the discussions preparing the convention and other ideas, prompted by debate at the WSIS, establishing common ground between demands for communication rights, and matters of cultural and media diversity: diversity of information sources; pluralism in the ownership of the media and access to it; support for public services and free, independent media. The professional bodies, drawing on 30 national coalitions constituted in less than four years, showed that is possible to combine work in culture with the promotion of civil rights without becoming bogged down in defending vested interests.

In a statement issued at a meeting in Madrid in May, just before the final revision of the draft convention, the networks appealed to Unesco member states to "resist all pressures throughout this period to dilute the convention" and "resist pressures to delay the timeline for adoption to 2007 or beyond, as any delay risks seriously compromising the impact of the convention". At least 30 states must now ratify the convention for it to come into force. It must then be implemented and improved.

About the Author: Armand Mattelart is professor at the University of Paris-VIII and author of Diversité culturelle et mondialisation (La Découverte, Paris, 2005)

(1) Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, Paris, November 2001.
(2) See Cultural industries, Unesco, Paris, 1982; The cultural industries, Cultural Development Division, Unesco, Paris, 1980.
(3) Sean MacBride, Many Voices, One World, Unesco, Paris, 1980.

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