UNESCO Takes Historical Step Against Cultural Invasion (fwd)

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INTERNATIONAL	10.21.2005 Friday - ISTANBUL 17:57

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’s 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 “a diplomatic war”
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’s 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’s 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’s 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.


Paris