Doe those who do not know the actual vote in Paris a few days ago:
For - 148
Against - 2 (USA and Israel)
Abstentions - 3 (Australia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Liberia)
The United States again was quite isolated...
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UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity: CRIS Statement
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The campaign for Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS:
www.crisinfo.org) welcomes UNESCO's near-unanimous approval of the Convention on
the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expressions. The
Convention is a clear demonstration that governments recognize that culture
cannot be reduced to a mere commodity. By endorsing the Convention, governments
have shown that they are prepared to take positive steps to support cultural
diversity in the age of global cultural industries.
However, while we support and encourage the ratification of the treaty, we have
the following concerns:
* We would have liked to see stronger emphasis on the protection and promotion
of cultural diversity within countries, especially indigenous cultures. We
denounce the hypocrisy of those countries that suppress and destroy indigenous
cultures internally while claiming to support cultural diversity beyond their
borders. The CRIS Campaign will remain vigilant, and will condemn and mobilize
against any attempt by any state to try and use this Convention to marginalise
women, or to repress ethnic minorities, migrants, sexual minorities, or
indigenous peoples;
* We applaud the elimination of language from earlier drafts of the Convention
that would have supported and strengthened the current extremist copyright
regime. However, the remaining unbalanced language on copyright in the
Convention's preamble is a clear step backward from the 2001 UNESCO Universal
Declaration on Cultural Diversity;
* We are deeply concerned by the failure to stress the importance of the public
domain, fair use and creative commons;
* We deplore the fact that there is no mention of the need to end the theft of
indigenous culture and traditional knowledge by the transnational copyright and
patent industries;
* We will remain vigilant with regards to the Convention's relationship to other
treaties, which as it stands is extremely ambiguous and therefore may encourage
some trade ministers to ignore the Convention altogether in their negotiations.
With these concerns in mind, we call on:
* Governments to ratify the Convention;
* Civil society to closely monitor their national trade ministers first as they
head to Hong Kong for the WTO negotiations and in all future bilateral or
multilateral trade negotiations;
* Civil society, to mobilize and use the UNESCO Convention a means to transform
domestic cultural, media, and communications policy in order to bring about
cultural justice.
Contacts: act@crisinfo.org
More information: www.mediatrademonitor.org ; www.crisinfo.org
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Myriam Horngren
WACC/CRIS Network and Advocacy Coordinator
357 Kennington Lane
London SE11 5QY
United Kingdom
Direct line: 44 (0) 207 587 3018
Fax: 44 (0) 207 735 0340
web: www.crisinfo.org/www.wacc.org.uk
email: mh@wacc.org.uk