Statement on the UNESCO Draft of a Convention on the Protection of the Diversity of Cultural Contents and Artistic Expression
Over the past four years the European Council of Artists, gathering interdisciplinary organisations for artists, authors and performers from 25 European countries, has been contributing to the shaping of a convention on cultural diversity.
The convention is intended to protect and promote the diversity of cultural contents and artistic expressions on a global scale, demanding legislative and structural measures by the States to achieve this goal.
ECA welcomes the UNESCO draft of the convention and repeats its conviction that only a binding character of the new instrument will provide the frame for cultural and artistic expressions to develop without being subject to free market considerations only.
Globalization of media and cultural industries and the subsequent uniforming of cultural contents have made it clear that cultural diversity needs special attention. These issues were first described by the Perez de Cuellar Commission in their report Our Creative Diversity in 1995. In this light ECA finds it necessary to give priority to this Convention to other international treaties that might have negative influence on cultural diversity issues.
The relation to other international instruments is treated in the crucial article 19 of the draft convention. ECA finds that option B is completely unacceptable and also option A needs to be modified in order to make the Convention efficient.
ECA strongly urges member state governments and NGOs to support the conviction that the final text should state that the convention could not and should not be overruled by WTO or other international trade instruments. Cultural Content and Artistic Expression cannot and must not be regarded as, and sided with, mere products and goods. The ECA foresees that without being granted such a priority a UNESCO Convention will not be able to fulfil its intended purpose.
ECA also recommends that measures that recognize the fundamental role and importance of artists and creators in societies are included in this Convention, as an addition to art. 6.
ECA and its member organisations will continue to monitor the development of this draft Convention up to the UNESCO General Meeting in autumn 2005 on as well national and international levels, and we request the States to co-operate with the artists' organisations in this process.
ECA Annual Congress Amsterdam 10th of October 2004