FIM

States which were Party to the 2005 Convention on Cultural Diversity adopt oper­a­tional guide­lines in the dig­i­tal environment

From 12 to 15 June 2017, UNESCO host­ed the 6th Conference of Parties to the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in Paris. When assess­ing the con­fer­ence, there are both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive points.

Among the pos­i­tive aspects, we can note the impor­tance giv­en to civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions (NGOs) which organ­ised their own forum on 12 June and are now rec­og­nized by the Secretariat and the Member States as essen­tial part­ners for imple­ment­ing the Convention. In par­tic­u­lar, NGOs have to pre­pare a report on progress made and obsta­cles encoun­tered when imple­ment­ing the Convention. This report will be sub­mit­ted to the Member States dur­ing the next Intergovernmental Committee Meeting in December 2017.

Still on the pos­i­tive aspects, we were espe­cial­ly sat­is­fied to note that the FIM ini­tia­tive (backed by SMF and U2U) in favour of gen­der equal­i­ty in the African music sec­tor was men­tioned in the UNESCO Secretariat’s report as con­tribut­ing to achiev­ing the objec­tives of the Convention (see para­graph 45).

Some States pay pure­ly sym­bol­ic sums, 82 Party States have nev­er made the slight­est con­tri­bu­tion to the fund

Another inter­est­ing aspect: Member States adopt­ed oper­a­tional guide­lines on the imple­men­ta­tion of the Convention in the dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment. The text spot­lights prin­ci­ples which, in our eyes, are essen­tial, such as tech­no­log­i­cal neu­tral­i­ty, respect of fun­da­men­tal rights –includ­ing free­dom of expres­sion – , gen­der equal­i­ty, the right of cre­ators to fair remu­ner­a­tion, the respect of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights or the right to car­ry out col­lec­tive bargaining.

On the oth­er hand, UNESCO is encoun­ter­ing great dif­fi­cul­ties in fund­ing the pro­mo­tion­al activ­i­ties of the Convention. This prob­lem is the direct con­se­quence of the sur­pris­ing­ly low lev­el of con­tri­bu­tions from states to the IFCD. For the 2016 – 2017 finan­cial year, the fund has only col­lect­ed $500,000US, just 10% of its objec­tive, which is quite sim­ply stag­ger­ing. Some States pay pure­ly sym­bol­ic sums, 82 Party States have nev­er made the slight­est con­tri­bu­tion to the fund, which means that only an extreme­ly lim­it­ed amount of projects can be financed. We were shocked to hear that the Secretariat has con­se­quent­ly been forced to turn to pri­vate part­ners such as multi­na­tion­al Vivendi.