Coalition Currents

Countdown to the UNESCO General Conference
Supporters on Track for
Strong Adoption Vote on Convention,
But U.S. Dilute, Delay Tactics May Yield Challenging Ratification Climate

As the UNESCO Executive Board met (September 13-29) in the run-up to the 33 rd General Conference (Oct. 3-21), countries championing the convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions were working hard to emerge from the board meeting with a strong recommendation that member states adopt the convention during the General Conference set to start October 3.

Specifically, supporters were working to secure an adoption recommendation backed by 40 or more of the 58 member states sitting on the board—matching or exceeding the level of support secured at this stage two years ago for the convention on intangible heritage, which was subsequently adopted at the 32 nd General Conference in October of 2003.

Leader countries supporting the convention were working hard to build strong momentum in favour of adopting the convention for good reason: an informal meeting on the UNESCO convention held August 25 at WTO headquarters in Geneva at the insistence of the United States and a small number of other countries was concrete proof that the U.S. has not abandoned its efforts to water down or delay adoption of the convention.

At the Geneva meeting, the U.S., supported by Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, Singapore and South Korea—and to a lesser extent, by Chile—launched a wide-ranging attack on the convention, and sought to have the WTO relay these concerns officially to UNESCO.

In a transparent attempt to give the impression their position enjoys broader support than it really has, the U.S. called on the WTO to relay the views expressed during the August 25 meeting “without attribution”.

However, this rear-guard attempt to re-insert the WTO into the UNESCO process was overwhelmingly countered by a broad alliance that included the European Union, Brazil, China, Canada, Benin, Turkey, Norway and many other countries.

These countries emphasized that the UNESCO consultation with the WTO on the convention had already taken place in November 2004. And they asserted that the appropriate venue for raising concerns about a UNESCO convention was the agency itself. In the absence of consensus, the WTO secretariat concluded it was inappropriate to transmit any record of the meeting to UNESCO.

With the WTO option shut down, the U.S. can be expected to make at least one more last-ditch effort at UNESCO to reopen negotiations in order to water down key provisions of the convention—notably Article 6, which sets out the right of countries to apply policies in favour of cultural diversity, and Article 20, which affirms the clear non-subordination of the convention to other international agreements, and commits signatory countries to take its provisions into account when applying and interpreting other international agreements.

Their Plan B—in the absence of the required support to dilute the convention now—will be to succeed in deferring a vote on adoption of the convention until the 2007 General Conference.

At the time of this writing the U.S. tactics looked unlikely to counter the extremely high level of support in favour of adopting the convention, especially as the U.S. greatly isolated itself at the end of the UNESCO negotiations with a statement that denounced, in vehement terms, the convention and the process by which it was negotiated.

However, there are signs that their last-ditch manoeuvres against the convention could have an impact on the ratification campaign for the convention—notably by sparking, or in some cases reviving, internal debates within some national governments on the issue of the convention.

The basis for the Executive Board discussions will be the August 4 report on the convention released by Director General Koïchiro Matsuura, which contained the draft text of the convention finalized at the conclusion of the third intergovernmental negotiations session.

The Executive Board wraps September 29—and the outcome of its discussion on the convention should provide a clear indication of the outlook for a positive adoption vote during the General Conference, which starts four days later.

The convention will be substantively discussed during the Commission IV (Culture) session of the GC. Listed last on the agenda for this session, the convention is expected to be debated on or about October 17, with final adoption—if all goes well—taking place during the closing plenary on October 20.

What should organizations representing cultural professionals do during this period?

Don’t take a positive vote on adoption by your country’s government for granted. Make last-minute approaches to ministers responsible for culture, foreign affairs, and education (any of which may represent their governments during the General Conference)—as well as the minister responsible for trade. Consider writing your head of government or state—as final decisions on the convention may well be made at this level. Whatever the channel, make sure the government hears clearly that the cultural sector attaches great importance to their supporting the convention—that the negotiations are over, that the convention should be adopted without any further changes, and that they should commit to ratify it as soon as possible following the General Conference.

Bringing the Convention to Life:
The Ratification Challenge

Successful adoption of the convention in October will be a watershed moment in the campaign to secure an international convention that recognizes the distinctive nature of cultural goods and services, and affirms the right of countries to apply cultural policies to ensure a genuine diversity of cultural expressions at the national and international level.

But it must be noted that adoption, while an essential step in the process, is not an end in itself.

The reality is that many treaties are adopted but never take on a legal life because they fail to be ratified by the number of countries required to go into effect.

So if the convention is adopted in October, it will signal the beginning of a new phase: the campaign to ensure that the required number of countries ratify it at the national government level in order for it to enter into effect.

The Ratification Campaign: A Realistic Timeline

Leader countries and cultural professional organizations supporting the convention should share a common objective on this count: securing fast-track ratification of the convention by 30 countries—ideally more—in time for the founding Conference of Parties to be held at the time of the 34 th General Conference in October 2007.

Securing ratification by 30 countries is frankly an ambitious goal—but it can be attained if the work of national coalitions is matched by a similarly concerted effort by leader countries supportive of the convention.

Without this campaign, the outlook for timely ratification of the convention is much less favourable.

To an important degree, this is because if the convention is adopted by vote this fall, the intense opposition coming from the United States will simply be redirected into a concerted campaign to pressure countries not to ratify the convention. And it must be recognized that for various reasons—economic or political dependency, aspirations to secure new trade agreements (or admission to the WTO), the desire to secure U.S. support in other fora (e.g. territorial disputes)—several countries could prove susceptible to this pressure.

Moreover, it must be noted that it will not be sufficient to simply meet the minimum target of having 30 countries ratify the convention.

Instead, it will be of great importance to the ultimate weight of the convention that it be ratified by an important number of countries from all regions of the world.

On all counts, the work of cultural professional organizations, and the continuing emergence of new national coalitions for cultural diversity, will be of great importance.

Much work can be done at the international level and in regional and linguistic fora to highlight the importance of the UNESCO convention and exhort countries to ratify it. But this decision, in the end, will be made at the individual country level. Coordinated work by coalitions in countries around the world will be crucial to reaching this objective in a timely fashion.

TOP

New WTO Head Lamy Looks to Get Doha Round Back on Track; U.S. Bilaterals Push Continues in Colombia , Bolivia , Ecuador , Thailand and Elsewhere

Even as the campaign to secure the convention at UNESCO is approaching a decisive milestone, the WTO Doha Round of negotiations is nearing a crucial deadline with the Hong Kong ministerial meeting set for December 13-18. With the breakdown in Cancun in September of 2003 still fresh in people’s minds, the WTO can ill afford another impasse in this round.

Meanwhile, the United States continues its ambitious push to secure wide-ranging bilateral agreements and, through these, extensive liberalization commitments affecting culture—notably the audiovisual services sector.

On September 14, just days after starting his new post as Director General of the WTO, Pascal Lamy used a speech at the opening of his first Trade Negotiations Committee to launch his campaign to bridge the divisions between countries that have hobbled the Doha Round of negotiations since its inception.

With the impasse on agricultural subsidies—chiefly a stalemate between the United States and the European Union as to which will move first to remove or sharply reduce their subsidies and allow agricultural products from the developing world greater access to their markets—still to be resolved, Lamy chose to focus on development issues in arguing for progress in the WTO negotiations.

Noting that the development aspect “is integrated across the various sides of the negotiations,” Lamy stressed that the Doha Development Agenda “will only succeed if this Development Dimension is at the centre of the negotiations and I am convinced that an ‘Aid for Trade’ window can help us translate the development package of the round into reality.”

Lamy extended this argument to the services negotiations, asserting that “what is new, as compared to previous rounds, is the importance that a number of developing countries attach to it, which in itself should suffice to energize this part of the negotiations.…What we must have are commitments which effectively open trade in services, with the corresponding improvements in the rule-making area.”

Meanwhile, as the Central America Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua was in the final stages of national government ratification, the U.S. was entering the late stages of negotiations with three countries of the Andean Pact: Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

Colombia, Ecuador and Peru were experiencing intense pressure to make sweeping liberalization commitments on culture that would seriously constrain their ability to have cultural policies in the future, but the Coalitions for Cultural Diversity in each of these countries were pushing their governments to maintain as much latitude as possible to have cultural policies in the future by limiting their liberalization commitments on culture.

The U.S. is not relying solely on bilaterals to attain its objective of wholesale liberalization of audiovisual services. Its recent agreement with Saudi Arabia to support its candidacy for WTO membership is a textbook example of how it leverages such requests to secure liberalization commitments “carefully crafted to apply to a broad range of audiovisual services of commercial importance today and to new technologies of tomorrow.”

At the same time, there are already some encouraging signs that the UNESCO process is having a positive effect on the negotiating stance that countries are taking in trade negotiations.

One noteworthy example was the statement issued on June 30 by the U.S., Japan, Mexico, Taiwan and Hong Kong criticizing what they characterized as an attempt by some key countries to secure ‘an a prior exclusion’ of the audiovisual sector from the WTO Doha Round services negotiations.

This statement, issued in the wake of the May 31 deadline for revised offers on services, indicated that only 26 of 148 member states had made offers on audiovisual services, with six of these being revised or new offers. But this could change in the run-up to Hong Kong, as member states have consistently disregarded the official deadlines for making such offers.

In conclusion, it has become increasingly clear with time that successful adoption and ratification of a convention on cultural diversity would not eliminate the pressure from trade negotiations in one simple step.

The reality is that—certainly in the short- to medium-term—countries will have to continue to maintain the political will to refrain from liberalization commitments on culture, particularly during the formative period when the convention is being put in place.

For this reason cultural organizations will have to remain active and vigilant in to ensure that their governments do not succumb to pressure to make liberalization commitments on culture in these negotiations. Adoption and rapid ratification of the UNESCO convention will support this task, but it will not eliminate it.

But the UNESCO convention has true potential to change the dynamic for countries involved in such negotiations, because for the first time they will have an international treaty that they can reference to justify their decision to refrain from liberalization commitments affecting the cultural sector.

TOP

Coalitions for Cultural Diversity Urge Adoption of Convention, Launch Plans for International Federation at Buenos Aires Meeting

Support adoption of the UNESCO convention. Resist overtures to reopen the negotiations. Commit to ratify the convention on a priority basis. And set about translating its principles into real-world cultural policies at the national level.

These were key messages for governments contained in the declaration issued at the conclusion of the Seventh General Assembly of the International Liaison Committee of Coalitions for Cultural Diversity (ILC), held September 6 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The meeting, hosted by Argentina’s Coalition (the Forum for the Protection of Cultural Industries) was attended by representatives of coalitions from Belgium, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Congo, Ecuador, Guinea, France, Korea, Mexico, Peru, Slovakia, Spain, Togo, and Uruguay.

The coalitions were joined by leaders of key cultural organizations from Bolivia, Paraguay and Venezuela actively working to establish new coalitions in their countries bringing together organizations representing artists, composers, writers, directors, independent producers and distributors of film, television and music, publishers and other cultural professionals.

At the Buenos Aires meeting, the coalitions held an extensive discussion of the outlook for a positive adoption vote on the convention at the UNESCO General Conference and exchanged notes on work they were doing to ensure their own governments support the convention—and act quickly to ratify it following the October vote.

The Coalitions also took stock of the rapid growth of the movement—30 coalitions are now in existence, almost triple the number from just one year ago—and agreed to start work on putting a more formal organization structure in place to coordinate their activities.

The first step in this direction will be to replace the name of the International Liaison Committee with a name that reflects what the ILC has truly become: an International Federation of Coalitions for Cultural Diversity.

A committee has been established to take on the work of developing concrete proposals for an organization structure for the federation, which would prepare the way for a founding congress of the new federation to be held in September or October of 2006.

This first congress would represent an evolution building on the cycle of four international meetings of cultural professional organizations launched in Montreal in September of 2001 and followed by meetings held in France (2003), Korea (2004) and Spain (2005).

Organized by the Co-Secretariat of the ILC with the financial support from the Canadian and French Coalitions for diversity, the coalitions meeting was also made possible by the generous support of the Culture Secretariat of the City of Buenos Aires—which also hosted two major meetings of its own on cultural diversity: the Third International Meeting on Cultural Diversity, which was also hosted by the City of Buenos Aires, and a meeting of the culture secretariats of the major cities of Ibero-America.

Leading into the Buenos Aires meeting of the coalitions, Robert Pilon, Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Coalition, undertook a six-country mission through the Americas—meeting with coalitions and leaders of key cultural organizations in Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Paraguay, as well as taking part in a series of meetings with government officials responsible for culture, trade and foreign affairs and according media interviews on the state of the UNESCO convention campaign and the implications for culture of key trade negotiations involving the region.

TOP

Swiss Coalition Formally Established September 28

On June 28, 23 Swiss cultural professional organizations laid the foundation for the Swiss Coalition for Cultural Diversity. Covering several sectors of culture, including cinema, theatre, dance, and music, the Swiss Coalition also includes five authors’ societies and several non-governmental organizations working in the countries of the South, as well as journalists and museums. By virtue of its recognition of four national cultures (German, Francophone, Italian and Romanche), Switzerland already practices cultural diversity and the Coalition intends to reinforce this at the level of the cultural sector.

Swiss civil society mobilized immediately following the release of the draft text released by the team of independent experts in July of 2004. Their work was a determining influence in the key role Switzerland played during the UNESCO negotiations. The creation of the Coalition is a logical extension of this prior mobilization.

A working group has been working since June 29 to organize an official launch day for the Coalition , which will take place on September 28. In the meantime, an approach has been made to the Swiss government to ensure their unconditional support for the Contention text during UNESCO’s General Conference, and as well, to ensure that no liberalization offers on culture be made in the context of the bilateral negotiations with the United States for a Free trade Agreement—or in any other bilateral or multilateral negotiation.

TOP

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				Highlights:
	Vol. 3, No. 6, September 2005 Countdown to the UNESCO General Conference Supporters on Track for Strong Adoption Vote on Convention, But U.S. Dilute, Delay Tactics May Yield Challenging Ratification Climate As the UNESCO Executive Board met (September 13-29) in the run-up to the 33 rd General Conference (Oct. 3-21), countries championing the convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions were working hard to emerge from the board meeting with a strong recommendation that member states adopt the convention during the General Conference set to start October 3. Specifically, supporters were working to secure an adoption recommendation backed by 40 or more of the 58 member states sitting on the board—matching or exceeding the level of support secured at this stage two years ago for the convention on intangible heritage, which was subsequently adopted at the 32 nd General Conference in October of 2003. Leader countries supporting the convention were working hard to build strong momentum in favour of adopting the convention for good reason: an informal meeting on the UNESCO convention held August 25 at WTO headquarters in Geneva at the insistence of the United States and a small number of other countries was concrete proof that the U.S. has not abandoned its efforts to water down or delay adoption of the convention. At the Geneva meeting, the U.S., supported by Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, Singapore and South Korea—and to a lesser extent, by Chile—launched a wide-ranging attack on the convention, and sought to have the WTO relay these concerns officially to UNESCO. In a transparent attempt to give the impression their position enjoys broader support than it really has, the U.S. called on the WTO to relay the views expressed during the August 25 meeting “without attribution”. However, this rear-guard attempt to re-insert the WTO into the UNESCO process was overwhelmingly countered by a broad alliance that included the European Union, Brazil, China, Canada, Benin, Turkey, Norway and many other countries. These countries emphasized that the UNESCO consultation with the WTO on the convention had already taken place in November 2004. And they asserted that the appropriate venue for raising concerns about a UNESCO convention was the agency itself. In the absence of consensus, the WTO secretariat concluded it was inappropriate to transmit any record of the meeting to UNESCO. With the WTO option shut down, the U.S. can be expected to make at least one more last-ditch effort at UNESCO to reopen negotiations in order to water down key provisions of the convention—notably Article 6, which sets out the right of countries to apply policies in favour of cultural diversity, and Article 20, which affirms the clear non-subordination of the convention to other international agreements, and commits signatory countries to take its provisions into account when applying and interpreting other international agreements. Their Plan B—in the absence of the required support to dilute the convention now—will be to succeed in deferring a vote on adoption of the convention until the 2007 General Conference. At the time of this writing the U.S. tactics looked unlikely to counter the extremely high level of support in favour of adopting the convention, especially as the U.S. greatly isolated itself at the end of the UNESCO negotiations with a statement that denounced, in vehement terms, the convention and the process by which it was negotiated. However, there are signs that their last-ditch manoeuvres against the convention could have an impact on the ratification campaign for the convention—notably by sparking, or in some cases reviving, internal debates within some national governments on the issue of the convention. The basis for the Executive Board discussions will be the August 4 report on the convention released by Director General Koïchiro Matsuura, which contained the draft text of the convention finalized at the conclusion of the third intergovernmental negotiations session. The Executive Board wraps September 29—and the outcome of its discussion on the convention should provide a clear indication of the outlook for a positive adoption vote during the General Conference, which starts four days later. The convention will be substantively discussed during the Commission IV (Culture) session of the GC. Listed last on the agenda for this session, the convention is expected to be debated on or about October 17, with final adoption—if all goes well—taking place during the closing plenary on October 20. What should organizations representing cultural professionals do during this period? Don’t take a positive vote on adoption by your country’s government for granted. Make last-minute approaches to ministers responsible for culture, foreign affairs, and education (any of which may represent their governments during the General Conference)—as well as the minister responsible for trade. Consider writing your head of government or state—as final decisions on the convention may well be made at this level. Whatever the channel, make sure the government hears clearly that the cultural sector attaches great importance to their supporting the convention—that the negotiations are over, that the convention should be adopted without any further changes, and that they should commit to ratify it as soon as possible following the General Conference. TOP Bringing the Convention to Life: The Ratification Challenge Successful adoption of the convention in October will be a watershed moment in the campaign to secure an international convention that recognizes the distinctive nature of cultural goods and services, and affirms the right of countries to apply cultural policies to ensure a genuine diversity of cultural expressions at the national and international level. But it must be noted that adoption, while an essential step in the process, is not an end in itself. The reality is that many treaties are adopted but never take on a legal life because they fail to be ratified by the number of countries required to go into effect. So if the convention is adopted in October, it will signal the beginning of a new phase: the campaign to ensure that the required number of countries ratify it at the national government level in order for it to enter into effect. The Ratification Campaign: A Realistic Timeline Leader countries and cultural professional organizations supporting the convention should share a common objective on this count: securing fast-track ratification of the convention by 30 countries—ideally more—in time for the founding Conference of Parties to be held at the time of the 34 th General Conference in October 2007. Securing ratification by 30 countries is frankly an ambitious goal—but it can be attained if the work of national coalitions is matched by a similarly concerted effort by leader countries supportive of the convention. Without this campaign, the outlook for timely ratification of the convention is much less favourable. To an important degree, this is because if the convention is adopted by vote this fall, the intense opposition coming from the United States will simply be redirected into a concerted campaign to pressure countries not to ratify the convention. And it must be recognized that for various reasons—economic or political dependency, aspirations to secure new trade agreements (or admission to the WTO), the desire to secure U.S. support in other fora (e.g. territorial disputes)—several countries could prove susceptible to this pressure. Moreover, it must be noted that it will not be sufficient to simply meet the minimum target of having 30 countries ratify the convention. Instead, it will be of great importance to the ultimate weight of the convention that it be ratified by an important number of countries from all regions of the world. On all counts, the work of cultural professional organizations, and the continuing emergence of new national coalitions for cultural diversity, will be of great importance. Much work can be done at the international level and in regional and linguistic fora to highlight the importance of the UNESCO convention and exhort countries to ratify it. But this decision, in the end, will be made at the individual country level. Coordinated work by coalitions in countries around the world will be crucial to reaching this objective in a timely fashion. TOP New WTO Head Lamy Looks to Get Doha Round Back on Track; U.S. Bilaterals Push Continues in Colombia , Bolivia , Ecuador , Thailand and Elsewhere Even as the campaign to secure the convention at UNESCO is approaching a decisive milestone, the WTO Doha Round of negotiations is nearing a crucial deadline with the Hong Kong ministerial meeting set for December 13-18. With the breakdown in Cancun in September of 2003 still fresh in people’s minds, the WTO can ill afford another impasse in this round. Meanwhile, the United States continues its ambitious push to secure wide-ranging bilateral agreements and, through these, extensive liberalization commitments affecting culture—notably the audiovisual services sector. On September 14, just days after starting his new post as Director General of the WTO, Pascal Lamy used a speech at the opening of his first Trade Negotiations Committee to launch his campaign to bridge the divisions between countries that have hobbled the Doha Round of negotiations since its inception. With the impasse on agricultural subsidies—chiefly a stalemate between the United States and the European Union as to which will move first to remove or sharply reduce their subsidies and allow agricultural products from the developing world greater access to their markets—still to be resolved, Lamy chose to focus on development issues in arguing for progress in the WTO negotiations. Noting that the development aspect “is integrated across the various sides of the negotiations,” Lamy stressed that the Doha Development Agenda “will only succeed if this Development Dimension is at the centre of the negotiations and I am convinced that an ‘Aid for Trade’ window can help us translate the development package of the round into reality.” Lamy extended this argument to the services negotiations, asserting that “what is new, as compared to previous rounds, is the importance that a number of developing countries attach to it, which in itself should suffice to energize this part of the negotiations.…What we must have are commitments which effectively open trade in services, with the corresponding improvements in the rule-making area.” Meanwhile, as the Central America Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua was in the final stages of national government ratification, the U.S. was entering the late stages of negotiations with three countries of the Andean Pact: Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Colombia, Ecuador and Peru were experiencing intense pressure to make sweeping liberalization commitments on culture that would seriously constrain their ability to have cultural policies in the future, but the Coalitions for Cultural Diversity in each of these countries were pushing their governments to maintain as much latitude as possible to have cultural policies in the future by limiting their liberalization commitments on culture. The U.S. is not relying solely on bilaterals to attain its objective of wholesale liberalization of audiovisual services. Its recent agreement with Saudi Arabia to support its candidacy for WTO membership is a textbook example of how it leverages such requests to secure liberalization commitments “carefully crafted to apply to a broad range of audiovisual services of commercial importance today and to new technologies of tomorrow.” At the same time, there are already some encouraging signs that the UNESCO process is having a positive effect on the negotiating stance that countries are taking in trade negotiations. One noteworthy example was the statement issued on June 30 by the U.S., Japan, Mexico, Taiwan and Hong Kong criticizing what they characterized as an attempt by some key countries to secure ‘an a prior exclusion’ of the audiovisual sector from the WTO Doha Round services negotiations. This statement, issued in the wake of the May 31 deadline for revised offers on services, indicated that only 26 of 148 member states had made offers on audiovisual services, with six of these being revised or new offers. But this could change in the run-up to Hong Kong, as member states have consistently disregarded the official deadlines for making such offers. In conclusion, it has become increasingly clear with time that successful adoption and ratification of a convention on cultural diversity would not eliminate the pressure from trade negotiations in one simple step. The reality is that—certainly in the short- to medium-term—countries will have to continue to maintain the political will to refrain from liberalization commitments on culture, particularly during the formative period when the convention is being put in place. For this reason cultural organizations will have to remain active and vigilant in to ensure that their governments do not succumb to pressure to make liberalization commitments on culture in these negotiations. Adoption and rapid ratification of the UNESCO convention will support this task, but it will not eliminate it. But the UNESCO convention has true potential to change the dynamic for countries involved in such negotiations, because for the first time they will have an international treaty that they can reference to justify their decision to refrain from liberalization commitments affecting the cultural sector. TOP Coalitions for Cultural Diversity Urge Adoption of Convention, Launch Plans for International Federation at Buenos Aires Meeting Support adoption of the UNESCO convention. Resist overtures to reopen the negotiations. Commit to ratify the convention on a priority basis. And set about translating its principles into real-world cultural policies at the national level. These were key messages for governments contained in the declaration issued at the conclusion of the Seventh General Assembly of the International Liaison Committee of Coalitions for Cultural Diversity (ILC), held September 6 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The meeting, hosted by Argentina’s Coalition (the Forum for the Protection of Cultural Industries) was attended by representatives of coalitions from Belgium, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Congo, Ecuador, Guinea, France, Korea, Mexico, Peru, Slovakia, Spain, Togo, and Uruguay. The coalitions were joined by leaders of key cultural organizations from Bolivia, Paraguay and Venezuela actively working to establish new coalitions in their countries bringing together organizations representing artists, composers, writers, directors, independent producers and distributors of film, television and music, publishers and other cultural professionals. At the Buenos Aires meeting, the coalitions held an extensive discussion of the outlook for a positive adoption vote on the convention at the UNESCO General Conference and exchanged notes on work they were doing to ensure their own governments support the convention—and act quickly to ratify it following the October vote. The Coalitions also took stock of the rapid growth of the movement—30 coalitions are now in existence, almost triple the number from just one year ago—and agreed to start work on putting a more formal organization structure in place to coordinate their activities. The first step in this direction will be to replace the name of the International Liaison Committee with a name that reflects what the ILC has truly become: an International Federation of Coalitions for Cultural Diversity. A committee has been established to take on the work of developing concrete proposals for an organization structure for the federation, which would prepare the way for a founding congress of the new federation to be held in September or October of 2006. This first congress would represent an evolution building on the cycle of four international meetings of cultural professional organizations launched in Montreal in September of 2001 and followed by meetings held in France (2003), Korea (2004) and Spain (2005). Organized by the Co-Secretariat of the ILC with the financial support from the Canadian and French Coalitions for diversity, the coalitions meeting was also made possible by the generous support of the Culture Secretariat of the City of Buenos Aires—which also hosted two major meetings of its own on cultural diversity: the Third International Meeting on Cultural Diversity, which was also hosted by the City of Buenos Aires, and a meeting of the culture secretariats of the major cities of Ibero-America. Leading into the Buenos Aires meeting of the coalitions, Robert Pilon, Executive Vice-President of the Canadian Coalition, undertook a six-country mission through the Americas—meeting with coalitions and leaders of key cultural organizations in Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Paraguay, as well as taking part in a series of meetings with government officials responsible for culture, trade and foreign affairs and according media interviews on the state of the UNESCO convention campaign and the implications for culture of key trade negotiations involving the region. TOP Swiss Coalition Formally Established September 28 On June 28, 23 Swiss cultural professional organizations laid the foundation for the Swiss Coalition for Cultural Diversity. Covering several sectors of culture, including cinema, theatre, dance, and music, the Swiss Coalition also includes five authors’ societies and several non-governmental organizations working in the countries of the South, as well as journalists and museums. By virtue of its recognition of four national cultures (German, Francophone, Italian and Romanche), Switzerland already practices cultural diversity and the Coalition intends to reinforce this at the level of the cultural sector. Swiss civil society mobilized immediately following the release of the draft text released by the team of independent experts in July of 2004. Their work was a determining influence in the key role Switzerland played during the UNESCO negotiations. The creation of the Coalition is a logical extension of this prior mobilization. A working group has been working since June 29 to organize an official launch day for the Coalition , which will take place on September 28. In the meantime, an approach has been made to the Swiss government to ensure their unconditional support for the Contention text during UNESCO’s General Conference, and as well, to ensure that no liberalization offers on culture be made in the context of the bilateral negotiations with the United States for a Free trade Agreement—or in any other bilateral or multilateral negotiation. TOP			Countdown to the UNESCO General Conference: Supporters on Track for Strong Adoption Vote on Convention, But U.S. Dilute, Delay Tactics May Yield Challenging Ratification Climate Bringing the Convention to Life: The Ratification Challenge New WTO Head Lamy Looks to Get Doha Round Back on Track; U.S. Bilaterals Push Continues in Colombia , Bolivia , Ecuador , Thailand and Elsewhere Coalitions for Cultural Diversity Urge Adoption of Convention, Launch Plans for International Federation at Buenos Aires Meeting Swiss Coalition Formally Established September 28 Coalition Currents is published by the Secretariat for the International Liaison Committee of Coalitions for Cultural Diversity (ILC). Member Coalitions: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Benin, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Congo, Ecuador, France, Germany, Guinea, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Mali, Morocco, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Senegal, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Togo, Uruguay. 154 Laurier Ave. West, Suite 240 Montreal, QUE H2T 2N7 T. (514) 277-2666 F. (514) 277-9994 www.coalitionfrancaise.org e-mail: Editor: Jim McKee Contributors in this issue: Robert Pilon, Bruno Bettati, Marisol Paquin We welcome re-use of material from this bulletin with attribution. Coalition Currents is published with the financial assistance of Canada’s Department of Canadian Heritage, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and the Government of Quebec