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12
UNESCO today
2|2005
Roland Bernecker
The Genesis of a Convention under
International Law
"Derrière six il y a plus que sept"
African proverb
When, on the 2nd April 1998 in Stockholm, the delegates of the UNESCO
World Conference on Culture adopted the Stockholm Action Plan, it
was not clear to all concerned that the central focus of the Conference
had already shifted considerably. Indeed, this third World Conference
on culture, which brought together 2000 participants from 140 countries,
had been entitled 'Cultural Policies for Development', still with
a clear focus on the field of development. It was a belated tribute to
the impact caused by the Report of the World Commission on Environment
and Development, the so-called Brundtland Report, 'Our Common
Future', on its publication in 1987. However, in the meantime,
cultural policy had moved on.
“Our most basic need is to be
left free to define our own
basic needs”
A New Concept
An attentive reading of the 1995 report
published by the World Commission
on Culture and Development –
set up in the same spirit as the
Brundtland Commission – shows that
the focus on development had been
relegated by a new concept: diversity.
The title of the report – 'Our Creative
Diversity' – is a clear reflection
of this shift. It is still well worth reading
attentively today. The participation
of the anthropologist Claude
Lévi-Strauss in the Commission's
work may have
made a significant contribution
in placing the reality
of an unimaginably rich
worldwide diversity of cultural expression
in centre stage, alongside
the problems arising from this reality:
the often lacking political will to permit
and encourage internal cultural
pluralism; the need for worldwide
ethical norms allowing for a right to
reject culturally defined pressures on
people; and, finally, the tension between
the existence of different cultural
value systems and the need for
constructive and trusting dialogue between
the various cultures.
We shall encounter these topics again
later on. None has been forgotten in
the further development of the debate.
The Commission, which under the
leadership of the former UN Secretary-General
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar
carried out a worldwide survey, merits
high praise for the fact that when
faced with contradiction between individual
self-definition and social cohesion,
it was individual freedom
that took clear priority. In a key statement,
the report summarises the elements
with which we continue to
deal today, with a view to the new
UNESCO Convention:
"Finally, freedom is central to culture,
and in particular the freedom to decide
what we have reason to value,
and what lives we have reason to
seek. One of the most basic needs
is to be left free to define our own
basic needs. This need is being
threatened by a combination of global
pressures and global neglect."
OECD and WTO Negotiations
Given the often hidden structure of
the international agenda, it is perhaps
no coincidence that the Pérez de
Cuéllar Report appeared in the same
year that the GATS came into force,
an agreement which extended the international
trend of deregulation and
liberalisation to the service sector,
thereby making public investment in
promoting and enlivening the national
cultural landscape a matter for negotiation
at the WTO. It is certainly no