ROUND TABLES

Theme 2 - Cultural Diversity and Globalization: Consideration of an International Instrument on Cultural Diversity

Summary of Comments

• The IICD should contain an essential point, which is to affirm the legitimacy of national cultural policies as a means to develop the expression of national and foreign cultures in their diversity and the equality of access to these cultures.
  Michel Duffour, France
  
  
• Foremost among all, it is important to speak with one’s own voice, and it is toward this goal that any cultural policy should be geared, making sure that each individual and each community has its own voice.
  Araceli Morales, Colombia
  
  
• We should not lose sight in the instrument of those extremely poor countries, so that the instrument can integrate them.
  Rafael Bernal Alemany, Cuba
  
  
• We should celebrate cultural diversity in accordance with essential principles of human rights.
  Antun Vujic, Croatia
  
  
• We should conceive cultural diversity as an enlargement of human brotherhood, and the expression of those differences that are more an enrichment than a confinement of culture. In the instrument, we need to proclaim the equality of cultures within borders but also at the international level.The instrument should affirm the universality of the arts and of people of culture.
  Amadou Tidiane Wone, Senegal
  
  
• The concern for cultural diversity is to avoid a battle of civilizations,we should reach the peaceful coexistence of different civilizations on our planet, in other words to reach civilization diversity.
  Denis Molchanov, Russia
  
  
• Switzerland is a country, which lives on cultural diversity. Culture needs a different treatment.
  David Streiff, Switzerland
  
  
• Cultural diversity is a principle of respect of creativity and human freedom. It is an extremely generic concept and a very fundamental one. The theme of culture as an exception is differentfrom the theme of cultural diversity. I agree to recognize culture as an exception if this is meant to obtain for culture benefits that the market cannot provide.
  Francisco Weffort, Brazil
  
  
• The preservation and the durable promotion of cultural diversity necessitate cultural policies strongly supported by public authorities in order to affirm choices.
  Michel Duffour, France
  
  
• In the global world, the capacity to create legal frameworks has been outstripped by our international interconnections. We need to have a political instrument that can actually provide us with a range of tools that we can exercise as national Ministers but for which we do not have a place right now.
  Sheila Copps, Canada
  
  
• The meetings of the Network are a good channel for information and communication. The real merit of the Network is that it has stimulated thinking. Cultural diversity is an important objective. As a result of the processes of globalization, and the development in modern media and communication, the framework conditions of national cultural policies have changed radically.
  An IICD may be the response to contemporary challenges facing cultural policy makers. The Network can serve as a driving force on the ongoing work on cultural diversity.
  Ellen Horn, Norway
  
  
• What makes the wealth of this informal Network, is that we can inform each other about what we have done to defend cultural diversity.
  Paule Iappini, France
  
  
• Cultural diversity will be an important part of what will happen in the future.The INCP is a unique network because it is a ministerial network.This is what gives it strength and legitimacy.
  Marita Ulvskog, Sweden
  
  
• This Network has been very important because it has allowed leaders as Ministers to directly participate in making policy in cultural diversity. It enables us to have a real sense of ownership. I want to acknowledge the vast opportunity that this informal Network offers to us all. However, it has been acknowledged that insufficient input has come from developing countries.
  Brigitte Mabandla, South Africa
  
  
• The inherent strength of this Network is its ability to be a catalyst in terms of concretizing opinions.
  Antonio Rudder, Barbados
  
  
• Our great fight against a hegemonic globalization is mainly concentrated in the strengthening of the processes of creation and cultural production in our nation. The local asks for an egalitarian globalization, a plural globalization. We want to be in globalization, but we want to do it in a strategic way; our participation in globalization has to be planned, and has to take into account what we want as a culture.
  Luis Armando Soto, Colombia
  
  
• If we are to unlock the potential of developing countries, the cultural resources must be developed alongside others. The importance of the INCP is the recognition that it is within no one’s interest for less developed countries to lose their cultural identities through an imbalance in cultural trade. Developing countries have cultural assets and cultural products, but they do not necessarily have fully fledged cultural industries. Developing countries do not possess the capital required for the development of competitive infrastructures in the cultural sector, especially with respect to the distribution of cultural products.
  Brigitte Mabandla, South Africa
  
  
• Culture is an asset of community development. Diversity is a factor in development. It is necessary to link the protection of cultural diversity and local development.
  Ali Amahan, Maroc
  
  

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