Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions Implementation and Followup: The Challenge of Concerted Action by Civil Society, by Véronique Guèvremont

As we prepare for the first meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee on the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, which will be held December 10 to 13 in Ottawa, Canada, Ms. Véronique Guèvremont, a professor at Université Laval’s faculty of law in Quebec City, looks at the role of civil society in the convention’s implementation and followup.

Civil society may have played an important and widely acknowledged role in promoting the convention, notably in terms of communicating its principles and objects, but now it is faced with a series of new challenges, among them the need for concerted action as the convention’s implementation and followup requires strategic decisions to be taken with regard to the most relevant courses of action and the appropriate means of support. Up to a point, in the phase leading to the convention’s adoption, the groundswell of various members of civil society behind certain general principles made up for a relative lack of organization. This is no longer the case, if only to ensure that civil society is acknowledged as a discussion partner by national bodies (states, governments, UNESCO national commissions) and international bodies (namely the convention’s governing bodies and UNESCO itself) that are to work on the convention’s implementation and followup. The increase in national coalitions for cultural diversity, as well as their recent coming together into an international federation, represents an informed response to this new reality.

In her essay, the author outlines the challenge of concerted action by civil society and suggests different avenues for acting effectively in this new stage begun by the convention’s coming into force. These avenues are presented through three axes: operational, cooperative, and institutional. We would like to thank Ms. Guèvremont for accepting our “challenge” to investigate civil society’s role in the convention’s implementation and followup, a role that we believe to be vitally important.

The French version of Ms. Guèvremont’s study can be found on our website, and its translation into English, Spanish and Arabic is underway.