CEN­TRE STAGE

A promise made. A promise kept. The Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment had com­mit­ted in its 2010 man­i­festo to rat­i­fy the Un­esco Con­ven­tion on the Pro­tec­tion and Pro­mo­tion of the Div­er- sity of Cul­tur­al Ex­pres­sions in its first 50 days in of­fice.

T&T be­came the 112th coun­try to rat­i­fy the con­ven­tion adopt­ed on­ly five years ago. This un­prece­dent­ed pace of en­dorse­ment by the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty is a clear in­di­ca­tion of a large con­sen­sus in favour of this new in­ter­na­tion­al in­stru­ment in­tend­ed to coun­ter­bal­ance trade agree­ments and af­firm the sov­er­eign right of coun­tries to pro­mote the ex­pres­sion of their own cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty by adopt­ing ap­pro­pri­ate pol­i­cy mea­sures. By com­par­i­son, 90 coun­tries had rat­i­fied the Ky­oto Pro­to­col on Cli­mate Change five years af­ter its adop­tion in 1987; 192 coun­tries now have.

To most cit­i­zens of T&T, this seems so far re­moved from day-to-day pre­oc­cu­pa­tions that one could even won­der why should a gov­ern­ment busy with so many oth­er pri­or­i­ties even con­sid­er spend­ing much time on this. For a coun­try whose fu­ture is so much tied to the so­cial co­he­sion made pos­si­ble by the ad­e­quate pro­tec­tion and pro­mo­tion of its cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty, this is a sig­nif­i­cant ges­ture. The new Gov­ern­ment there­by sends a strong sig­nal both to the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and to its own peo­ple that cul­tur­al ex­pres­sion is a cen­tral pri­or­i­ty of the coun­try's well-be­ing and de­vel­op­ment. Cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty is to mankind what bio­di­ver­si­ty is to the liv­ing thing. It is our col­lec­tive wealth. The col­lec­tive wealth of the peo­ple of T&T that calls for ad­e­quate pro­tec­tion and pro­mo­tion.

As with any oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al in­stru­ment, uni­ver­sal ac­cep­tance through rat­i­fi­ca­tion in­creas­es the con­ven­tion's le­git­i­ma­cy in the in­ter­na­tion­al le­gal sys­tem. But more im­por­tant­ly, prop­er im­ple­men­ta­tion by the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty is key to suc­cess. The Gov- ern­ment of T&T must now take up the chal­lenge of ac­tu­al­ly us­ing the con­ven­tion it sought to have. By rat­i­fy­ing the Con­ven­tion on the Di­ver­si­ty of Cul­tur­al Ex­pres­sions so ear­ly in its term, the Gov­ern­ment has giv­en it­self a head start in plan­ning for its im­ple­men­ta­tion so it can re­port that progress has been made when its turn comes to re­port back to Un­esco, as is ex­pect­ed from all sig­na­to­ry states every four years af­ter rat­i­fi­ca­tion.

This is a long jour­ney and so there is no need to press ahead too hasti­ly un­til a good plan has been de­vised. A first step would be for the peo­ple of T&T, the cul­tur­al sec­tor and es­pe­cial­ly artists and cre­ative in­dus­tries, to be prop­er­ly in­formed of their rights and of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ment made by their Gov­ern­ment. A sec­ond step could be for the coun­try to take stock of the cur­rent lev­el of pro­tec­tion and pro­mo­tion of the di­ver­si­ty of cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions and de­fine the roadmap of mea­sures that could be tak­en to achieve the con­ven­tion's ob­jec­tives: where are we now, where do we want to go, how are we go­ing to get there and, most im­por­tant­ly, how are go­ing to know that we are get­ting where we want to be?

A third step might be for the Par­lia­ment to adopt a law specif­i­cal­ly ad­dress­ing how it in­tends to im­ple­ment the Un­esco con­ven­tion, which could prove very use­ful to en­sure co-or­di­na­tion be­tween the var­i­ous min­istries and agen­cies in­volved. The civ­il so­ci­ety move­ment of T&T has played a lead­er­ship role in gar­ner­ing sup­port for the con­ven­tion at na­tion­al and re­gion­al lev­els in the Caribbean. The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, as well as Kris Ram­per­sad have or­gan­ised three very im­por­tant re­gion­al meet­ings in Port-of-Spain in 2007 and again in 2009, as part of the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing.

Con­sis­tent with ar­ti­cle 11 of the Con­ven­tion on the Di­ver­si­ty of Cul­tur­al Ex­pres­sions, which states that "par­ties shall en­cour­age the ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion of civ­il so­ci­ety in their ef­forts to achieve the ob­jec­tives of this con­ven­tion," one can hope that this lead­er­ship role will con­tin­ue to be ful­ly recog­nised. This can on­ly be pos­si­ble if there is a will­ing­ness on the part of the Gov­ern­ment to keep civ­il so­ci­ety in­formed of its in­ten­tions and ac­tions. By do­ing so, one can ex­pect that the peo­ple of T&T will bet­ter be able to ap­pre­ci­ate the ef­forts made by their gov­ern­ment to en­sure that the coun­try's di­ver­si­ty of cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions is right­ful­ly pro­tect­ed and pro­mot­ed along­side the di­ver­si­ty of cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions com­ing from abroad.

* The In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Coali­tions for Cul­tur­al Di­ver­si­ty (IFC­CD) is the voice of cul­tur­al pro­fes­sion­als world­wide. The fed­er­a­tion brings to­geth­er 43 na­tion­al coali­tions com­prised of over 600 or­gan­i­sa­tions