Last December 18, the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, adopted October 20 2005 during the 33rd General Conference of UNESCO, topped the goal of 30 ratifications needed for it to come into force, after a period of three months.

On that date, twelve member States of the European Union (Austria, Denmark, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Estonia, Finland, France, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Sweden), in addition to Bulgaria and the European Community itself, jointly deposited their instruments of ratification at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.  The number of States that, to date, are already integral Parties to the Convention has now reached 35, which means it will come into force next March18.

The significance of this Convention is, among other things, the fact that it lends legitimacy for States to adopt measures for the protection of their cultural production and diversity, particularly in the face of the commercial offensive of transnational corporations in this field; for example, to grant preferential treatment (measures that are often prohibited under trade agreements).

Nonetheless, the campaign to obtain the ratification of other countries is still going ahead, since the legitimacy and applicability of the Convention will be proportional to the number of States that ratify, accept, approve or adhere to it.  But as well as promoting the ratification of those States that have not yet done so, the coming period is an opportunity to publicly disseminate the contents of this Convention, so that the peoples and public authorities can use its clauses in defence of rights.

In the Americas, this demand has been one of the central issues for the Continental Campaign for Communication Rights (http://movimientos.org/derechos-communication), as well as the Network in Defence of Humanity, that promotes the Network in Defence of Knowledge and Culture for All (porlacultura@icaic.cu) and of the Continental Campaign against the FTAA and the FTAs (http://movimientos.org/noalca).   Globally it has been taken up by the CRIS Campaign (http://www.crisinfo.org).