Fabri, Hélène Ruiz --- "Games within Fragmentation: The Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions" [2009] ELECD 550; in Joseph, Sarah; Kinley, David; Waincymer, Jeff (eds), "The World Trade Organization and Human Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: The World Trade Organization and Human Rights

Editor(s): Joseph, Sarah; Kinley, David; Waincymer, Jeff

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847206619

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: Games within Fragmentation: The Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions

Author(s): Fabri, Hélène Ruiz

Number of pages: 30

Extract:

8. Games within fragmentation:
the Convention on the Protection
and Promotion of the Diversity of
Cultural Expressions
Hélène Ruiz Fabri
Once upon a time, there was the Convention on the Protection and Promotion
of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions1 (`the Convention'). This is not a fairy
tale but the story of a legal policy that one could call `games within fragmen-
tation', such is the accuracy of the picture it gives of the itineraries one can
explore during the journeys through the archipelago of international law,
sometimes no more than steered by the stars. It is not a fairy tale because the
Convention not only exists ­ it was adopted on 20 October 2005 by the 33rd
General Conference of the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural
Organization (`UNESCO') ­ it has entered into force. One would like to see it
as the younger sister, alive and viable, of the cultural exception whose death
had left too many hopes unfulfilled. Yet, at once it is tempting to question
whether the Convention is or will be of any utility and if it can be considered
effective. Should one tend toward an elegant cynicism (though perhaps a
better term would be realism), a prudent idealism, or maybe even a militant
voluntarism?
Such questions already reveal one characteristic of the Convention, to
have been and to remain a source of controversy, as an object of legal
discourse and as an instrument of legal policy. On the one hand, the perspec-
tives concerning the ...