Context and Aim
Capacity building in broadcasting and audiovisual policy and strategy for leaders and decision makers.
Developing countries are facing crucial decisions affecting the broadcasting and audio-visual industry, today’s pillar for information and cultural exchange. Policy and decision makers often lack the necessary tools to adequately inform their choices and strategies.
As this field is one of the most important and fastest-growing of the cultural industries, policy progress in broadcasting and the audio-visual field will set standards for other creative industries as well. Key among these standards will be those relating to the protection of the intellectual property rights of creators. For the Asian region, the intent is to use policy initiatives in the broadcast and audio-visual field to spearhead the larger programme to promote the cultural industries in the region, as envisaged in the Jodhpur Consensus and Initiatives.
Within the framework of this programme, this expert meeting is the third and final phase of a two-year UNESCO project studying how to “Harness Information and Communication Technologies for the Audio-Visual Industry and Public Service in Developing Countries.”
In the first phase of the project, studies were carried out on a regional basis around the world analyzing international broadcasting and audio-visual services and flows. For the Asian region, the countries studied were India, Thailand and the Philippines.
In the second phase of the project, and based on the studies of the first phase, UNESCO drafted guidelines for international strategies and national audio-visual policies, including guidelines for policies to mitigate the potentially negative effects of trade liberalization by increasing local participation in the multilateral trading context, and recommendations for ways to reflect national policy objectives, such as the promotion of cultural diversity, in trade commitments.
The third phase of the project is to introduce these guidelines to policy leaders and decision makers in the broadcasting and audio-visual field, through a series of regional expert meetings.
Thus, this Asian regional expert meeting, will serve as a platform to discuss the results and recommendations of the studies to the relevant decision-makers in the public sector (trade, commerce and culture), creative community, media, and academic circle, and encourage their application in the region.