Brasília - Creativity as a basis of the production process. This is the theme that will be broached by the Brazilian Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, at the First Evaluation Meeting of the XI United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), tomorrow (20), in Geneva.

For Gil, the so-called creative industries should have a distinct policy. In his view, cultural goods and services cannot be treated in the same way as their commercial counterparts, because they contain specific values for sovereignty and the preservation of cultures.

At the XI UNCTAD, which took place this year in São Paulo, the Minister launched a proposal calling for a global policy of free circulation of cultural goods and products. Gil's idea is to mobilize the international community to turn creative industries into instruments of leverage for developing countries.

Now the Minister wishes to establish the International Forum of Creative Industries, with headquarters in Brazil, to discuss the implementation of strategies in this area.

Today, in Geneva, Gil launched the foundations of the National and World Capoeira Program ["Capoeira" is an Afro-Brazilian form of self-defense that is also practiced as a sport].The Minister promises to convene this year the first meeting of capoeira practitioners from Brazil and other countries to discuss the organization of the program. Among the initial ideas are proposals that encompass schools, students, and the government.

The first idea is for the creation of a program in schools, in partnership with the Ministries of Sports and Education, so that capoeira is not viewed solely as a sports event, but as a cultural and artistic activity.

Another plan is to establish a specific social security plan for practitioners. The program also intends to provide support for capoeira practitioners who live abroad and to develop capoeira as an instrument of citizenship and social inclusion.

In Geneva the Minister also participáted in a tribute to Sérgio Vieira de Mello, a Brazilian who represented the United Nations (UN) on a humanitarian mission in Iraq, where he died a year ago, victim of a terrorist attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad.

Agência Brasil
Reporter: Alessandra Bastos
Translator: David Silberstein
08/19/2004