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The concept of cultural diversity has emerged as an influential one having impact on multiple policy and legal instruments especially following the adoption of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in 2005. The discussions on its appropriate implementation are however profoundly fragmented and often laden with political considerations. The present brief paper offers some thoughts on the meaning of cultural diversity and its implementation in the digital networked environment, taking into account the effects of digital media upon cultural content creation, distribution and consumption. The paper was meant to be part of a document prepared by a civil society organisation for the OECD ministerial meeting in Seoul 2008 on the future of the Internet.

The Arizona Schools for the Deaf and the Blind have a multicultural population of students that has led to multiple opportunities to enrich the school programs and enhance each student's life. This article describes two such programs: multicultural diversity and vocational planning and work experience.

Contributed articles with special reference to India

The aim of this introduction is to contextualise the multifarious notion of cultural diversity by analysing, firstly, its relations with globalisation as well as the different normative actions undertaken by UNESCO to protect it against the negative impacts of the globalisation processes. This introduction also explains how globalisation can be beneficial for cultural diversity and contribute to new, fluid and deterritorialised phenomena. Finally, fear of cultural diversity, characterised by ethnocentric attitudes that attempt to preserve "authentic identities", is briefly touched upon, along with the obvious limitations of such stances. The second part of this introduction presents the articles selected for this issue among the background papers commissioned by UNESCO to help to draft the 2009 World Report on cultural diversity. Each article sheds light on particular dimensions of cultural diversity: in combination, they provide a valuable overview of its multiple meanings and contexts.