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Report on the World Summit
on the Information Society
16-18
November 2005, Tunis, Tunisia
By
Rik Panganiban, Communications Coordinator, CONGO
This
must be the Summit of solutions. If Geneva was the "input"
phase, then Tunis must be the "impact" or "output"
one. However, impact will not be reached in three days and the
implementation of the commitments taken will be a time consuming
and demanding process that has a chance of success only if all
stakeholders join forces in mutually benefiting partnerships.
Only then will we have a chance to bridge the digital divide and
come closer to reaching the Millennium Development Goals within
the next ten years. Let this Summit not fail us!
–
Ms. Renata Bloem, President, CONGO, addressing
the WSIS first plenary session
In
the Kram convention centre, in Tunis, Tunisia, nearly 20,000 participants,
including more than 6,000 from civil society alone, gathered to
discuss how to bridge the “digital divide” between those with access
to modern information and communications technologies (ICTs) and
those who have been left behind. For many of us from civil
society, the Summit elicited feelings of déjà vu as this
UN conference was the second phase of an equally-mandated Summit
that took place in Geneva in December 2003. But, for various
reasons, it was clear that in the “Tunis Phase” of the WSIS, civil
society was a critical part of the success or failure of
the Summit.
Civil
Society Voices at the Summit
As
a result of a last-minute campaign by the WSIS human rights caucus
and others, Iranian human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize
recipient Ms.
Shirin Ebadi addressed the opening ceremony of the WSIS on behalf
of civil society. It was a moving moment for many of us. Among the
main points of her
speech:
- She drew attention to
the importance of civil society at the UN, particularly civil
society from governments that don't respect the will of their
own peoples.
- She noted that some governments
create their own "NGOs" to put out false information
about the government.
- She drew a link between
the enormously high military budgets of governments and their
enormous development needs, including ICT development, that could
easily be met by a reduction in military spending.
- She alluded to the control
of the US government of the current Internet Governance structures,
i.e. ICANN, noting that it was a difficult situation when one
government could for political reasons cut off access to the internet
to others around the world.
- Finally she observed that
"some governments" prevent access to certain information
on the Internet, and repress journalists and others who disseminate
certain information.
- She called for the creation
of a new UN commission on internet censorship, with the participation
of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, the ITU, UNDP and
NGOs.
Following
Ms. Ebadi, 34 speakers from civil society, largely selected through
our own self-organizing mechanisms, spoke at the official plenary
sessions, high-level panels, and roundtables of the WSIS.
This was an enormous acknowledgement of the key role of civil society
in the Summit process and in the Information Society in general.
Ms. Renata Bloem of CONGO addressed the first plenary session
of the WSIS on 16 November.
The
Tunis “Commitment” and “Agenda”
The
Geneva phase of the WSIS concluded with a broad set of principles
that governments affirmed to be integral to the Information Society,
including basic human rights such as the freedom of expression and
of the press, human-centered development, and gender equality.
However governments in Geneva were unable to come to any firm agreements
on ICT financing or internet governance issues.
This
time around in Tunis, the stakes were much higher, with a significant
row developing in the last months between the United States, developing
countries and the European Union over government oversight of the
Internet. Currently key resources of the Internet, including the
“domain name” addressing system of the network, are under the effective
control of a US based non-profit, the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
ICANN itself receives it mandate directly from the US government.
Many other governments are, to put it mildly, uncomfortable
with this arrangement where the US government could unilaterally
decide to block or re-route internet traffic to another country
if it so wished.
In
the end, the
Tunis documents contain no explicit references to the US domination
of the internet governance sphere, and merely affirms that "all
governments should have an equal role and responsibility, for international
Internet governance and for ensuring the stability, security and
continuity of the Internet.”
But
more importantly, the Tunis
Agenda calls for the creation of a new Internet Governance Forum
to be established by the UN Secretary General for 2006, with a mandate
to address a wide range of internet public policy issues.
This forum is to be mulilateral and multi-stakeholder in make-up,
including the active participation of civil society. Greece
has already offered to host the first meeting of the Forum.
On
the more general question of follow-up and implementation of the
WSIS, the final agreement is somewhat complicated. The Tunis
Agenda invites UN agencies and international organizations “facilitate
activities among different stakeholders, including civil society
and the business sector, to help national governments in their implementation
efforts.” It also requests that the Chief Executives Board (CEB)
of the UN to establish a “UN group on the Information Society” to
facilitate implementation.
On
the inter-governmental side, ECOSOC is mandated to oversee the follow-up
of the WSIS, as ECOSOC does for all UN summits. Instead of creating
a new commission to facilitate this, as has been done for most other
UN conferences, governments in Tunis agreed to recommend that ECOSOC
review the mandate of the existing
Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD)
as the follow-up mechanism.
Among
other agreements reached:
- Integrates the implementation
of the WSIS with the broader UN development mandate of achieving
the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
- Recognizes that the ITU,
UNESCO and UNDP should play “leading facilitating roles.”
- Calls for a review by
the General Assembly of the Summit commitments in 2015.
- Contains language on the
importance of human rights in the information society, particularly
the freedom of expression, right to receive information and a
free press.
- Affirms the importance
of education in science and technology of girls and women to enable
their effective participation in decision-making fora.
- Supports the creation
of child helplines in all countries.
- Includes an annex on which
organizations should be involved in the coordination of implementation
activities
- Declares 17 May to be
“World Information Society Day.”
In
general, civil society groups reacted favorably to the texts, noting
the substantial contributions from civil society accepted by governments.
The main reservations remain around how the Internet Governance
Forum and the Commission will actually operate. So the next negotiating
target centers around the organization of these new policy spaces.
CONGO
Event on Civil Society Best Practices
On
16 November, CONGO organized a parallel event on “Civil
Society Best Practices to Bridge the Digital Divide.”
This intensive, multi-session conference brought together high-level
UN officials and grassroots community activists to exchange views
and ideas on how civil society contributes to closing the ICT gap.
Among the speakers present were Mr. Nitin Desai, special
advisor to the UN Secretary General on the WSIS; Ms. Shashi Tharoor,
UN Under-secretary-general for Public Affairs; Mr. Sarbuland Khan,
head of the UN ICT Task Force; and representatives of One World
South Asia, the WSIS Youth Caucus, Telecentres Caucus, Media Caucus,
FEMNET, Femmes Africaines Solidarité, and Development Gateway.
CONGO
Serves as CS Secretariat
The
Conference of NGOs played a strong facilitating role for the 606
registered NGO entities present, functioning as the civil society
secretariat during the entire week from the run-up to the Summit
to the actual Summit itself. CONGO ensured that adequate
facilities would be available for civil society during the summit,
including access to meeting rooms, office spaces, computers, internet,
printers, and photocopiers. This was not an insignificant
achievement, since many governments and private sector representatives
complained to us that they had difficulty finding available computers,
printers and photocopiers.
CONGO
prepared a small but detailed “orientation
kit” for civil society that gave a brief overview of the official
WSIS process as well as the various civil society procedures, mailing
lists, entities, caucuses, working groups, and families.
This popular item was distributed in both French and English in
print form and online. This kit was prepared in conjunction
with the UN Non-governmental Liaison Service with the support of
HIVOS.
CONGO
organized the distribution of “overpasses” to the opening session
and other high-level events, with the assistance of Robert Guerra
of Privaterra. Establishing a quick arrangement for caucuses,
working groups and the most active WSIS NGOs to get access to these
overpasses was not an easy task. In the minutes before the
opening ceremony, scores of other participants clamored around the
civil society space to ask for overpasses, including business representatives,
government delegates and even UN staff.
Adina
Fulga Radi was “seconded” to the civil society secretariat to assist
us with media arrangements for civil society, a role she fulfilled
so well at Prepcom III in September 2005. This included organizing
the holding of various press conferences by civil society groups.
Notably, Adina organized a press conference with Ms. Shirin
Ebadi on the final day of the Summit, which, despite happening at
the same time as the closing ceremony of the WSIS, was a packed
standing-room-only event.
Parallel
Events and ICT4All Exhibition Space
For
most participants, the official WSIS was the least interesting part
of the Summit. More than 300 parallel events, of which 155
were sponsored by civil society, were organized in the Kram Centre.
These covered every imaginable subject related to the Information
Society, such as “ICTs for peace,” “Innovation for physical and
mental health and well being using media ICT,” “ICT and people with
disabilities,” “Best ICT4D practicies from Bangladesh,” “Gender
Equity in Information in Latin America and the Caribbean,” “Arab
Palestinian media rights in Israël,” “New technologies for road
safety,” and “Cybercrime & censorship in Middle East and North
Africa.”
In
addition to the parallel events, the Tunisian host country organized
an enormous exhibition space at the Kram Centre with more than 300
exhibits sponsored by governments, businesses, international organizations
and civil society. The exhibition was the only area open
to the general public, and indeed many local Tunisians we talked
to considered the WSIS to be an ICT “fair” not a UN summit.
It
should be noted that some human rights organizations and Tunisian
NGOs had been attempting to organize a “citizen's
summit” to occur in parallel to the WSIS at another venue in
Tunis. However it was widely reported in the press that the
organizers were prevented by Tunisian authorities to hold an organizer's
meeting at the Goethe Institute in Tunis, leading to the cancellation
of the citizen's summit and formal protests by several organizations.
Beyond
the WSIS
With
the completion of the WSIS process, it is clear that civil society's
work is far from over. Indeed with the establishment of the
Internet Governance Forum and the re-vamped mandate of the Commission
on Science and Technology for Development, as well as the critical
national implementation process, our role is more important than
ever. In the post-WSIS phase, the challenges are enormous.
The civil society procedures and structures innovated through
the process now effectively do not exist. A number of questions
remain:
- What new structures and
modalities will need to be established to maintain momentum and
solidarity among civil society?
- How will these structures
interact or merge with existing civil society structures at the
United Nations?
- How will civil society
continue to expand its outreach beyond those currently involved
to those in the grassroots, practitioners in the field, those
who can only participate virtually, etc?
- Where will the funding
come from the make all of this happen?
As
the IGP and the CSTD will operate in a United Nations context, the
role of CONGO is clear. Our mandate obliges us to, where
possible, ensure broad access and effective participation of civil
society in these fora. Given our long history, our
role in the WSIS process and expertise in UN-NGO procedures, it
is likely that CONGO will be needed more than ever.
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