Just a few words about the Fourth meeting of the Group of friends of the chair
(GFC) held on Monday, January 10th at Geneva’s Palais des Nations. Despite
its important agenda –notably the discussion about the TFFM Report- this
"open" meeting attracted barely ten members of CS, and no prominent
member of the CS’ financing working group. Besides this important topic,
the agenda consisted in approving or/and modifying the draft Final document
to be submitted to PrepCom-2 for further wording and improvement. My full report
is in French and can be visited at CSDPTT’s website (www.csdptt.org).
The main topic was obviously the TFFM Report, both for its questionable content
and the short period of time (a few days) for the delegates to examine carefully
a 125 pages document. Moreover, only the English version was (and still is)
available which gave the no English speaking participants a serious headache
!
It was therefore very sympathetic for the latter (i.e.the majority, never forget
it) to listen to the delegate from Luxemburg, on behalf of the European, telling
the chair that the EU comments and (necessary) proposals will only be available
by the end of January. This was in turn a detrimental setback for the President,
because the majority of the government delegates expressed the same concerns,
adding some severe criticisms.
Before EU intervened, CONGO made a statement about the TFFM Report which took
up Sean O’Sochru’s arguments (sent just before the opening of the
meeting) against the most questionable issues of this Report.
From there on, chairman Karklins tried all tricks to pass over the determination
of the delegates and to impose a deadline so as to save its mandate. This was
particularly frustrating for all participants since they were urged by the chair
to hold an obviously too short deadline for producing their contributions, mainly
because the "rules of procedure" request a 4 weeks time before each
Prepcom for the availability of the relevant official documents. My feeling
was that the Chair privileged its functions instead of the objectives of the
WSIS.
Other interesting discussions concerned international cooperation (input from
Canada, widely supported, but the USA asked to delete the reference to multilateralism
and international law …), as well as social impacts from ICT in DCs. Commons
and Free Software were asked to be added to the content of the Final Document.
CSDPTT took the floor four times, i.a. for reminding some basic objectives of
the Geneva Action Plan and asking to giving first priority to connecting isolated
or remote villages, to associate renewable energy to ICT’s deployment
in DCs, …
There was also stressed that the WSIS follow-up be benchmarked and relevant
indicators be in place for this purpose.
But one of the highlights of this meeting was the speech of the representative
of the African diaspora (on behalf of the AU), telling the audience i.a. that
the financial "North-South" flow generated by the Africans living
outside the continent was estimated to be as high as one hundred billion dollars
a year. However unfortunately this significant amount isn’t even mentioned
in the TFFM Report ! In a later speech, CSDPTT added that the amount of money
sent by these Africans is burdened with taxes from 10 to 20% for Western Union.
Thus, if there is one mechanism to examine and to reduce, it is obviously this
one, because it amounts to fifteen billion dollars a year. Such an amount would
be more than sufficient for building the whole ICT infrastructure and access
for Africa.
As far as the Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF) is concerned, it was a generally
agreed upon that it has to be taken in account by the TFFM (this point was strongly
supported by the Chairman), contrary to the position of the TFFM which excluded
it from its Report.
Invited by the chair to explain and advocate the DSF, the delegate from Senegal
tried its best but, in my point of view, wasn’t convincing enough for
the audience. This is due to very different "versions" of DSF definitions
which are circulating and also to the inventor’s himself different features
given at different audiences (and probably "matched" to them).
Once again, if you understand sufficiently French, have a look at
CSDPTT’s website for a more complete report, and thanks for your attention.
Jean-Louis Fullsack
jlfullsack@wanadoo.fr