24-26 June 2004 Hammamet, Tunisia
By Rik Panganiban, Communications Coordinator, CONGO
From 24-26 June, approximately 900 participants, including 135 government delegations, gathered for the first Preparatory Committee of the World Summit on the Information Society Phase II. The meeting took place at the Medina Conference Centre in Hammamet, Tunisia.
Many civil society organizations arrived early for a series of information and orientation sessions held on 23 June. Organized by the Conference of NGOs in cooperation with the WSIS executive secretariat, the event brought together about 100 civil society representatives as well as high-level WSIS officials, including Markus Kummar, head of the Working Group on Internet Governance, Shoji Nishimoto, head of the Task Force on Financial Mechanisms, Charles Geiger and Moncef Achour of the WSIS executive secretariat.
Civil society met throughout the Prepcom during morning plenary sessions, afternoon civil society bureau meetings, content and themes strategy sessions, and various caucus meetings. Civil society was given the opportunity to address governments during two 15-minute periods of interventions on the 25 th and 26 th , alongside representatives of the private sector and inter-governmental organizations. Civil society speakers addressed important issues such as internet governance, human rights, and overall participation in the Summit process.
Among civil society, there was significant controversy and conflict over both political and procedural issues. In particular, there was disagreement about the selection of a speaker from a Tunisian human rights organization, as well as the naming of Tunisia in the statement. Questions were raised about how these decisions were made and by what mandate. One particular civil society plenary session was witness to shouting matches and general discord.
At the official plenary on the morning of the 25 th , reportedly the President of the Prepcom Amb. Janis Karklins of Latvia took the extraordinary step of suspending the plenary for one hour to try and resolve the issue, after being approached by the Tunisian delegation.
In the end, the WSIS secretariat informed us that the President of the Preparatory Committee had taken the decision to allow the speaker from the Tunisian human rights organization to speak at the plenary session on the 26 th . In addition, another speaker from African civil society delivered a statement on human rights.
Otherwise the official plenaries were relatively calm and orderly. Shoji Nishimoto of UNDP gave a report on his preparations for organizing the Task Force on Financial Mechanisms, which was fairly quickly accepted by delegations. Markus Kummar followed with a report on the preparations for the Working Group on Internet Governance. His report was followed by several delegations expressing concern about their government's ability to participate in this Task Force. Some questioned whether this structure reflected their understanding of the mandate given to the Task Force by the Plan of Action from WSIS Phase I.
The WSIS Phase II Prepcom I finished very late on 26 June, at around 11:30pm. As I understand it, governments agreed to accept the President's draft decision, which outlines the structure of the Tunis Phase, including its relationship with the Working Group on Internet Governance and the Task Force on Financial Mechanisms. The next prepcom will take place for 7 working days, that is one and a half weeks, I believe on 17-25 February 2005.
The President of the Prepcom has made quite an interesting proposal calling for a "group of friends of the President" in consultation with regional groups to prepare a "document to serve as the basis of negotiations" taking into account the outcomes of relevent thematic, regional and other "WSIS-related" meetings.
This proposal would represent a good amount of trust placed in the President to facilitate the drafting of the main texts of the Summit directly, as opposed to being done through a bureau or only through a formal Prepcom process. In Phase I, the Prepcom President's own drafting process was pre-empted by governments wishing to have more direct control over the drafting.
This also would be a evolving document that would be able to incorporate the results of various "WSIS-related" meetings. This is in contrast to the Phase I process, which did not allow for the regional consultations to be directly inputted into the draft summit texts. In addition, it leaves vague the notion of which meetings actually might be included, since "WSIS-related" could be interpreted quite broadly, perhaps including meetings organized by the private sector, civil society, academia, etc.
The final documents will take the form of a political declaration and an action-oriented document.
For civil society, this represents perhaps a gain and perhaps a loss in terms of our ability to monitor and contribute to the drafting process. A "friends of the chair" committee would presumably be closed to observers. However a text incorporating directly thematic, regional and other WSIS-related meetings might be more open to civil society input, since it gives us more opportunities to make contributions that in the end might end up in the summit text.
The government drafting group working on the President's text took an very long time to complete its work, beginning around 4pm on 26 June and going until late into the evening. By some reports, this was a signal of some governments discontent with how the President was conducting the process. It was the Asia Group that had initially expressed reservations about accepting the text as is without amendment or discussion, but other African states expressed the desire to go through the text line-by-line as well.
Reportedly, civil society and other observers were ejected from the drafting meeting after a request by the Chinese delegation, which was supported by the Brazilian delegation.
Meanwhile, the final plenary session of civil society on the evening of 26 June witnessed no major disagreements or discord. Whether this was due to general fatigue, the near completion of the prepcom, or no controversial issues on the table is unknown. One person observed that the number of Tunisian participants had dwindled to a handful. It was agreed to try and convene a civil society plenary at least the day prior to the actual prepcom, and that the chair of that meeting would be from the African caucus.
It should be noted that the Tunisia hosts were extremely hospitable and obviously eager to provide whatever was required by the participants, from a lavish reception on the evening of the 26 th to widely available WIFI internet access, a large cybercafe, a large number of meeting rooms, free translation services, shuttles between several of the hotels and the conference facility, and transportation between the Tunis airport and Hammamet. Friendly staff were everywhere to answer questions and direct people to where they needed to go.
It is clear that there are significant structural, procedural and political issues among civil society that need to be resolved for us to effectively participate in the process. The civil society bureau has recommended the establishment of a number of working groups to focus on reform of the bureau, plenary and general civil society procedural rules, financing issues, and a recommendation that content and themes conduct a similar process to discuss and document clear rules of procedure.
– Report by Rik Panganiban, Communications Coordinator, CONGO