[WSIS CS-Plenary] Please sign-on - Letter to OHCHR

[Meryem Marzouki]

[This is a call for signatures by NGOs]

Hi all,

Below you will find a letter to the Deputy High Commissioner for Human 
Rights, Bertrand Ramcharan, to ask him to attend next PrepCom of the 
World Summit on the Information society (WSIS) and the Summit itself, 
in order "to ensure that human rights language in the WSIS process is 
comprehensive, strong and consistent with resolutions and decisions 
adopted by the Commission on Human Rights and build upon human rights 
language developed through the various UN world summits and 
conferences.", as written in the letter.

This letter is an initiative from Rik Panganiban from the World 
Federalist Movement, who submitted the proposal to the WSIS Human 
Rights caucus, coordinated by Rikke Frank Jorgensen from the Danish 
Institute for Human Rights and myself as IRIS representative (see the 
HR caucus website at:
http://www.iris.sgdg.org/actions/smsi/hr-wsis).

After some modifications from HR caucus members, the final text of the 
letter has been agreed (see below).
Now we would like to gather as much signatures from organizations as 
possible, so that the letter can be seen as a strong demand.

You are then asked to send signatures before the deadline of June 12. 
Please send them directly to me (marzouki at ras.eu.org), I'll post the 
final list here.
Please provide: name of the org, web site if any, contact person name 
and email.

You don't need to be accredited to the Summit for that, not to have 
taken an active part in its process till now.

Thanks you in advance,
Meryem Marzouki
HR caucus co-coordinator
=======
Final text of the letter:
June 2003

Bertrand Ramcharan
Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations
Geneva, Switzerland

RE: Human Rights and the World Summit on the Information Society


Your Excellency Mr. Bertrand Ramcharan:

The under-signed civil society organizations strongly encourage your 
active participation in the preparatory committee and summit meeting of 
the World Summit on the Information Society, taking place in September 
and December 2003, respectively.  Human rights are an essential 
requirement of the Information Society, as elaborated in the draft 
declaration of the WSIS (WSIS/PCIP/DT/1-E):

10. The essential requirements for the development of an equitable 
Information Society include: The respect for all internationally 
recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms. Notably the right to 
freedom of opinion and expression, including the right to hold opinions 
without interference and seek to, receive and impart information and 
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers in accordance with 
article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to 
unhindered access by individuals to communication media and information 
sources…

As the United Nations highest human rights official, your good offices 
are needed to ensure that human rights language in the WSIS process is 
comprehensive, strong and consistent with resolutions and decisions 
adopted by the Commission on Human Rights and build upon human rights 
language developed through the various UN world summits and conferences.

Civil society organizations view ICTs as having both tremendous 
applications that enhance human rights, such as through the rapid 
dissemination of action alerts and instant access to human rights 
information, and disturbing capacities to greatly diminish human 
rights, such as by providing governments with means enabling intrusive 
surveillance and monitoring and therefore, repression.

Only through the active participation of governments, civil society, 
and international human rights institutions such as your Office can 
these ICTs be best harnessed to maximize the protection of human rights 
worldwide.

We hope the Office of the High Commissioner will become involved in 
this event and we look forward to our ongoing collaboration in ensuring 
that the World Summit on the Information Society has a strong human 
rights focus. In particular we are hoping that you personally will be 
able to attend the Third Prep Com, to take place in Geneva in September 
15-27, 2003, and we look forward to meeting with you at that time. We 
also hope that the Office of the High Commissioner will be prominent in 
the deliberations of the Summit in December, and that we will harness 
the potential of information technology to serve the cause of human 
rights to the Summit in Tunisia and beyond.

We look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

[under-signed NGOs. 15 till now]