[WSIS CS-Plenary] Speakers, youth, and children's involvement

[Nick Moraitis]

Hi Amali and all,
 
On children's involvement:

On the issue of children's involvement in the Summit -- At the Youth
Caucus, have made much effort to engage more children in the process of
WSIS - children afterall are some of the most active participants in the
information society. Unfortunately it has been an uphill battle. We have
spent many meetings (I even made a trip to New York) and phone calls
with UNICEF to try and convince/suggest to them to play a bigger role in
the Summit, particularly selecting or sponsoring child delegates to
prepcoms and also creating their own text input as a UN agency. However,
they would not be convinced it was a high priority for them. The Youth
Caucus has been very active speaking out for the inclusion of text that
relates to children at the 2nd and 3rd Prepcoms, and we specifically
lobbied (effectively) several governments to get them to ensure the
reference to children was developed and then re-framed in "child rights"
compatible language. I also wrote to other groups, including people
responsible for Child Rights/UN advocacy at groups like Human Rights
Watch in New York, but unfortunately they did not respond/get involved.
So we are not meaning to discriminate against children in saying that we
agree with some who do not think it's best to give them a token role.
Hopefully we can all work together to ensure this important stakeholder
group is better engaged in Phase 2!

On speakers:

While we did not propose it, we are obviously supportive of having a
young person speak in the Opening Ceremony, but it is important (and not
difficult to ensure) that this young person is not selected based on
their symbolic presence as "young" alone. I think it is important that
whoever is selected, old or young, can not only represent civil society
in general, but also personnify a key aspect of the information society
through their experience, actions, and involvement in the WSIS process.
So while we definitely wouldn't support having a random person selected
from a local school, we would be happy for any of the six younger people
(all aged over 20) we have already nominated as speakers to be
considered for the opening to speak on behalf of civil society. 

But I'm sure there are plenty of other great people nominated as well
and we'll leave it up to the ad-hoc committee!

Incidently, anyone interested in finding out more about youth plans for
the Summit or our history of involvement, please visit the Youth
Creating Digital Opportunity website -- http://www.ycdo.net/wsis/ and
http://www.ycdo.net/wsis/summit.html

All the best,
Nick

Facilitator of the Youth Caucus

Nick Moraitis
Strategy and Partnership Coordinator
TakingITGlobal - Toronto, Canada
http://profiles.takingitglobal.org/nick
nick at takingitglobal.org