[WSIS CS-Plenary] draft WSIS CS press statement for feedback

[Ralf Bendrath]

Hi all,

Here we are at 2 in the morning having just finished a draft statement
we hope to be able to read tomorrow. It is quite a different statement
to those we´ve produced in the past in that it focuses more on a macro
anlaysis of the state of play in the WSIS process, which has moved to a
situation of near dead-lock this past week. It would be used as the
basis of a press briefing rather than a press conference, along with our
CS Essential Benchmarks document. 

Could you please send comments (substance, edits) by 0900 CET tomorrow
morning and remember to quote only the text you need to.

we will have some time tomorrow, after a good night´s sleep, to craft a
revised version.

All the best from the Geneva madhouse.

Ralf

------------------------------------

Civil Society Statement
at the End of the Preparatory Process
for the World Summit on the Information Society
Geneva, November 14, 2003

I. Where do we stand now?

We have come to the last day of PrepCom 3a. This was an extra full week
put in because governments were not able to finalize work in Prepcom 3
in September. And this last day the situation is what it is, a deadlock
on the very first article of the declaration. Where they are not able to
even agree on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948
as the common foundation of this declaration.

We observe three main problematic areas impeding progress in the WSIS:

1.	The North-South divide: The rich part of the world - the part that
has been profiting from unequal trade relations for the whole 20th
century - is not even willing to agree on a voluntarily funded attempt
to bridge the digital divide. This is a shame, as the summit process has
started two years ago with exactly this goal. 

2.	The struggle over human rights. They are not able to reach a common
agreement on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the basis for
the Information Society. They are not willing to commit to basic human
right standards, most prominent here the freedom of expression.

3.	Internet governance

II. Old world or new vision?

The old world of governments and traditional diplomacy confronting new
challenges and realities in the 21st century: 

We recognize the problems governments face in trying to address a range
of difficult, complex and politically divisive issues in two documents.

This reflects power struggles that we are seeing around the world. A
number of governments are getting nervous and stubborn, because they
realize that a lot is at stake. They have noticed that they can not
control media content or transborder information flows anymore, nor can
they lock the knowledge of the world in the legal system of intellectual
monopolies that are misleadingly called property rights.

They are afraid.
·	fear of power of new technologies, and the way people are using them
to network, form new forms of partnerships and collaboration, sharing
eperiences and knowledge etc
·	fear and uncertainty of past few years compounds this uncertainty and
is played out in the WSIS process

But: 
Do we want to base our vision of the information society one of fear and
uncertainty or on curiosity and the spirit of looking forward and living
up to the new challenges?

The WSIS process has slowly but constantly been moving from
"information" to "society". It was started as a technocratic idea in the
ITU and we are proud to say that we were crucial in bringing back the
idea that in the end, the information society is about humans, the
communication society is about social processes, or the knowledge
society is about society's values.

The whole process  shown a lack of interest in forming a common vision
for the information society among governments. It is not clear if it was
ever the agenda - probably governments are just not prepared to draft a
common society vision anyway. They are not good at that. 

IV. How do we come up with a true vision for the information society?

This is the first time that civil society has participated in such a way
in a summit preparation process. We have worked very hard to include
issues that some did not expect to be included. We have had some small
successes, while in a number of areas we were not heard or even listened
to. 

If the governments want to agree, they can agree in 5 minutes. We have
the feeling that there is no political will to agree on a common vision.

Therefore we will now stop giving input to the intergovernmental
documents. Whether they agree or not, they won't be able to say that
civil society is endorsing their lowest common denominator in December -
if there will be anything like that. This process is going so badly, we
need to see how we can save it from destruction caused by governments.

We have produced essential benchmarks - governments risk overlooking key
issues in the process of negotiations.

We are the people. We don't need governments's permission. We take our
own responsibility. Someone has to take the lead, if governments won't
do it, civil society will do it.

We have now started to draft our own vision document. our vision
document: the result of a two-year, bottom-up, online and offline
policy-development process. We will present our vision at the summit.
There we will invite all interested parties to discuss with us, in a
true multi-stakeholder process.

This shows that new mechanisms and structures are possible to resolve
these impasses and work together globally and inclusively.

V. What about implementation and the two years leading us to Tunis?

There is no real Action Plan so far. But there is a draft agenda with a
list of interesting issues.

Not only is the declaration of principles in danger, but the mechanisms
to implement the action plan are not prepared.
If there is an implementation mechanism, we have to be included or its
dead.

Civil society reaffirms that governments alone can not implement
whatever action plan they come up with: Implementation mechanisms that
do not associate closely civil society and other stakeholders will
simply be not acceptable but also will just not work.

We will continue what we have been doing all the time: Doing our work,
implementing our vision, working together in bottom-up processes and
thereby shaping the shared knowledge society.