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

[Adam Peake]

Ralf,

Some thoughts on the 3 problem areas:


1.	The North-South divide: The rich part of the world --the part 
that has been profiting from unequal trade relations for the whole of 
the 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 started two years ago with exactly this goal. How many 
more times must we hear promises of 0.7% GNP?  We will not achieve 
the MDGs unless we approach funding with more honesty. No more 
dead-beat donors.

2.	The struggle over human rights: WSIS cannot even reach a 
common agreement on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the 
basis for the Information Society. Half a century of the United 
Nations, yet as we try to forge a common vision for the new century 
and new era of Information Society, our governments are not 
collectively able to commit to basic human right standards, the most 
prominent being freedom of expression.

3.	Internet  Governance: We all acknowledge the Internet is the 
platform on which information society is being built.  Yet countries 
have demanded sweeping changes to how the Internet is administered. 
Ill-considered and un-explained --unexplainable?-- changes, made with 
no regard to their disruptive consequences.  This narrow focus has 
meant that WSIS has ignored addressing the problems of many 
significantly more important policy forums and processes where the 
views of the South are usually absent. A great opportunity has been 
wasted.

Sorry, makes the text longer.

Adam



>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.
>_______________________________________________
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