[WSIS CS-Plenary] CS meeting in Tunis 22-23 June?

[Ralf Bendrath]

To the translation team: Can we get a translation of Rik's and this
message? I neither speak Spanish nor French... Thanks!

Hi all,

the idea of having a CS pre-prepcom in Tunis was also discussed at the
recent Public Voice meeting of mainly North American groups in New York,
and also here in Germany at our last federal CS meeting in mid-March.

We had the idea to not only have it as an introduction for the ones who
are new to the WSIS process, but also as a collection of workshops for
capacity building especially for CS people who have been involved and
active before. As has been said, phase two will be more complex, so we
need to be more efficient in our use of scarce resources like time,
money, attention span etc. And we will have to take into account the
special situation in Tunisia, where internet traffic is monitored and
human rights websites are blocked.

A preliminary list that we in Germany (with help fom Robert) developled
included the following workshops. We already listed some people who
might help organizing them, though some have not been asked yet and we
have no idea who will be able to come to Tunisia then.

- secure and free communication infrastructures (Robert Guerra, Chaos
Computer Club Berlin, Alvar Freude/Odem.org)

- human rights legal instruments (Rikke Frank Jörgensen/Human Rights
Caucus, also invite someone from Tunisian Human Righs League)

- moderation and discussion skills / techniques (Heiner Benking/Open
Forum, Berlin)

- websites and online collaboration tools (Robert Guerra, Derrick
Cogburn)

- press work / strategy (Media Caucus?)

- WSIS phase one and past UN summits: process experiences / modalities /
rules of procedure for NGO participation, also: lessons learned
(Renate Bloem, Wolfgang Kleinwächter, UN Associations?)

- Negotiation and "diplomacy" skills for lobbying / interaction with
governments / delegation members) 

- ... and whatever people find useful and are willing to organize.

The general idea is to have a pool of parallel workshops people can pick
from. There should also be some time for caucus and plenary meetings,
where the political discussions can take place. Of course it would be
good to combine this with an introduction session on the moring of the
first day (23 June).

So: If we can get 4-5 working group rooms for the two days and a big one
for plenary every evening, it should work and would be a great
contribution to the overall process.

Best, Ralf