[WSIS CS-Plenary] Position paper draft

[djilali benamrane]

Dear colleagues,
As promised, please find here after for your comments,
the draft of a Position Paper aiming at clarifying our
position arround 3 proposals of recommandations.
This document has to be corrected and completed (sorry
for my poor anglish.
Djilali)

POSITION DOCUMENT DRAFT OF THE CIVIL SOCIETY
DISCUSSION GROUP ON THE INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION
TECHNOLOGIES FINANCE MECHANISMS
(Document of contribution to the debates in
preparation of the SMSI - Phase II - Tunis, November
2005)
(wsis-finance at yahoogroupes.fr)

Back ground

Regarding the challenges generated by the
extraordinary emergence of the ITC which affect all
activity sectors, the international Community decided
to convene a world summit. The United Nations
Organization entrusted the UIT to lead the process.
Its preparation innovated, in particular in two
fields: on the one hand organizing the summit in two
phases and two places, the first in Geneva by the end
of 2003, the second in Tunis by the end of 2005, on
the other hand, the implication in addition to States
and their intergovernmental organization
representatives, private operators and civil company,
associated all the stages of the process.

1 Results of the Geneva phase and challenges of the
Tunis phase

 It will be difficult to evaluate with objectivity the
real performances of the Geneva phase of the WSIS as
long as it is easy to justify now, that such or such
raised insufficiency was foreseeable and raised from
the beginning to be addressed, with implicit term of
reference during the second phase. In Geneva, the
objectives seemed clear: seeking ways and means to
reduce the digital gap and to facilitate the access to
communication and information technologies for
development ITC/D. The participation was massive
there, rather dedicated safety, poor interpretation
and translation, officially denounced at the closing
session by several governmental delegations.
Emergence, consequent means and dynamism of the
private operators dominated the exercise, supported
and promoted by the UN-ITU, dedicating itself as ultra
liberalism defender, in the spirit of the public
private partnership (PPP). The civil society seems to
be satisfied by the role assigned to her as an alibi
in the greatest organized disorder and destitution, in
conformity with the image of representation and
defence of the interests of the great majority of the
world population, surviving in misery and despair.



The Geneva meeting have been a remarkable show, a fair
during which the interests of the dominant private
operators, architects of the globalisation process in
general and "merchandization of the human relations
were exposed and effectively defended in particular.
The debates of the rare and relevant topics for the
civil society were deferred for the meeting of Tunis
such as those on the good governance, or the finance
mechanisms of the strategies, policies and action
plans for the promotion of information and
communication for the development. The Tunis meeting
could prove more difficulties than that of Geneva; so
much the objective became fuzzier, more complex
because having to lead to proposals specific,
operational, verifiable, sanctionnables. The couple
private operators - civil society showed its
impertinence and the limits of a factitious
interdependency. The credibility of the U.N. system in
general and certain intergovernmental organizations in
particular, has been severely degraded in the past.
Tunis as a hosting place of the second phase of the
WISIS Summit is disputed regarding the governmental
policy and the deficit of the standards of good
governance, respect of the human rights and freedom of
access to the means of communication which prevail in
this country.

Draft of the recommendation N° 1 on the context of the
Summit 

The various and relevant working groups of the civil
society, trying to do their best in difficult
conditions,  with insufficient and disparate means, to
promote an concerted  position for the WSIS, must take
into consideration the gravity of the world situation
and unacceptable conditions of their implementation in
the process. Contrary to the working groups of the
governments, the intergovernmental organizations or
the private operators, the groups of the civil society
are the only ones not to have autonomous and
sufficient means for a minimum implementation
capacity. Their insidious and suicidal inclusion in
such an approach promoted and brought into fashion by
the U.N. System within the concept of the Private
Public Partnership, whose ITU supported and which
UNESCO has just followed with the recent agreement
signed with Microsoft, constitutes a real danger of
confusion and discredit. We support the proposal (see
meeting of Berlin, November 18-20, 2004, on the ITC
and development) of the German civil society to create
a working group on the working methods of the civil
society and request this working group to improve
coherence of work and the self-sufficiency of its
initiatives compared to the other partners implied in
the WSIS process.

2…  A requirement for a relevant assessment of the
needs for financing before any examination of the
mechanisms of mobilization and allowance of the
resources. 

To have the ambition to examine the relevance and the
effectiveness of the finance mechanisms existing or to
be created for an adequate financing of the ITC for
Development has a sense only if the volume of the
indicative needs for financing were correctly
appreciated. Do not displease any with those which
minimize the challenge of the volume of the financing
to the profit of a useful debate but secondary,
focused on the only concerns of quality, exemplarity,
facilities of control, follow-up and evaluation
answering the only concerns of the donors, the
procedures and mechanisms are only tools to carry out
objectives. However these are the objectives which
require and legitimate adequate means for their
implementation, as soon as possible and at lower
costs, under control of the international community
and not of one of the parts. 

Draft of recommendation N° 2 on the imperative
subordination of the evaluations of the mechanisms of
financing to the clarification of the aimed
objectives. 

The working groups of the civil society owe all
however their fields of competence, to concentrate on
the desirable contents of a world strategy of
sustainable development of information and
communication technologies aiming at the Sustainable
Human Development. Each group in its field will have
to argue on the relevance of the issue consisting in
promoting the effective and universal access to the
ITC/D like a basic right of satisfaction of an
essential need, with information and the communication
for the individual and collective development. This
basic and essential right to be informed and to
communicate is an indispensable condition of
satisfaction of the other rights recognized by the
Universal Declaration of the Human Rights and by the
whole of the international institutions which govern
the relations of the international community, that it
acts of the right to dignity, education, health,
sufficient alimentation, decent housing, with freedom
or safety. One will never underline sufficiently but
to defend his universal rights, the human being, in
some situation where it is, must be able to be
informed and to be able to communicate to denounce the
insufficiencies, the dysfunctions even failures or
abuses. Information and communication must be regarded
as public goods on a worldwide scale (BPEM) and to be
treated like such by the international community. The
latter will have to make of it a criterion of
qualification of world and or national good governance
(for memory, several governmental delegations asked at
the time of the meeting of Geneva on last 16 November,
as well in the working group on the Finance mechanisms
as in that of the friends of the president of the
WSIS, so that the mandate of the debates in Tunis be
able to be widened with these important aspects of
approach of the ITC under the angle of public goods).

3…  To privilege the requirements of relevant response
to the correct satisfaction of the need of ITC/D,
before being concerned with profits of the private
operators suppliers of goods and services. 

If the civil society intends to be located in a vision
of construction of a better world, of safety, progress
and well shared welfare, it must promote another idea
of universality and globalisation, another image of
the planetary village to build. Such a vision
encourages taking into consideration the Digital gap
as a result of another gap, more global, which does
not cease deepening, between populations living in the
rich and poor countries. The objectives of the ITC are
only one component of the broader objectives and more
integrators of those relating to the urgency for the
international community to answer the intolerable
situations of poverty, misery and despair from which
suffer its great majority, vegetating in the poor
countries. The market and the interests of the private
operators cannot constitute reliable solutions, able
to satisfy the needs for access of the fragile, poor,
rural or wedged populations. Logics of answers
individual, local, national or regional are
insufficient and the colossal needs which justify
strategies of world regulation, for promoting huge
programs of international co-operation and
intersectorial development.

Draft of recommendation N° 3 on the imperative
subordination of the objectives of the ITC/D to those
of the sustainable human development. 

The working group on the mechanisms of financing of
the TIC/D, requires so that work of evaluation and
proposal of the civil society, however their
competences, must be confronted with those agreed by
the competent authorities of the international
community at the time of the preceding world summits,
in particular those retained by Millennium (Objectives
of the development of the Millennium, New York 2000).
The finance mechanisms of the ITC must be in adequacy
with those of the financing of under development and
poverty. The initiatives of the Mutual aid funds such
as Solidarity Digital Funds which abound, so useful
are, have relevance only if they are registered and
consolidate the finance mechanisms of under
development and more especially those having to check
than engagements of government aid to development, or
Official Development Assistance (ODA), are sufficient
and are respected by the governments of the rich
countries. Within these quantifiable and verifiable
volumes of financing, the development of the ITC/D,
articulated with that of the other branches of
activities, should have the mechanisms, likely to
exist already, even if they must be the subject of
consequent reform in their organization and their
management, of mobilization and allowance of the
resources, in the transparency and the respect of a
world good governance which should take precedence
over the conditionality of the bilateral and
multilateral donors. The world good governance remains
a concept to be created and the architecture of the
leading institutions of the world is to be re-examined
consequently. Deep system of the United Nations
reforms that everyone waits will constitute an
advisability to revise, gather and if necessary widen
the mandates of the institution or institutions in
charge with the ITC sector. By supporting the dominant
multinationals of the ITC sector, the UN-ITU largely
showed its incompetence as regards to international
co-operation in telecommunications. On its side,
UNESCO proved its inefficiency to defend its mandate
as regards to information development and is satisfied
to play a minor part in this issue. Other
intergovernmental at international or regional levels
and with various statutes have to be revisited for
better coordinating and making the unit more coherent
(the ONPI, the UCANN, Africa One, RASCOM, PANAFTEL,
NEPAD, FSNs and others...).

Elements of conclusion:

The task is immense and the time insufficient from
here to the Tunis Summit to transform these general
analyses into proposals for actions. That means that
the debates and combat will continue after Tunis and
that will require the continuation of the mobilization
of the civil society in the mechanisms of evaluation
and follow-up of the decisions agreed upon at the time
of the Tunis Summit. 

(Version N° 02 of December 5, 2004)





=====
Djilali Benamrane : dbenamrane at yahoo.com
Tel/fax : (227) 75 35 09 BP 11207 - Niamey - Niger
Tél/Fax : (331) 01 45 39 77 02 Paris - France
Page web sur le SMSI (mecanismes de financement) : en cours de construction 
Page web sur l'Afrique et la globalisation : http://www.multimania.com/djilalibenamrane/
Groupe de discussion: http://www.egroups.com/list/afriqueglobalization

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