[WSIS CS-Plenary] Position paper draft

[Rik Panganiban]

Djilali,

Merci pour cette "position paper" en anglais.  Est-ce que tu peut 
envoyer le document en français aussi?  J'ai des problemes de 
comprehension, mais peut-etrê en français sera plus clair.

Juste deux commentaires, en anglais malhereusement......

Thanks for this position paper.  Can you send it in French also?  I am 
having problems understanding it, but perhaps the french will be more 
clear.

Just a couple of comments:

*	Role of Civil Society in Financing Issues:  There appears to be some 
confusion within the TFFM on the role and contributions of civil 
society to the financing of ICTs, viewed by many largely as an issue 
among governments, the private sector and multilateral development 
banks.  The sole role identified by members of the Task Force for civil 
society was an "implementer" and recipient of ICT funding.  Does civil 
society also finance independently ICT development?  How can this be 
measured and evaluated?  More clarity on this issue would be 
appreciated.

*	Prioritizing the Gaps. Given the fact that there are many "digital 
divides" that need to be met, many marginalized communities, many 
regions with no meaningful access to ICTs, how can financing be 
targetted and prioritized to do the most good with limited resources?  
How can the gaps be mapped so that the most serious ones are addressed 
as a matter of urgency?

Regards,

Rik Panganiban

On Dec 5, 2004, at 3:27 PM, djilali benamrane wrote:

> 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
>
> ____
===============================================
RIK PANGANIBAN       Communications Coordinator
Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations 
(CONGO)
web: http://www.ngocongo.org
email: rik.panganiban at ngocongo.org
mobile: (+1) 917-710-5524

** Please note CONGO's new mailing address: CP 50, 1211 Genéve 20, 
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