[WSIS CS-Plenary] RE: Invitation to a informal meeting at Tunis

Thu Feb 12 14:04:52 GMT 2004

[note to CS Bureau, for your info]

Dear members of the CSB

I would like to update you on some recent events in the Executive
Secretariat (ES), and also answer the questions of Amir Barmaki and Roberto
Guerra.

As you may have heard, the funding from the Canton of Geneva for the
Fondation du Devenir, which was running the civil society division in our
ES, has come to an end. The ES, as a whole, continues to exist, but with
less personnel than before. We may get some new colleagues into the ES,
which could be dealing with civil society liaison and accreditation matters.
We will inform you as soon as this becomes reality. For the time being, we
will inform the CSB members directly and as a whole.

As you know, WSIS is a Summit in two parts. All Rules and Arrangments
decided by Governments for the first part of WSIS continue to be valid
during the second part. This includes Arrangments for accreditation and
participation. All entities from civil society and business who got
accreditation during the first part of the Summit remain accredited for the
second part of the Summit. Accreditation is an ongoing process, and we will
prepare for each PrepCom of phase 2 a new list of civil society and business
entities having requested accreditation, for approval by the Governments.

Accreditation of civil society during the first part of the Summit was done
on the website of the Civil Society Division / Fondation du Devenir (FDD)
www.geneva2003.org , which was not the official WSIS website. As the FDD is
outgoing, this website will not be updated anymore, and we do not have the
capacity to manage the electronic registration they installed on their
website. Therefore, new accreditation requests, from now on, have to be sent
to the Executive Secretariat electronically or by fax / normal mail, and the
respective forms are available on our WSIS website at
http://www.itu.int/wsis/participation/accreditation/cs.html  .

Let me now turn to the invitation of Tunisia:

The host country of the second phase has invited the members of the three
Bureaus (Intergovernmental Bureau of the PrepCom, Civil Society Bureau,
Consultative Committee of Business interlocutors) as well as the focal point
members of the HLSOC (High Level Summit Organizing Committee, basically the
interested UN Agencies) to a informal brainstorming meeting at Tunis. This
meeting is not part of the formal preparatory process.

The meeting intends to kickstart the reflection process among all
stakeholders on what should be the value added of phase 2 of WSIS. As you
know, agreed languange was that phase 1 would end with a Declaration and a
Plan of Action (and it did!), and phase 2 would focus more on developmental
issues and also monitor and evaluate progress made since the first phase of
the Summit. This is a vague statement. For real monitoring and evaluation,
the time span of 23 month between the two phases is too short, as every
development expert knows.

My guess is that the second phase will work more through thematic meetings
(organized mainly by the UN Agencies, but also by some governments, and even
by Civil Society and business, perhaps). Africa and LAC will probably have
another regional meeting, to discuss regional implementation (and perhaps
come up with a blueprint for good national impelementation). My guess is
further that there will be two PrepComs, one near the end of 2004 and one
around September 2005. The discussion in Tunis will focus on the process,
but probably also on which themes should be deepended further (besides the
two themes Internet Governance and Financing, where the SG of the UN was
asked in the final documents to create working groups). Such themes could be
Internet Security, Spam, Ethics of the Information Society, to give just
some examples.

I think we should also use the second phase to stress implementation (a weak
point of most previous UN Summits).

At the actual stage, there is no Agenda for this informal meeting. From the
above, you can guess in which direction the discussion could go. Perhaps we
will create mixed working groups during these two days, to deepen one or the
other issue. The planning is done by our Tunisian colleages. I do not think
that the meeting will produce a document, as such document may have the same
fate as previous external inputs into the WSIS process. The idea is that we
come all together to think what the second phase could/should look like. It
is then up to the formal process to decide.

Please note also that we have used the list of CSB members from the exisitng
website of the Civil Society Division. When there was more than one name for
a family we sent to all addresses. As the invitation extends to one member
of each family, you may have to get in contact among yourself to determine
who should be the invited person. There is also no obligation to accept the
invitation. In fact, we are well aware that perhaps not all families will be
represented (or have the necessary means to travel to Tunis).

To answer Roberto Guerra's 3 questions:

1. Tunisair flies to Paris, you could try to get a cheap ticket
Canada-Paris. The ITU arrangements do not work for non-ITU personnel. Air
France was an official carrier for WSIS phase 1, you can always try if this
arrangements still work (it is likely that the advantages ended with the
Geneva Summit). Infos are at
http://www.itu.int/wsis/practical/carriers/index.html . At the actual stage,
Tunisair has not yet confirmed its "official carrier" status for the second
phase of WSIS. Therefore, we do not exactly know what rebates they will
offer. A decision will hopefully be taken within the next few days.

2. The invitation is from Tunisia, and they are hosting the event. You would
have to ask them directly if they would be ready to host you longer. There
are also some inexpensive Hotels in Tunis (take the Lonely Planet Guide), if
you want to stay longer. There are interesting historical places in and
around Tunis, and the weather is surely warmer than here in Geneva or in
Canada.

3. The idea of the meeting is to have some sort of retreat to think about
phase 2. So my guess is that there are no Audio or Video-conferencing
facilites. It could also be contrary of the idea of a retreat. Again, you
may ask the organizers at the e-mail address indicated in the inscription
form. But I don't think they are equipped or will consider the request.

One last information: Tunisair has direct flights from and to Geneva on
Monday, Thursday and Saturday. This was also one of the reasons why the
meeting is scheduled on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Yours sincerely

Charles Geiger
Assistant Executive Director WSIS

-----Original Message-----
 >From: west Asia [mailto:westasiaregion at hotmail.com]
Sent: mercredi, 11. février 2004 16:28
To: fatma.harbaoui at itu.int; ajp at glocom.ac.jp; adel.elzaim at canti.com;
alalegre at fma.ph; alex at takingitglobal.org; krikorian at ipa-uie.org;
munyua at femnet.or.ke; alke.boessiger at union-network.org;
amkt at apcwomen.org; busaniche at caminandoutopias.org.ar;
bvigano at genderwsis.org; congo at ngocongo.org; carthage at icsu.org;
charlotte at icvolunteers.org; greve at gnu.org; hkawa at attglobal.net;
briquemont at ebu.ch; j.gagain at funglode.org; cic at coi-tn.org;
kend at easterndoor.com; mth.bellamy at geneva.icftu.org;
nick at takingitglobal.org; events at genderwsis.org; info at laneta.apc.org;
anais_ac at yahoo.fr; info at cities-lyon.org; rebloem at ngocongo.org;
rguerra at cpsr.org; ross.shimmon at ifla.nl; sean at nexus.ie; nyaka at sn.apc.org;
viola at icvolunteers.org; Yjpark at myepark.com
Cc: charles.geiger at itu.int
Subject: Re: Invitation to a informal meeting at Tunis

Dear Fatma

I will participate in that informal meeting event from Middle East and West
Asia region family (CSB). Thanks for informing us, my question is who should
be contacted for arrangements there and what is the exact agenda of the
meetings?

Thanks

Amir Barmaki

----- Original Message -----
 >From: <fatma.harbaoui at itu.int>
To: <ajp at glocom.ac.jp>; <adel.elzaim at canti.com>; <alalegre at fma.ph>;
<alex at takingitglobal.org>; <krikorian at ipa-uie.org>; <munyua at femnet.or.ke>;
<alke.boessiger at union-network.org>; <abarmaki at irancsos.net>;
<amkt at apcwomen.org>; <busaniche at caminandoutopias.org.ar>;
<bvigano at genderwsis.org>; <congo at ngocongo.org>; <carthage at icsu.org>;
<charlotte at icvolunteers.org>; <greve at gnu.org>; <hkawa at attglobal.net>;
<briquemont at ebu.ch>; <j.gagain at funglode.org>; <cic at coi-tn.org>;
<kend at easterndoor.com>; <mth.bellamy at geneva.icftu.org>;
<nick at takingitglobal.org>; <events at genderwsis.org>; <info at laneta.apc.org>;
<anais_ac at yahoo.fr>; <info at cities-lyon.org>; <rebloem at ngocongo.org>;
<rguerra at cpsr.org>; <ross.shimmon at ifla.nl>; <sean at nexus.ie>;
<nyaka at sn.apc.org>; <viola at icvolunteers.org>; <Yjpark at myepark.com>
Cc: <charles.geiger at itu.int>
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 12:03 PM
Subject: FW: Invitation to a informal meeting at Tunis

 > Dear members of the Civil Society Bureau
 >
 > Please find attached an invitation letter, signed by the Minister for
 > Communication Technology and Transport, Republic of Tunisia, and by the
 > Secretary General of the ITU, to an informal brainstorming meeting at
 > Tunis.
 >
 > Please note that this meeting is not a part of the official preparatory
 > process. The idea of the organizers is to bring together a group or
 > persons which has been actively involved in the process of phase I of
 > WSIS. In order not to make an arbitrary selection of persons, the
 > organizers did choose to invite the members of the different bureaus as
 > well as the members of the HLSOC in their personal capacity. With regard
 > to the CSB, one member of each family is invited.
 >
 > The organizers will pay the costs of accommodation at Tunis (only
 > telephone charges and alcoholic beverages are charged to participants).
 > Travel costs have to be paid by the participants (there is a rebate in
 > case you use Tunisair). As the meeting has an informal character and the
 > invitation is restricted, we regret to inform you that no fellowships from
 > the ITU WSIS trust fund are available.
 >
 > With best regards
 >
 > Charles Geiger
 > Assistant Executive Director
 >
 >
 >
 >  <<Letter Tunis English, rev.1.doc>>  <<Lettre Tunis version française,
 > rev.1.doc>>  <<Formulaire Réunion Tunis rev.1.doc>>
 >

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