[WSIS CS-Plenary] report on WSIS Briefing, 9 Feb, Geneva

[William Drake]

Hi Karen,

> From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org]On
> Behalf Of karen banks
> Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 3:48 PM
>
> ** Can someone clarify who will be participating in the March 3-4 meeting
> from civil society, and who is making those decisions? **

As Rik's summary indicated, there was some discussion of your question at
the CONGO meeting.  The Tunisian ambassador said that his government wants
civil society to be fully involved, and to that end is inviting the bureau
to the Tunis meeting to plan the next steps.  In the Q&A I pointed out that
caucuses and working groups were formed bottom up by CSOs themselves, all
have members, have been the locus of a lot of activity, and hence be
involved in phase II planning along with the families.  Accordingly, I asked
what steps Tunisia would be taking to ensure this broad-based participation.
The Tunisian ambassador replied that his government wants civil society to
be fully involved, and to that end is inviting the bureau to the Tunis
meeting to plan the next steps.

I then asked the Swiss ambassador, Charles Geiger of the secretariat, and
Alain the same question.  Basically their answers were to effect that it's
up to the CSOs to organize themselves in whatever way best reflects their
members' interests.  Renate suggested that to the extent that the Tunis
planning meeting could blur from process to content issues (which is
inevitable, given the need to decide what will be addressed etc), perhaps it
would make sense to have a representative of contents and themes there as
well.

That's where things stand.

Aside from such process matters, I should add that there were some
disturbing suggestions about possible new thematic focuses for phase II,
including "security" and "ethics."  Maybe we'll end up with a new Acceptable
Use Policy....

Cheers,

Bill


******************************************
William J. Drake
Geneva, Switzerland
wdrake at ictsd.ch
http://www.citi.columbia.edu/affiliates/wdrake.htm
Director, Project on the Information Revolution
  and Global Governance
Senior Associate, International Centre for Trade
  and Sustainable Development www.ictsd.org
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