[WSIS CS-Plenary] Summary of Public Voice WSIS call 2/20
Frannie Wellings
wellings at epic.org
Thu Feb 26 19:04:11 GMT 2004
Summary of the Public Voice 2nd Teleconference on "WSIS and Civil Society"
February 20, 2004
On February 20th, the Public Voice held the second meeting to discuss
civil society involvement in the WSIS process. Participating were
Deborah Hurley, Rikke Frank Joergensen (EDRI), Robert Guerra
(Privaterra), Nathan Mitchler (Public Knowledge), Marc Rotenberg
(EPIC), Frannie Wellings (EPIC), YJ Park, Milton Mueller (Syracuse),
Andy Carvin (Benton), Chris Chiu (ACLU), and Becky Lentz (Ford
Foundation). Thank you to Deborah for moderating and to Rikke and
Robert for providing very useful updates.
The Next Public Voice Meeting will be coordinated alongside the UN
ICT meeting in NY (both in person and via telephone). It will
probably take place at the Ford Foundation on March 24 or 25, 2004.
Please let me know if you will be in NY at this time - it seems
opportune for a civil society strategy meeting. Confirmation on
date/time/agenda still to come.
Summary:
I. Updates
II. Report from Civil Society Plenary
III. Discussion of Internet Governance and Upcoming UN meetings
IV. Addressing issues from last meeting
V. Organizing Around Upcoming Events
VI. Needs/Next Steps
I. Updates
Robert Guerra's reported on Recent Canadian meeting:
The Canadian government under UNESCO organized a civil society
debriefing in Ottawa on January 23rd. They brought together
participants to discuss the process so far in terms of civil
society's organizing and challenges and what Canada should do next.
In the second phase, the Canadians see a problem in terms of
stakeholders - Canadian business wasn't as present as they expected
in the first phase. It was said that the Declaration and Action Plan
would not be reopened according to governments. There are now only
two concrete issues that will be dealt with, financing and Internet
governance. There are no modalities for oversight of the Action Plan
- the process is decentralized and there are a number of initiatives.
Coming up:
There will be an informal, brainstorming meeting on March 4-5 in
Tunisia. They want the Bureau to attend, but there are few funds for
travel. Very few people are able to go due to lacking funds, and
others are avoiding Tunisia for human rights reasons. Robert will be
attending this meeting and will report back.
There will be a WSIS civil society meeting in Berlin, Germany in
March, but without a funded Bureau, travel opportunities and even
discussions are sparse. Robert thinks the new bureau will probably
pick a new president, though Deborah Hurley pointed out that
Sammassekou was appointed for the entire WSIS process.
Regarding the next preparatory meeting, the Tunisians want April
while the ITU wants June or July. Most people involved want it to be
held in either New York City or Geneva.
II. Report from the Plenary
Rikke discussed the UN ICT Global Forum in New York in March. (On
the Human Rights Plenary list, I read that the February ITU meeting
is an internal technical ITU workshop to feed into the UN ICT Task
Force Open Forum in New York, 25-27 March, on Internet Governance.
It is not directly part of the WSIS 2 preparatory process, but its
outcome will help determine the Secretary General's appointment of
the Internet Governance working group.) While Saturday's meeting is
closed, the 25th and 26th are open to public participation. Several
government delegates will attend, many from Europe and the US.
Rikke mentioned frustration with the Bureau family structure, with
the involvement of family members rather than caucus members. The
human rights caucus should apply for a formal role in the Internet
Governance working group.
Robert said that the Latin America regional plenary list is very
active, though there is a great deal of frustration that so many of
the documents are only in English.
III. Internet Governance
Milton Mueller led this very informative discussion of Internet
governance and the upcoming UN ICT Task Force forum. He feels that
the only concrete accomplishment of WSIS I was the establishment of
an Internet governance working group. The two documents, the
Declaration and the Plan of Action, won't be reopened. He feels that
the broad range of information and communication concerns will have
to be, and can be, addressed through the question of Internet
governance. The concept of Internet governance is very broad and can
concretely address issues such as Voice Over IP, Spam, and content
controls. We're looking at an International framework/agreement for
the governance of the Internet.
The ITU meeting will take place on February 26th and 27th with
experts presenting, most of whom are critical of ICANN. Milton will
also be presenting. The UN ICT Task Force will become the
secretariat of the working group, which Kofi Annan will select. The
UN ICT forum is shaping up to be a big meeting. Milton's not sure how
they selected invitees, but said some invitations must have channeled
through the WSIS civil society groups such as the Internet Governance
caucus. He said it doesn't appear to be horribly selective. Deborah
Hurley suggested the working group might be supplanting the Tunisia
phase.
Milton stressed his belief that Internet Governance issues touch on
more than just the ICANN question, but also most other issues
involved in the World Summit, such as privacy and censorship. All of
the human rights issues may be brought into the framework of Internet
Governance. Progressive communities are not unified on IG, with
divergence on model of representation, for example. Milton stressed
the need for a more unified strategy.
People on the call agreed that many issues may be tied up in Internet
Governance, that the working group is extremely significant, and
civil society needs to be involved pushing a human rights perspective
in the working group. It is unknown whether this will be the only
point of significance, however. The CS Internet governance caucus has
already sent a letter to Mr Kofi Annan to express its willing to
participate in the Internet governance working group. (As far as I
know right now, the Human Rights caucus is considering doing the
same.)
There is still an Internet Governance civil society caucus list,
though most discussion is not on there, but is on the plenary list.
Anyone from civil society who is following the Internet governance
working group process can get involved with the Non-Commercial Users
Constituency of ICANN. The NCUC is civil society's body there. The
NCUC will be holding a meeting in Rome on March 2nd (more information
below).
Goals for the UN ICT Task Force Global Forum in New York in March
Consensus of principles
Openness of Internet Governance working group process
Involvement of civil society caucuses including internet governance
and human rights caucuses
A Civil Society meeting alongside the forum
IV. Addressing issues from last meeting:
-Additions to the current list of allies
We discussed the list of allies (Samessekou, Tunisian Human Rights
League, Geneva, Youth, Governments such as Canada, Switzerland, and
others, International organizations such as UNESCO, UNHCHR, Council
of Europe, and the EC, Media activists, Human Rights groups). Robert
suggested we recruit some smaller business interests who may have
like-minded thinking to show we too can put together a
multi-stakeholder approach.
-Prioritization of Issues:
We decided to organize the list of issues under a human rights
framework. Robert suggested we add linguistic diversity to the list
of issues.
Human Rights:
Š Access to technology
Š Access to information
Š Cyber Security
Š Digital Divide
Š Freedom of expression
Š Freedom of movement
Š Freedom of association
Š Internet Governance
Š Linguistic Diversity
Š Media ownership and concentration
Š NGO empowerment and participation in international governance
Š Privacy
Š Public Domain/Intellectual Property
Š Right to education
Š Right to work
Š Right to development
Š Surveillance
V. Organizing Around Upcoming Events -
The calendar of events that may be useful for civil society
organization, networking, promotion, presence, etc. has been updated.
See below. It is now also displayed on the Public Voice web site:
http://www.thepublicvoice.org/events/2004_csonetwork.html. Please
send me any other events and I'll continue to update it.
2004
* February 26-27: ITU Internet Governance Workshop »
* February 27-29: New York City Grassroots Media Conference, New York »
* March 2-6: ICANN meeting, Rome, Italy »
* March 2: Meeting of ICANN's Non-Commercial Users
Constituency, Rome, Italy »
* March 2-3: Disney Shareholders Meeting, Philadelphia, PA »
* March 13: "Can Media Artists Survive Media Consolidation?"
Conference, Beverly Hills, California »
* March 15 - April 23: Commission on Human Rights, Geneva »
* March 17: FCC Hearing, Monterey, California »
* March 22-23: "Implementing the WSIS Action Plan" Conference, Nairobi »
* March 22-26: Kenya ICT National Convention, Nairobi »
* March 24-25: Internet Commons Congress, Washington, D.C. »
* March 25-26: UN ICT Task Force Global Forum on Internet
Governance, New York City »
* March 25-27: Nonprofit Technology Conference, Philadelphia, PA »
* March 26-28: "Designs on Democracy: Communication for
Liberation," Berkeley, California »
* March 26-28: Yale Law "CyberCrime and Digital Law
Enforcement" Conference, New Haven, Conn. »
* April 2-4: Labortech 2004 Conference, San Francisco, California »
* April 17-22: National Association of Broadcasters Meetings,
Las Vegas, Nevada »
* April 19-23: 4th World Summit on Media for Children and
Adolescents, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil »
* April 20-23: Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference,
Berkeley, California »
* April 21-24: National Federation of Community Radio
Broadcasters Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico »
* April 22-25: Union for Democratic Communications Conference,
"The Axis of Empire," St. Louis, Missouri »
* April 26-28: Council on Foundations 55th Annual Conference,
Toronto, Ontario »
* April 30-May 1: "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond
The Non-Profit Industrial Complex," Santa Barbara, CA »
* May 2-4: Future of Music Coalition Policy Summit 2004, Washington, DC »
* May 20-23: EPIC's 10th Anniversary Conference, Washington, DC »
* May 27-31: 54th Annual Conference of the International
Communications Association, "Communication in the Public Interest,"
New Orleans, LA »
* June 7-8: Organization of American States General Assembly,
Quito, Ecuador »
* June 18: Conference of Scholars on Human Rights and the
Information Society, Montreal »
* June 18-20: Allied Media Conference, Bowling Green, Ohio »
* June?: Media Justice Summit »
* July 1-4: "Declaring Media Independence" ACME Summit, San
Francisco, California »
* July 7-10: The Alliance for Community Media, International
Conference and Trade Show, Tampa, Florida »
* July 13-16: 8th International Conference of the International
Society for Knowledge Organization, London, England »
* July 20-25: OURmedia Conference, Porto Alegre, Brazil »
* July 25-30: Intl'l Association for Media and Communication
Research Conference, Porto Alegre »
* July 25-30: 1st Americas Social Forum, Quito, Ecuador »
* November ?: European Social Forum, London »
2005
* November: WSIS Phase 2, Tunisia »
We discussed holding a Public Voice meeting alongside the UN ITC
meeting in New York on March 24th or 25th, as many civil society
groups will be in New York for the this forum. The Ford Foundation is
willing to give us space - we're waiting for the ITC Task Force to
put up an agenda for their forum before we discuss a time/day.
In addition, a proposal has been submitted to the Computers, Freedom
and Privacy 2004 conference in April in California for a workshop on
civil society participation in the WSIS. There is discussion of a
meeting alongside the event or possibly workshops at universities in
the area.
EPIC's annual conference will be held in Washington, DC on May 20th
to 23rd, which will also include a concentration on WSIS issues.
There is an opportunity to meet then as well.
The Non-Commercial Users Constituency of ICANN, the civil society
representatives, will be meeting in Rome on March 2 at the ICANN
conference. More information is available at
http://www.ncdnhc.org/meetings/2004/2004_meeting.htm - anyone in Rome
at that time should join the meeting, if possible. The NCUC is
another way for NGOs to keep involved in the Internet governance
process/discussion. ICANN's at-large committee will be holding a
forum on WSIS on March 4th at the Rome meeting, in cooperation with
the business community.
VI. Next Steps/Needs
Outreach/Coordination
We still need to check in with other Civil Society groupsŠ improve
outreach to and mobilization of NGOs and networking with developing
countries. It was suggested people begin to take responsibility for
coordinating with people from other countries.
We still need to engage with Social Justice Groups.
The list of events around which NGO / civil society work could be
furthered is now on the Public Voice web site, but in its current
form it is heavily focused on those involved in ICT's rather than
other social justice events.
We need to circulate the Civil Society Declaration and the Sourcebook
Effectiveness of Civil Society Participation:
We need to coordinate with Plenary the best way to improve our
structure/representation in the next phase - Robert's going to
initiate this coordination on the Plenary list. We need to discuss
structure, involvement, particularly of candidates from CS itself,
and funding. Unfortunately we're still looking at process rather
than substance, which will have to change shortly if we're going to
be effective. But, related to process, we discussed three issues
related to the structure/make-up of Civil Society: the need to be
better organized within civil society, representation of the civil
society secretariat, and representation within the Bureau.
Robert mentioned we could suggest to the secretariat that we
coordinate ourselves this time. It's important that civil society
runs 'itself' and is not managed as much, but this hasn't been dealt
with yet. We need to grasp all possibilities of funding for travel,
such as foundations and governments. We also need to look ahead to
trade talks, etc. We need to better understand how to interact with
the UN. In New York, networking will be difficult, constrained by
the physical access to people due to building structure/security. We
should do some intelligence seeking - what's going on and where's the
support. We need to work on outreach and analyze our limitations.
Where do we dedicate resources if Tunis isn't ever going to happen?
Many folks are currently working to articulate how civil society can
participate more effectively - we need to keep this up, build on it,
and coordinate it. The Human Dignity in the Information Society
group will follow-up in June at the Montreal academic meeting.
Deborah Hurley said the Human Rights Caucus has been bringing
standards forwardŠ economic, social and cultural rights. She brought
up the question of global research projects digging into these
aspects, but again, coordination is necessary.
Robert suggested we start recording this process and compile a civil
society report detailing our intervention and assessing the results.
It could be connected to the academic work and a summary of our
movement, meetings, and actions.
In Terms of Current Process:
We need to be significantly involved in the Internet Governance
working group process, with participation by civil society caucuses
such as the human rights caucus. As mentioned previously, the CS
Internet governance caucus has already sent a letter to Mr Kofi Annan
to express it is willing to participate in the Internet governance
working group. We need to make sure that this is the case, and try
and make sure that the human rights caucus is also involved.
We also need to get together and identify specific needs for
resources, such as travel funds. Becky Lentz said this would be
useful for foundations such as Ford. While it would not guarantee
that any funds would be distributed, it would identify needs and help
map their future funding.
Future meetings:
UN ICT Forum: Public Voice meeting alongside the UN ITC meeting in
New York on March 25th or 26th. Many civil society groups will be in
New York for the this forum so it will be both a physical meeting as
well as via telephone. The Ford Foundation is willing to give us
space - we're waiting for the ITC to put up an agenda for their forum
before we discuss a time/day.
CFP meeting: Organize side-by-side meetings with people in the areaŠ
San Francisco based organizations, students and maybe even businesses.
--
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Frannie Wellings
Policy Fellow, Electronic Privacy Information Center
Coordinator, The Public Voice
1718 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Suite 200
Washington, D.C. 20009 USA
wellings at epic.org
+1 202 483 1140 extension 107 (telephone)
+1 202 483 1248 (fax)
http://www.epic.org
http://www.thepublicvoice.org
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