[WSIS CS-Plenary] Priority for WSIS Civil Soiciety

[YJ Park]

There have been three proposals so far how we can move forward within WSIS
civil society in terms of WSIS "Internet Governance" issue both caucus level
and plenary level.

The main challenge of Internet Governance debate during Geneva WSIS was to
initiate a momentum of creating international forum to discuss Internet
Governance in the global level.
Like it or not, we, civil society, should understand "civil society's roles"
in the Internet policy decision-making process was not recognized seriously.
They gave some credits to Internet Governance caucus but not to WSIS civil
society in general. If I remind you of WSIS recommendation, it invited again
only governments to discuss following issues.

f) Governments are invited to:
i)facilitate the establishment of national and regional Internet Exchange
Centres;
ii)manage or supervise, as appropriate, their respective country code
top-level domain name (ccTLD);
iii)promote awareness of the Internet.


But Internet Governance caucus itself cannot make difference to ensure civil
society's voices in the Internet policy making process. WSIS Civil Society
should go along with it. The main challenge of Internet Governance debate
from now on until Tunisia WSIS is to build a consensus in the WSIS plenary
that civil society should equally participate in open, transparent, and
bottom-up decision-making process like our counterparts, governments and
private sector members.


This may generate more traffics in the plenary list as Bertrand is
concerned, we have to live with it until WSIS civil society is ready for
presenting our collective position to various platforms including ITU
proposed by Amali de Silva.

YJ