[WSIS CS-Plenary] Priority for WSIS Civil Soiciety

[richard t jordan]

--Hi, YJ and others, Thanks for these emails. Being an old hand at UN Summits and General Assembly Special Sessions, etc., let me say that little inroads are important. They may not seem to be so, but they are.

What happened in 2000 at the Millennium NGO Forum held 22-26 May at UN Headquarters was that an 18-page NGO Declaration was issued that covered six areas covered in the governmental Millennium Summit statement. This NGO document was then issued by the Secretary-General as an actual UN document, something that in my knowledge has never happened before or since.

The difference was that we outlined steps that NGOs thought that governments should take, what the UN system could do, and what NGOs could do.

Declarations are worth the paper they are printed on. The importance are strategies, alliances and partnerships that can make differences. 

The Millennium NGO document, from all sides, remains unimplemented, but that does not mean that aspects of it are not being implemented.

Our NGO was able to make some significant impacts for current and future work because of the Prep Com and Summit processes because we were always looking toward Tunis right from the start.

It's up to Civil Society to figure out how to proceed to Tunis and beyond, but from my vantage point, I think creative use of collective visions can move everyone forward.

Richard J.



--------- Original Message ---------

DATE: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 09:40:29
From: "YJ Park" <yjpark at myepark.com>
To: <plenary at wsis-cs.org>, " Governance" <governance at lists.cpsr.org>
Cc: 

>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
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Plenary mailing list
>Plenary at wsis-cs.org
>http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/plenary
>



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