[WSIS CS-Plenary] FYI: News on Tunis Prep Com 1

[Liss Jeffrey]

http://www.idg.com.sg/idgwww.nsf/0/89C7423D6CED239B48256EC8000DE973?OpenDocument
Early row signals challenges for next Net summit
By John Blau
IDG News Service, Düsseldorf Bureau
05-07-2004
Tempers flared briefly during a recent meeting designed to define the 
structure of next year's follow-up global Net summit in Tunis, Tunisia, and 
what the assembly should deliver in the way of action.
An unexpected human rights row on June 26 at the first preparatory meeting 
(Prepcom-1) for the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 
in November 2005 signalled the many challenges the world faces in bridging 
the digital divide and giving people, particularly in developing countries, 
access to information and knowledge.

Representatives of the Tunisian government, which will host WSIS II, tried 
to block Tunisian human rights activist Souhayr Belhassen of the Civil 
Society Human Rights Caucus from delivering a slightly critical statement 
on the government's position on freedom of speech and the right to privacy. 
In the end, a formal protest by the European Union (E.U.), pointing to the 
active role of Civil Society groups in the Net talks, forced the Tunisian 
government delegation to back off and let Belhassen speak.

If blood pressures rose briefly over human rights at the first meeting, 
they could easily soar at the next two prepcoms or at the final summit when 
delegates meet to decide on the prickly issues of Internet governance and 
infrastructure funding -- both of which were shelved at the first Net 
summit in Geneva at the end of last year -- and on how to implement the 
agreed upon action plan.

"The human rights row showed how sensitive many of the issues are," said 
Ralph Bendrath, a Civil Society representative from the German Heinrich 
Böll Foundation. "Some tough negotiating lies ahead."

The two special task forces approved at WSIS I to focus on Internet 
governance and funding task forces are expected to make preliminary reports 
at Prepcom-3 in September 2005, said Bendrath, who attended the first 
preparatory meeting.

Internet governance is a term that has evolved from its early technical 
focus on names, numbers and protocols to include policy issues. And it's 
the policy aspect that has led to a divide between the E.U., U.S. and many 
other industrialized countries in the one camp and Brazil, China and 
numerous other developing countries in the other. While the U.S.-led bloc 
favors the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), 
based in Marina del Rey, California, the other bloc seeks strong government 
intervention.

The other battle to be fought from now until WSIS II is funding expansion 
of the Internet to the billions of people without access. Pleas by 
developing nations such as Senegal to set up a "digital solidarity fund" 
were largely rejected at the first summit by developed countries, notably 
the U.S. and the 15 members of the E.U. before enlargement, which favor 
using existing funding programs and voluntary contributions.

Even if funding and Net governance are high on the agenda, other issues, 
such as security and open-source software, will continue to draw attention. 
Viruses, worms and various forms of fraud, which are already nibbling away 
at the security of the Internet in industrialized nations, will come to 
developing countries as well. And although the U.S. successfully lobbied to 
have proprietary software added to the WSIS declaration of principle, 
numerous poor countries view open source as a means to develop their own 
technology instead of having to import it at a price many can't afford.

In Geneva, delegates agreed to achieve certain goals, such as ensuring that 
more than half of the world's population has access to the Web, telephone 
lines or some other form of electronic media by 2015. How to implement 
these goals as part of the agreed action plan and monitor performance, 
however, is still an unanswered question, according to Bendrath. "What was 
agreed in Geneva was more a good draft than a real action plan," Bendrath 
said. "There wasn't a lot of time to put together the plan. Now there is."

The next meeting, Prepcom-2, is scheduled for Feb. 17 in Geneva.  
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