[WSIS CS-Plenary] Civil Society Must not be an Alibi for Governments

[Ralf Bendrath]

Thanks for the summary, Andy.
For the record: Here is what I actually read. 
We are giving this to the governments (bureau and others) soon.
The other statements fromthis morning will also be sent here and put
online asap.

Ralf

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Ralf Bendrath, Heinrich Böll Foundation

Statement to the PrepCom Plenary on behalf of the Civil Society plenary

25 June 2004

Dear friends,

the first phase of this summit was a major step forward in developing a
multi-stakeholder process on the global level. For the first time civil
society and others have participated in such a way. 

We have worked very hard to use this opportunity in a constructive
manner. By doing so, we also have been reminding you of how a true
vision of a human-centred, just and inclusive information society could
and should look like.

We have to move on in this direction. Governments can not address these
issues alone. Any mechanism that does not closely associate civil
society and other stakeholders is not only unacceptable in principle, it
is also doomed to fail. 

You all have acknowledged this. The importance of civil society
participation is evoked routinely by governments and in official WSIS
statements.

What we demand now is that the multi-stakeholder process is not just a
nice phrase, but becomes true reality.

This seems to be the case for the working groups on internet governance
and finance, where we have heard about and experienced very promising
approaches.

We insist that it also becomes a reality for the rest of the summit
process. 

We are not convinced yet:

- The speaking time given to Civil Society reveals the ironic asymmetry
between the importance theoretically given to us and the actual reality.
Our speaking slots only amount to 2.7 per cent of the total plenary
time!

- In order to have meaningful discussion among all stakeholders, we need
to be able to speak to the points at the time they are raised. This is
not the case right now, though we already had this modality during the
Geneva phase!

- It is still not clear how we can contribute to the implementation of
the action plan with our knowledge and our experiences.

- Meaningful participation also needs to address the large part of civil
society that can not come to Tunis or Geneva. At this PrepCom, we do not
even have an internet broadcast as in phase one.

We want to make very clear that our further participation is depending
on some conditions:

- We insist that we don't fall back behind the highest levels of
inclusiveness and participation from the first phase. Instead, we even
want to improve them. 

- All thematic and regional meetings have to be fully open to all
interested parties.

- Whatever Political Declaration is to be adopted in Tunis, appropriate
mechanisms have to guarantee that civil society is truly involved in any
drafting process and supported in commenting and proposing amendments in
a timely manner.

- We need modalities to ensure meaningful civil society consultation and
cooperation on all areas of the stock-taking exercises and the
implementation of the action plan.

- There must be a creative use of ICTs to ensure civil society
participation from all over the world. We have a lot of experience with
this from our own work.

- We were happy to hear about the participation fund yesterday. However,
we insist that the funding is used in a transparent manner, according to
the actual needs and with meaningful participation of already
established civil society structures on this.

To summarize: 

We are not willing to play an alibi role or lend our legitimacy to a
process that excludes us from true meaningful participation. The summit
can only be a summit of successes if there is substantive progress in
our participation.