[WSIS CS-Plenary] process for drafting of documents

[Rik Panganiban]

COMMENTARY ON THE PRESIDENT'S PROPOSAL FOR A SUMMIT DOCUMENT DRAFTING 
PROCESS

My understanding is that the President of the Prepcom Amb. Janis 
Karklins has made quite an interesting proposal, which should be 
accepted today.  He calls for a "group of friends of the President" in 
consultation with regional groups to prepare a "document to serve as 
the basis of negotiations" taking into account the outcomes of relevent 
thematic, regional and other "WSIS-related" meetings.

This proposal would represent a good amount of trust placed in the 
President to facilitate the drafting of the main texts of the Summit 
directly, as opposed to being done through a bureau or only through a 
formal Prepcom process.  In Phase I, the Prepcom President's own 
drafting process was pre-empted by governments wishing to have more 
direct control over the drafting.

This also would be a evolving document that would be able to 
incorporate the results of various "WSIS-related" meetings.  This is in 
contrast to the Phase I process, which did not allow for the regional 
consultations to be directly inputted into the draft summit texts.  In 
addition, it leaves vague the notion of which meetings actually might 
be included, since "WSIS-related" could be interpreted quite broadly, 
perhaps including meetings organized by the private sector, civil 
society, academia, etc.

Presumably the final documents will take the form of a political 
declaration and an action-oriented document.

For civil society, this represents perhaps a gain and perhaps a loss in 
terms of our ability to monitor and contribute to the drafting process. 
  A "friends of the chair" committee would presumably be closed to 
observers.  However a text incorporating directly thematic, regional 
and other WSIS-related meetings might be more open to civil society 
input, since it gives us more opportunities to make contributions that 
in the end might end up in the summit text.

Rik Panganiban
===============================================
RIK PANGANIBAN       Communications Coordinator

Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship
with the United Nations (CONGO)
web: http://www.ngocongo.org
email: rik.panganiban at ngocongo.org
mobile: (+1) 917-710-5524 
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