[WSIS CS-Plenary] Youth Caucus Report

[MRAIHI Marouen]

1. Engagement in Civil Society Bureau meetings and debates (who represented
the YC? what (youth) issues were raised? what key decisions were made? etc)

As I was the representative of the Youth Caucus during the informal meeting
which took place in March, CSB Members invited me to join them to the bureau
meetings to replace Nick in the debates.
In general, all the content of the debates was related to these topics:
-         Differences of the way of working of CS and CSB between the 2
phases and the solutions of the lack of fundraising.
-         CSB constitutions and way of working of different
caucuses/families
-         Solutions to the problem of Human Rights caucus conflict
-         Teams constitution to take care of writing/editing CS procedures
texts to avoid some new conflicts happened during this phase.

As you can see, there was no debating about the content of each caucus
statements. Only 2 working groups were discussed related to this phase
vision (Financing Mechanisms and Internet Governance). That's why my
position as an youth caucus temporary alternate, with a non clear position
of the youth caucus inside the forthcoming WSIS disallowed me to rise any
questions related to us. All my interventions were related to the topics I
already said and most were adopted on the CSB final report.


2. Participation in plenaries, side events/meetings

Since the 1st day, youth caucus was "officially" represented by 5 Tunisian
persons (4 TIG members + the youth Tunisian CS responsible), when our
meeting was announced by the chairman of the plenary, we found ourselves 9
persons (Anne Christin and Julia - 2 German girls from the Lutheran world
federation, Andy from the Digital Divide Network, and Lionelle from
Cameroon). All these last persons attended the 1st meeting not as Youth
caucus official representatives but found our caucus the most close to them.
After presentations, we started the discussion with Youth Caucus news such
New Facilitator assignment. Second point was Youth Caucus participation
inside the WSIS, it was obvious that we were not as enough as prepcom 3 for
example to take decisions about that point. So we preferred trying to find
new ideas. And there is the result (thanks to Andy's summarize):

- Reaffirm ongoing youth involvement in the prepcoms through various
publicity efforts
- Organize youth consultations at a national level to collect youth input on
relevant issues being discussed through WSIS
- Identifying practical ways youth can be involved in implementing aspects
of the Declaration and Plan of Action to reach the MDGs (such as youth
involvement in running telecenters, etc.)
- Organize an officially recognized youth summit within the Tunis WSIS phase

These points were presented by Andy on the 2nd official CS plenary as the
result of YC fist meeting.


During the next 2 days, the youth caucus meetings were always scheduled at
10 o'clock, the same time of the prepcom's plenary sessions and especially
the CS speakers' interventions and that was the reason why we were not able
to have more meetings during that prepcom. Moreover, most of us attending
the prepcom for other reasons than the YC were busy with other caucuses
meetings. Anyway, they proved the solidarity of youth members of CS family.


3. emerging developments and opportunities pertinent to youth (ie. Proposed
UNDP Task Force on Financial Mechanisms, new funding commitment from the
Tunisian Gov't for CS participation...which mentions of youth, among
others).

About the financial point, I don't have a lot to say but that the Tunisian
CS promised to help us (at least on a local level) when we will need it. But
I don't have more information about the use of the CS fund started by
Tunisian 400.000 TN Dinars (about 270 US$).
There are other points I want to focus on:
As Tarek said, Tunisian Minister of transport and Communication Technologies
presented the willing of Tunisia to host the Youth Summit inside the WSIS on
Tunis 2005. This project was the proposal of an ONG called Mileset
(http://www.milset.org) to the Tunisian government. This ONG was asked by
the CS Tunisian side to be in touch with the YC facilitator to see how this
event can be organized. I don't know if it was done or not but what is sure
is that we need an urgent response of the YC Facilitator concerning this
point.


4. Personal reflection/assessment on the process so far

Personally I think that YC participation was acceptable as the outcome of
the other caucuses wasn't so important considering the issues faced and the
short period of this prepcom. What it must be done for the next prepcom is
to guarantee the participation of more important number for the YC as it
will be in Geneva.
During the first meeting of the YC, we tried to find solutions to reach the
two WSIS official working groups related to the two issues proposed by Mr.
Anan in case we want to help them by making a youth world wide consultation.
Now I think that it can be done through the CS working groups related to
these topics (the reports of these WG are linked to a strict timeline to be
respected).
Youth Caucus is much respected as it was very active during the first phase!
Despites funding issues, we are supposed to keep the same level of
participation during this phase.


5. The road ahead after PrepCom 1 (i.e strategy for continuity of
participation, potential project partnerships)

- We (Tunisian YC representatives) had a nonofficial meeting with Mr. Alain
Clairc who explained us how the YC was born and how it was working. He also
explained why the facilitator should be from the North. As the first phase
is not like the second one, he advised us (on a local and global scale) to
stay active and to plan on or two international events in Tunisia related to
the YC.
- A personal contact I had with Viola Krebs, from voluntarism Caucus and
director of the International Conference Volunteers NGO, about events we can
organize together (as she's convinced that the voluntarism and Youth Caucus
are linked in several points). She also wanted to be present to a YC meeting
to speak further about this partnership but it was unfortunately possible.

MRAIHI Marouen
Youth Caucus member
marouen at mraihi.com
http://profiles.takingitglobal.org/marouen

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