[WSIS CS-Plenary] report from WSIS CS meeting in Berlin on Saturday

[Ralf Bendrath]

Hi all,

I think we had a very constructive discussion at the Berlin meeting on 
Saturday and came up with some good ideas. You've already seen the first 
outcome in Rik's mail on the WG on Working Methods.

Below see the minutes from that meeting. For the speed readers, here's 
the extra-short version:

Major tasks to be done:
- CS travel funding
- fast and substantive work on finance
- linking WSIS CS with other information policy networks and movements
- discusssion on WSIS 2005 follow-up, including implementation
**

Next events to prepare for:
- African regional meeting in February
- PrepCom2 in February
- UN ICT TF in April

Best, Ralf

-------------------------------------

*WSIS Civil Society Meeting*
*Berlin**, newthinking store*
*20 November 2004, 15:00-18:00***

***Participants: *36 NGO people from 14 countries and 4 continents
*Chair: *Rik Panganiban
*Minutes: *Ralf Bendrath (corrected / updated version, 24 November 2004)

*Agenda *
- UN ICT TF – our assessment of the meeting
- Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG)
- Task Force on Financing Mechanisms (TFFM ) / Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF)
- procedures for WSIS CS organization
- overall CS strategy
- PrepCom2
- Reports
o WIPO
o Youth Caucus


**

*UN ICT Task Force & Global Forum *

- sense of *frustration *from the conference

o unclear if the TF members really took note of all comments

o they did not really include CS issues in the reports from breakout groups

o CS written input needed to be submitted to the TF?

- important to have links to the TF

o *new TF chair soon*, but unclear when it's being announced

- Proposal from APC to do the CS participation mapping project in WG1

o will be important to have CS participation there

- next *ICT TF meeting is on education*

o *in **Ireland** in April (5 days)* (Karen: “Ireland, cool ;-)”)

o Ireland is pretty excited about it, will pay the Human Capacity WG 5.8 
mio $ for global E-School initiative

o Ireland is pretty approachable

o Our links to Dublin should concentrate on Brendan Tuohy and Art Reilly 
– the 2 new Vice Chairs of UN ICT Taskforce. “Brendan is absolutely the 
man in Dublin” - see <http://www.dcmnr.ie/display.asp/pg=748>

o we should think about what we want to have as headlines for the 
breakout groups

- *ICT TF's main purpose was testing ground for WSIS *PC2 and general 
Phase 2

o Conflicts for PrepCom2 are becoming clearer:

§ *Finance*

§ *global Taxes*

§ *Global Goods*

- important for us to be there and discuss and speak out

o pretty open discussion between CS and Private Sector,

o better than at WSIS

- *metrics / stocktaking*

o big issue in TF Global Forum

o let's get involved in the metric development (indicators etc.)

*WSIS 2005 Follow-Up
*
- *Suggestions that were heard *at ICT TF

o ICT TF is suggesting a *“global alliance”* concept

§ multi-stakeholder outreach group to find out if there would be support

o GFC drafts: *conference series or within existing UN bodies?*

o *WGIG successor panel *as main mechanism proposed by Abu-Ghazaleh, VC 
of ICT TF

o other mechanisms

- *good news is: all these suggestions are multi-stakeholder*

- deeper discussion on this will probably start at PC2

*WGIG*

- CS members report the WGIG is just getting organized

- Markus Kummer is very open

- CS mostly concerned about process issues

- mailing list for CS members in WGIG (wgig at wsis-cs.org) not used yet

- CS discussion will for the moment take place on the IG Caucus list

- *CS lacks procedures for this kind of situation*

o we need to clarify

§ our role in the official process,

§ our content,

§ and our internal procedures for joint positions

- *our role: *

o the WGIG is a new animal

o CS will *try to take the lead*

- *our content*

o *Content positions (e.g. end-to-end principle) have to be formulated*

§ the issue matrix sent out as a questionnaire by the WGIG staff is not 
really taken too serious by most CS members.

§ Don MacLean made some interesting remarks on this in the wgig at unog.ch 
<mailto:wgig at unog.ch> list for WGIG members:

> >the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action had quite a bit 
to say about Internet governance, both explicitly and implicitly, in 
terms of:

1. Governance objectives – including “an equitable distribution of 
resources, facilitate access for all, ensure a stable and secure 
functioning of the Internet, with multilingualism”

2. General ICT4D issues that have significant, Internet-related 
components – including “access to infrastructure and services, access to 
information and knowledge, confidence and security in the use of ICTs, 
social and economic applications, cultural and linguistic diversity, 
freedom of communications media, ethical dimensions”

3. Institutional arrangements – which should be “multilateral, 
transparent, democratic, with the full involvement of governments, the 
private sector, civil society and international organizations”

4. Practical working methods – including “partnerships among all 
stakeholders, capacity building, international and regional cooperation”<<

- *our internal procedures *for joint positions

o people are nominated as individuals and not representing constituencies

§ they have to *provide access *to the process

§ individuals and organisations do need the freedom to advocate their 
positions

§ wherever possible *facilitate broader based support*

- Viola Krebs and Karen Banks are working on a *translation strategy for 
the WGIG*

o they have agreed with Kummer

o hopefully all 6 UN languages

- WGIG link to GFC is not clear yet


*TFFM /DSF*

- TFFM is exchanging drafts with GFC

- *first draft is ready*, but not published

- *CS finance discussions*

o caucus is discussing position paper (mostly in French)

o other discussions: Switzerland, Germany, Africa, APC

o African regional meeting, February in Accra (Ghana)

§ African CS main issue: from WSIS to national implementation

o *better coordination needed*

- *DSF*

o a lot of people have been approached to give money

o others are concerned it will turn into global tax

o *confusion among governments *about the DSF

§ some call it "the DSF", others say "a DSF"

§ link to official WSIS process is very unclear

§ would be considered ‘an alternative financing mechanism’

§ they want to engage other organizations and individuals

o *CS from Africa should be included in the DSF*

§ who are the 8 CS reps on the board and how are they being selected?

§ *specific request for more info and expressing interest in being 
involved could come from African caucus*

*Online Collaboration*

- We need a *FAQ *on the 3 or 4 'threads' of WSIS II

o and somewhere we can link to relevant docs

o the basics on WGIG and TFFM are on the worldsummit2005.org site, but 
need more

- *online consultations *for TFFM and WGIG

o did not really work, only a few contributions

o need for additional tools than online platform for WGIG

- APC suggested to UNDP to *have at least a parallel mail based 
consultation*

o email is the lowest common denominator

o anything web-based will exclude many.

- we *need a suite of tools*, coordinating feedback across them all

- *Wiki *would be really helpful

*CS Rules and Procedures*

- *CS Caucuses*

o Caucus mechanism is a *good bottom-up process*, worked pretty well

o *Phase two different*, as summit declaration is finished now (most 
issues besides financing and IG are closed since Geneva)

o *Options: *

§ maintain caucuses as watchdog for official documents

§ focus on implementation

§ link to other for a and networks

§ transform them into more general activists networks beyond WSIS

- *CS Content and Themes (CT) group *

o still needed

§ for *our coordination*,

§ *was also important for Sammassekou to interact with us*

o good for input, not so good for legitimacy

o needs to be *more inclusive*

- *CS Bureau *

o is more problematic, as it was

§ more developed top-down

§ replicating the intergovernmental structure

o *bureau meeting planned in Capetown in December*

§ needs really good facilitation, otherwise it won't work

o *constituency / elections of board members?*

o restructuring of bureau is needed urgently

o proposal for restructuring was made in Hammamet

o *should bureau reform itself? *experience shows it’s not enough.

***--> Suggestion to form a Working Group on CS rules and procedures*

- we need a *report on experiences *before proposing to restructure again

o Karen has done some work documenting Hammamet

§ how we have worked,

§ what didn't work

§ and a start on what we need to do to make it work

§ got some feedback but not from all families

- point of departure is

o how we have operated in Phase one

o lessons learned from Hammamet

o how to move on, on what basis?

- we are on the starting point of shaping a global public for 
information society policy

o CT group and Bureau were already mentioned in Cardoso report

o *CS rules and procedures working group will be of value much further 
than WSIS*

- Examples to draw from:

o look at the *CS committee on rules and procedures we already had at 
PrepCom 1 in 2002*

o *internet world:*

§ make the rules as flexible as possible

§ working groups on issues

§ *"steering group" *than more or less functions as a router

§ what is *missing is a mechanism for conflict resolution */ decision 
making under disagreement

o CS national *consultations in India*

§ done in the 16 official languages

§ have language coordinators

§ work through English for the drafting document and then re-translate it

- *Some of us later worked on a draft for this working group on CS rules 
and procedures. *

o *Rik will send the outcomes around (see his mail from 23 November 2004)*

* *

* CS overall structure and strategy*

* *- *WSIS II structure is different*

- so *we can't just reproduce the CS structures from phase one*, where 
we just watched two documents

- *stuff happening on different tracks*

o TFFM

o WGIG

o GFC

o Implementation/stocktaking and indicators

- *we need working groups with focal points*

- one of our challenges is to *create linkages between WSIS and other 
processes*

o WSIS CS is largely delinked from the (largely) CRIS networks 
mobilising around WIPO, WTO, UNESCO convention on culture, etc.

o WSIS CS similarly de-linked from the social movements around the 
social fora processes

- would be great if we could all get it together

o the European social forum demonstrated the benefit of maintaining 
strong relationships between the activists and the more traditional NGOs

o the Indymedia server 'incident' is another good example of where 
autonomous activists and NGOs worked closely together for mutual benefit

- *Diversity of CS will increase in phase 2*, as more groups are coming in

o how to deal with it?

o diversity increases chance for conflicts

o *give up striving for consensus*

§ we can't let the consensus principle block us from stating our positions

§ in these cases, just have two or more positions and give all of these 
as input

§ move away from consensus to developing positions of like minded groups

§ *what are the operational impacts speakers, time, who get's it etc.?*

*PrepCom 2 Preparations*

- we need to prepare our *CS demands for the Summit*, as the structure 
of it will be discussed in PC2

- CONGO and others will prepare *pre-PrepCom CS events*.

- WGIG will also meet on the 2 days prior to prepcom

- better early *coordination needed between African CS and overall CS 
like C&T group*

o otherwise we will have a Hammamet situation again

- *CS travel funding, especially for African CS needed*

o Tunisia’s 500.000 Dinar announced at PrepCom1

§ “this money won't leave the country”

§ will only be used for the summit, not prepcoms

o we need other sources to ensure participation at PrepComs

*WIPO*

Robin Gross reporting from *WIPO meeting on broadcasting treaty this week*

- anti-circumvention provisions

o Brazil wants to have this language removed

o CS too

- webcasting

o USA is virtually alone in demanding to extend the broadcasting treaty 
to webcasting

§ but the language is still in the draft

- exceptions for education, libraries etc., supported by developing 
countries and NGOs

o on the agenda of next meeting

- *Scandalous WIPO behaviour*

o WIPO people are really bullying delegates to accept the treaty

§ if that does not work, they go over their heads and call their capitals

o also problems with CS participation

§ this time no real CS input possible

§ CS speaking slots were almost completely dropped out

§ they only got one slot after some developing countries made a big deal 
of it

§ CS papers (official input) were taken from tables and found in trash 
afterwards

- Next steps

o Chair suggested regional meetings (easier to influence individual 
governments there)

o Brazil asked for an open intersessional meeting

§ seconded by Africa, India, Syria, Iran etc.

o Chair (Finland) dropped that out of the final report

o big fight between Brazil, India and others and the Chair

- weird situation: WIPO people arguing with member countries.

o India: It's not the role of the chair or of WIPO to argue with us - 
they should serve us!

o *WIPO is mostly independent of government funding*

- no agreement in the end, *whole process is under question now*



*Youth Caucus representation*

- MILSET wants to do a youth summit

o parallel to the WSIS summit 2005

o supported by Tunisia

- *no consultation with youth caucus*, though the latter has tried for 
months

- *Update from 22 November 2004*

o The Youth Caucus was waiting on reports from the meeting that took 
place last week (see www.milset.org <http://www.milset.org/>) to see if 
they would get through in some way.

o Some breakthrough has in fact occurred in that direction (via the 
Tunisian WSIS YC) - they will be sending a draft proposal in the next 
few days - which the Youth Caucus will input on.

o Hopefully this will be a continuous and reflective process.