[WSIS CS-Plenary] Civil Society Involvement in TF on Financing Mechanism

[Christoph Dietz]

Francis muguet at noos.fr 09/14 22:59  wrote:

>>>At Hammamet, Nishimoto made a remarkably open assessement of the
situation and invited all Civil Society stakeholders to participate and
provide input.

I had a look at the intervention of Mr. Nishimoto of UNDP at PrepCom1:
http://www.wsis-online.net/financing/documents/download/remarks-nishimoto%20Hammamet%20PDF.pdf?version_id=415954

I found his remarks quite disappointing. The basic stakeholders he
mentions are: "developing countries", "developed countries and
international financial organizations", "the private sector" and
"experts". At least in this paper civil society seems to appear
basically as an actor to implement the policies defined by others. In
addition, our central concerns are not directly addressed:
people-centred sustainable development, human rights, cultural and
linguistic diversity, public domain of global knowledge.

>>>I discussed with him for a long time later on because we have been
preparing for quite some time a proposition that would go beyond
that is proposed in the Cardoso report concerning the formation of
Multistakeholder Partnerships in general, and this of course this is of
interest for the implementation of WSIS recommendations.

Could you explain what the Cardoso report is?

>>> He was quite open to our preliminary suggestions and we started
working on it.

What are your suggestions and on behalf of whom did you present these
suggestions?

>>>As you known, this is a rather technical topic that requires both 
expertise and caution.

You are right: the topic requires expertise. But I disagree that
"Financing" is a "rather technical topic". What type of projects should
be funded? Who defines the project selection criteria? Who controls the
appropiate use? These are political questions as well.

>>>I hope that they are going to include Civil Society "experts"  or
representatives in their Bureau as I urged them to do.

If UNDP is interested in a multistakeholder partnership: they should
ask us not at an individual/personal level but as Plenary or Working
Group who could represent Civil Society in the Task Force. 

>>>Concerning the need of forming a Working Group on  Financing
Mechanims, Djilali Benamrane ( from Niger and with an extensive
experience about financing mechanisms with PNUD  )  and me have been
planning to offer such a suggestion to the Civil Society and open a web
site that should allow to present this proposal in the most transparent
and inclusive way : ( see http://www.wsis-finance.org or 
http://www.wsis-financing.org, we prefer the former because finance word
is the same word in French and English )  and a mailing list 
finance at wtis.org,
 as soon as the dust around the WGIG formation is setlled, because we
felt it would be difficult to catch the full attention of the Civil
Society
at the present time, but may be we should start sooner according to
your latest information.

Please, coordinate the setting-up of a mailing list with the few other
people who already have been working in this field, especially: the
Third World Institute from Uruguay (Pablo Accuosto, accuosto at chasque.net
and/or Roberto Bissio) and Rainer Kuhlen from NetEthics (Germany,
rk_iw at gmx.de).

Best regards

Christoph Dietz
CAMECO Latin America Projects
Postfach 10 21 04 
D-52021 Aachen, Germany
Tel.: 0049 - 241 - 70 13 12 14
Fax: 0049 - 241 - 70 13 12 33
christoph.dietz at cameco.org
http://www.cameco.org