FW: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Civil Society and the Multi-Stakeholderism

[mclauglm at po.muohio.edu]

I must correct myself on a couple of items below (before someone else 
does:-): 1) the UN Charter was signed by 50 countries in 1945--two 
months later, the inclusion of Poland brought the number to 51; 2) 
not all original member-states were from Western nations (I 
inadvertently omitted an "almost" below) but the majority were so.

In fairness to the ICC, the debate about allowing "private 
organizations" access  to, and consultative status with, the UN 
involved the much broader issue of whether or not NGOs (defined as 
any non-state actor at that time) should be afforded these privileges 
or whether the UN should be a state-centric organization that would 
not be influenced directly by civil society organizations.

Apologies (I'm not a morning person),

Lisa



>Richard makes an excellent point about the assumption that the WSIS 
>represents the first real dialogue on MSPs (an assumption that's 
>easy to make, given how the ITU hyped this process to CS under the 
>"common vision" logo). In fact, arguments about bringing in 
>non-state actors began within one year of the establishment of the 
>UN in 1945, after the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC, parent 
>company of our CCBI friends) was granted high-level consultative 
>status, thanks to the efforts of groups from the United States to 
>lobby for the participation of private organizations in the 
>deliberations of the UN and its specialized agencies. I believe that 
>there were approximately 24 nation-states comprising the UN in those 
>days, all Western countries, the majority of which opposed the 
>inclusion of the ICC as a consultant to the UN.
>
>Lisa
>