[WSIS CS-Plenary] Summary of the Briefing for NGOs on WSIS outcomes (7 december 2005)

Fri Dec 16 18:44:39 GMT 2005

Dear all, 

For those who could not attend the briefing for NGOs organised in Geneva (7
December) on WSIS outcomes, you can find below a summary of the main
discussion.

Best regards, 

Philippe Dam
CONGO - WSIS CS Secretariat 
11, Avenue de la Paix
CH-1202 Geneva
Tel: +41 22 301 1000
Fax: +41 22 301 2000
E-mail:  <mailto:wsis at ngocongo.org> wsis at ngocongo.org
Website:  <BLOCKED::http://www.ngocongo.org> www.ngocongo.org 

The Conference of NGOs (CONGO) is an international, membership association
that facilitates the participation of NGOs in United Nations debates and
decisions. Founded in 1948, CONGO's major objective is to ensure the
presence of NGOs in exchanges among the world's governments and United
Nations agencies on issues of global concern.  For more information see our
website at www.ngocongo.org <BLOCKED::http://www.ngocongo.org/> 

============================

Briefing on WSIS outcomes

7 December 2005, Palais des Nations Geneva

Renate Bloem, President of CONGO, introduced the discussion, underlining
that the way civil society was called to participate in the Summit,
including its preparatory process, was a major breakthrough. Apart from
this, the content outcome of WSIS was sometimes less satisfying, and she
therefore pointed to the on-going drafting of a Civil Society Statement
which would draw a more visionary outlook of the future. 

Overview from the key actors from the process

Mr Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary General of the Summit and of ITU, highlighted
the unique role of all stakeholders in WSIS and its preparatory process. The
ITU strongly pushed for such an enhanced participatory mechanism. Mr. Utsumi
said he had proposed a much higher standard for stakeholder participation,
such as a full participation in the discussion process and a membership for
civil society and private sector at the intergovernmental Bureau. In spite
of the governmental refusals of such proposals, he mentioned the
participation of civil society steadily increased throughout the process, so
that at the end stakeholders fully participated in the final negotiations.
The challenge for civil society was now to establish a truly
multi-stakeholder mechanism in the follow-up and implementation, by
continuing this inclusiveness and sense of ownership of the WSIS. Mr. Utsumi
promised he would perform all necessary efforts to that end. 

Ambassador Janis Karklins, President of WSIS Phase II Preparatory Committee,
supported the view that the way civil society was involved created a strong
precedent in the history of the UN Summits, in particular the example of the
Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) in which civil society and the
private sector participated in an equal footing with State representatives.
Some States considered WGIG as the end of the pure intergovernmental
machinery. 

However, in the implementation and follow-up mechanisms, the
intergovernmental framework is preserved for the time being: an ECOSOC
functional commission (Commission on Science and Technology for
Development), to be given a new mandate at the next ECOSOC session in July
2006, would be in charge of follow-up, and the challenge for civil society
would be to influence the work of governments; multi-stakeholder
implementation would be organised around themes and action lines; the
question of multi-stakeholder policy debate under the UN umbrella would
depend on the way the Global Alliance would be established. 

He added that the WSIS package (i.e. Geneva + Tunis) must now be endorsed in
New York by the GA. Tunisia is working to prepare a draft Resolution and
expects to present it by the end of this year or by early January 2006. 

Mr. Charles Geiger, WSIS Executive Director, gave some figures regarding
WSIS Phase II: 11 regional meetings and 29 thematic meetings, 5 rounds of
accreditation, 1300 NGOs accredited in addition to those in ECOSOC
consultative status, 42 heads of States and 174 States present in Tunis.

On the implementation and follow-up, he highlighted that ITU would play the
role defined in the WSIS text. The role of all stakeholders in the UN CSTD
is still to be defined. 

Internet Governance

Since Ambassador Khan could not be present because of last-minute intense
negotiations on the Red Cross emblems, Ambassador Karklins also spoke about
Internet Governance outcomes. He admitted that Internet Governance was one
of the central issues of the second phase of the Summit. The WGIG set up a
working definition on Internet Governance, not only including the
administration of core Internet resources, but also a broad range of policy
issues related to the Internet such as interconnection, cyber-crime and
security. The WGIG recommendations were the basis of intergovernmental
negotiations. 

Since in general the Tunis outcome has been well received in New York, in
particularly the creation of an Internet Governance Forum (IGF), it is
expected that open consultations on the shape and working methods would take
place probably in early March and a very practical agenda must be
established in advance. Civil society should not hesitate to forward its
views to the UN SG office. By the end of the second quarter of 2006, the UN
SG should convene the 1st meeting of the Forum. 

On the enhanced cooperation for oversight functions, in spite of the
difficult wording of the outcome document, the Board of ICANN, in line with
the WSIS decisions, established a joint Working Group of ICANN and the
Government Advisory Committee (GAC) to further develop proposals to enhance
cooperation. This would include the improvement of the working methods of
GAC, better secretariat assistance, and improved participation of developing
countries. 

Charles Geiger expressed some more pessimism on the future of the IGF, and
stated the risk that the IGF would be more a traditional intergovernmental
organ with open-ended participation rather than a truly multi-stakeholder
body. Indeed all modalities would still have to be discussed, including
rules for participation, accreditation of observers, with a risk of strong
drawback on the way multi-stakeholder participation should be implemented
and the need to start again the whole negotiation on almost fully accepted
elements at the end of WSIS. 

Bill Drake, President of CPSR and former member of the WGIG, praised the way
Ambassador Khan had chaired the negotiations on Internet Governance. In
relation to Mr. Geiger's remark, he stated that civil society understanding
was that the IGF would be an open multi-stakeholder process; if not the
Forum is dead. He said all actors involved assisted in sort of a win-win
situation for many major actors on IG, in which the USA, the European Union,
the private sector and civil society were more or less satisfied with the
outcomes. He underlined major outcomes: 

-          The constitution of a strong CS coalition around Internet
Governance and a major interest in this issue. Eight WGIG members came from
civil society, with major outcomes in the final process. The question
remains how to organise civil society to carry out the up coming process.

-          Multi-stakeholder participation is recognised as the only viable
way to deal with Internet Governance: governments made their mind that they
need to have civil society involved, and WSIS demonstrated that a stronger
multi-stakeholder process can fully work.

-          A broader holistic vision of Internet Governance was endorsed,
not only limited to the DNS and core internet resources, but also
interconnections, spam, allowing for a multidimensional look at these
issues. 

-          Oversight functions for the Domain Name System: all participants
agreed with WGIG recommendations that no single government should have
domination on major internet resources. More open multilateral models should
be established in this regard. 

-          Creation of the IG Forum: the civil society IG Caucus started
lobbying for a forum already in 2003. It now has to see the way the Forum
would be established to better monitor trends in Internet Governance,
improve awareness and capacity building for developing countries

Financing Mechanisms

Ambassador Karklins recognised the absence of additional resources and the
WSIS agreement to welcome the set up of the Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF)
and the use of existing resources. In fact, he said, the WSIS outcomes in
terms of financing are still open. In relation to the DSF it would depend on
the way the fund would be managed.

Ambassador Astrid Dufborg, ICT Advisor for the Permanent Mission of Sweden,
made a much stronger statement, highlighting the failure of WSIS to fully
address the digital divide: the initial priority of the Summit has not
provided any strong outcome on ICT for Development, lacked realism and
priority. The Outcome Document provided some wishful recommendations but not
any practical answer on how to bridge the digital divide. 

For the donor community, the market was still seen as the main finance
source for infrastructures, but public funding and more involvement are also
needed. According to her, the DSF, as the only solution endorsed by the
Summit after a quite poor debate, would not be a viable solution to bridge
the digital divide. Compared to the work of WGIG, the work of the Task Force
on Financial Mechanisms (TFFM) was not given space enough in WSIS. Therefore
the whole discussion on how to bridge the digital divide is still to be
done. 

The MDG and Monterrey processes were also too much left aside, whereas
discussions related to the use of ICTs should be more deeply integrated in
poverty reduction strategies.

Ms. Heba Hage, from Global Knowledge Partnership, underlined the importance
of multi-stakeholder partnerships in the implementation of WSIS follow-up.
Drawing from the experience of the GKP and its participation in the WSIS
process, in any areas such as education, access to knowledge, partnerships
would be major elements for resource mobilization for action at the national
and regional levels to bridge the digital divide. 

Human Rights

Mr. Wolf Ludwig, from the Swiss NGO Platform Communica-ch, underscored that
human rights was one of the several issues of the 1st Phase, and was all
along WSIS a crosscutting aspect in many thematic issues. He was still
hoping at the end of WSIS I that the HR aspect would not become so
prominent, but after several incidents occurred during PrepCom-1 and
PrepCom-2, Communica-ch and other NGOs did not see any HR improvement in the
Host Country. International civil society could not continue its
participation without raising this situation again at PrepCom-3 and in
Tunis. It has been a necessity to make Human Rights a major issue within the
WSIS context and therefore to organize a Citizen Summit. Mr. Ludwig recalled
the incidents occurred during the Summit in Tunisia: the citizen summit was
not allowed to take place, other meetings were prevented to take place, the
statement of the Swiss President was censored on Tunisian media. 

He also mentioned the letter addressed to Kofi Anna on this situation, to be
signed by NGOs. He lastly called for the UN to think about these basis
elements for the organisation of future World Summits.

Before opening the floor for comments and questions, Renate Bloem
underscored that Tunisia organised this UN Summit very well. At the same
time it would have been a golden opportunity for Tunisia to demonstrate its
commitments for human rights. The message from civil society, including the
statement delivered by Shirin Ebadi at the opening ceremony on behalf of
civil society, should be a strong signal for the respect of human rights
everywhere and for a more proactive involvement of the overall NGO community
in the different regions. The more civil society entities work together, the
more its voice would be heard without selectivity. 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/pipermail/plenary/attachments/20051216/73d41ce7/attachment.htm