[WSIS CS-Plenary] RE: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Communiqué de Presse de la Société Civile

Fri Mar 4 16:13:22 GMT 2005

Surely the real problem with all of this is the issue of who is Civil Society and how on earth can a small self-selected group such as those who have the time and resources to attend a two week conference in Geneva "represent" Civil Society in any meaningful way? 

I'm not in anyway disparaging the capability or commitment of those who did attend but only to make the self-evident observation that Civil Society (however it is defined or constituted) is rather broader and more diverse than what is represented here and that the real issue remains how to provide a meaningful and effective voice for this "larger civil society" and some useful process of legitimation/accountability for those who are able/willing to become "representatives" for CS in forums such as the WSIS Prepcoms (and beyond?)!

It seems to me further, that there is a very real danger in the drive towards a "Multistakeholder" follow-up to WSIS. It seems likely on the basis of current practice, that this lack of legitimation and representativeness will in fact be perpetuated in this forum as well, with the result that the role of Governments as the democratically constituted (and thus formally "accountable" at least in theory) "representatives" of citizens are demoted to simply another stakeholder group (although what their "stakes" might be apart from representing their and their citizen's interests I'm rather loathe to contemplate); the private sector is of course "non-accountably" pursuing their interests; and these new CS stakeholders again without any formal structure of accountability or representativeness are meant to represent the interests of everyone else.  

Hmmm... Quite honestly, I don't see this as any sort of advance, in fact given now-fading memories of mid-century European history I see significant dangers in this type of "multi-faceted" approach to "governance" issues.

Mike Gurstein

-----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org] On Behalf Of Rik Panganiban
Sent: March 4, 2005 3:58 PM
To: plenary at wsis-cs.org
Subject: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: Communiqué de Presse de la Société Civile

Ralf, et al,

I will take some responsibility for the Press Release as it was drafted. Adina took on the difficult job of pulling together what input she received verbally and via email on Thursday and Friday, and worked hard to integrate it into a single, short press statement over the weekend. I received an early draft of it and should have alerted her to the problematic nature of drafting and getting approval for a "civil society press release." Instead I just word-smithed the draft and sent it back to her.

In retrospect, the most transparent and inclusive way this could have gone out was for it to either be simply a compilation of quotes from various sources, i.e.
- According to Ralf Bendrath of Boell Foundation, "This Prepcom was crap!." 
- Anne-Marie on behalf of the Women's Caucus noted that "This was a complete waste of time!" 
- Rikke of the Human Rights Caucus expressed her disatisfaction that "our views were ignored" etc. 

And then have links to complete statements somewhere else on the web. Other coalitions and networks that I have been involved with have compiled press releases in this fashion. This neatly avoids the need to summarize the "view of civil society," which is kind of impossible.

Otherwise this should have gone out simply as a press release on behalf of the CS "secretariat" of CONGO / ICV / NGLS -- full stop.

My apologies for adding to any breakdown of our processes and trust. 

Rik Panganiban
CONGO

On Mar 3, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Ralf Bendrath wrote:

Dear all,

I am also not happy about the press release, neither on the content nor on the procedural side.

Renata Bloem schrieb:

This was not a statement of CONGO.

But CONGO wrote it, refined it and sent it out, without any consultation with the plenary or whomever. Right? Given the fact that the final Content & Themes meeting where we collected points for Adina to include was on Friday evening, and the press release only was published on Wednesday, there would have been enough time to send out a first draft for further confirmation. That's how we did it before, like at PrepCom3a when I wrote the final CS press statement.

> In fact we have not submitted a single sentence to it.
But who wrote it then? The press release does not at all reflect the general discussion we had on the state of the process etc.

"Despite some concerns about WSIS "losing its vision" and "moving away
from the Geneva Declaration track", civil society entities were
generally satisfied with the response by governments to their efforts in
making the peoples' voices heard in "bridging the digital divide"."

Here I fully agree with Jean-Louis: We (any especially the folks who worked hard on financing issues at the Prepcom) are certainly not "satisfied with the response by governments". Quite the opposite.

Adina was asked to make an amalgam of the submissions she had received. and in order to avoid any misunderstanding / possible conflicts she decided not to refer to any specific entity / group / caucus, but to use more a general language 

That is fine, as long as the submissions are still somewhere incorporated.

BUT: I find no single sentence on Human Rights here, though the Human Rights Caucus had sumbitted language. Nothing on the lack of a Human Rights focus in the summit drafts, nothing on Tunisia as the host country, nothing on accreditation problems of NGOs like Human Rights in China. But then it mentions accreditation problems in WIPO. Why?

And most of the press release is applauding the improvements in the multi-stakeholder process. But were there really any? We had our usual 15 minutes a day like we had two years ago. On the last day we did not even get these. The improvement is only on the substance side: They listen to us, because they either have no clue and need our input, or they have learned to take us serious. So, if we want to applaud anybody for the bigger impact we might have had during this PrepCom, it should be ourselves. BTW: Empirical research done on WSIS phase one suggests that CS impact is bigger in the early stages and gets smaller and smaller towards the end, when all that counts is the government's agreement.

So, to me, this press release looks like somebody (if not CONGO, then who else?) wants to play extremely nice and by doing this is silencing all more outspoken and critical voices in civil society. Fine with me if some groups want to do this, but then they can't claim to speak for all civil society.

I totally agree with Renata: We are lacking a clear press structure and really should work on it for PrepCom3.

But while we don't have an agreed structure, things like these have to be done the most careful and inclusive way. And that normally includes a feedback loop on the plenary list, even more if there are a few days of time. Otherwise, we get a PR disaster like this and enlarge the divides between different groups of civil society in the WSIS.

Ralf

===============================================
RIK PANGANIBAN Communications Coordinator
Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CONGO) 
web: http://www.ngocongo.org
email: rik.panganiban at ngocongo.org
mobile: (+1) 917-710-5524 

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