[WSIS CS-Plenary] Fwd: ON EVE OF UN SUMMIT, PROGRESS MADE ON GLOBAL INFORMATION, TECH AGREEMENTS

[Rik Panganiban]

Here's a Press Release on the WSIS from the UN News Centre.

- Rik

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "UN News Service" <UNNews at un.org>
> Date: November 15, 2005 6:12:02 PM EST
> To: <news10 at list.un.org>
> Subject: ON EVE OF UN SUMMIT, PROGRESS MADE ON GLOBAL INFORMATION,  
> TECH AGREEMENTS
> Reply-To: <UNNews at un.org>
>
> ON EVE OF UN SUMMIT, PROGRESS MADE ON GLOBAL INFORMATION, TECH  
> AGREEMENTS
> New York, Nov 15 2005  6:00PM
> On the eve of a major summit that aims to bridge the “digital  
> divide” – the gap in access to information technologies between  
> affluent and poor communities – the head of the United Nations  
> telecommunications organization said that there was already headway  
> on major issues and attendance had surpassed expectations.
>
> In his opening remarks to the press on the eve of the Tunis phase  
> of the World Summit on the Information Society (<"http:// 
> www.itu.int/wsis/">WSIS), to be held from 16 to 18 November, the  
> Secretary-General of the International Telecommunications Union  
> (<"http://www.itu.int/home/index.html">ITU), Yoshio Utsumi,  
> announced that by this morning, 23,000 participants had registered  
> with 12,000 arrivals recorded so far.
>
> About 173 countries are represented at the Summit and over 50 heads  
> of State and Government are expected to attend.
>
> While the first phase – held in Geneva in 2003 – established the  
> principles of the Information Society and outlined an action plan,  
> the Tunis phase is the “Summit of Solutions,” Mr. Utsumi said.
>
> He hailed progress in the negotiations toward that end, especially  
> the headway made this morning on Internet governance. Consensus  
> seems to be emerging on forming a forum to discuss the future of  
> the world-wide network. “This management should be more democratic  
> and multilateral,” he said.
>
> Compromise had yet to be reached on how to implement the action  
> plan, he said, but he was pleased to have achieved nearly 80 per  
> cent of the goals. New ideas have been forthcoming from scientists,  
> and in five years the outlook would be quite different. He was  
> quite confident of connecting the world by 2015, including the  
> 800,000 villages that remain disconnected from information and  
> communication technologies.
>
> “In order to connect these villages we need about $1 billion,” Mr  
> Utsumi said. “Every year about $100 billion is invested in the  
> mobile telephone system, so only 1 per cent of this amount is  
> needed to achieve the target.”
>
> Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has arrived in  
> Tunis, has been meeting on information issues with local officials,  
> as well as Israel’s Foreign Minister and heads of UN agencies  
> attending the Summit.
>
> Shashi Tharoor, UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and  
> Public Information, expressed concerns over what he called the  
> “content divide” and freedom of expression, at a press conference  
> on the World Electronic Media Forum (WEMF) taking place in parallel  
> with the Summit.
>
> What passed for global media remained, in reality, the media of the  
> developed West, where most of the world’s Internet hosts were, he  
> said.
>
> “Access to the Internet is growing but is of little value if the  
> bulk of the information that it reveals is in a language you don’t  
> understand or if it fails to deal with life and death questions  
> that affect your family or your society,” he said.
>
> On the issue of press freedom, Mr. Tharoor acknowledged that  
> Internet, the “medium without a passport” posed challenges to all  
> governments as they sought to find a legal environment that  
> fostered freedom of expression without trampling on other  
> legitimate rights.
>  2005-11-15 00:00:00.000
>


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

* Information on the WSIS at http://www.ngocongo.org/wsis
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