[WSIS CS-Plenary] CS WSIS statement - feedback needed by 22:00 through caucuses

[djilali benamrane]

> I am sorry i cannot access to ct-dec at wsis-cS.org and
so i send Finance Caucus comment through the global
list.....
 
Please find here after between """" some rapid
proposals from
Finance caucus.... sorry for the poor English.... you
don't give us suffisant time to do better.
Congratulation for those who draft so quickly and so
efficiency.
Djilali

 
I. Introduction 
 
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
presented an opportunity to create conditions and
mobilize support of citizenry for the development of
democratic information societies, in which
communication would be the expression and interaction
of diverse voices, and knowledge a public good.
 
We entered the WSIS process with a few major goals:

 
“””” 1) influencing the new world economic and social
human sustainable development and for that we need new
financing mechanisms able to ensure a rapid
davelopement in poor and less developed countries. In
this matter, the WSIS proposals, including the Digital
Solidarity Fund remain inconsistant and
insuffisant”””””
 
1) influencing the political outcomes to ensure they
envisage a human-centred, just and
development-oriented information society
2) influencing the process to reach better
participation models 
3) continue providing valuable input from experts from
the field and grass-roots levels as well as ICT
experts and from academia, research 
 
4) ensuring continued multi-stakeholderism in
follow-up
 
“””” Despite lack of ressources and support and in a
difficult backround and world political
environment“””””, 

 we got an unexpected reward: civil society surprised
all other actors by its professionalism,
organizational capacity, expertise, creative
proposals, mobilization and general efficiency. We
feel we have contributed to empowering our community
and blazing new roads for like-minded communities to
come, in other summits.  
 
However, in most areas, WSIS hasn’t lived up to our
expectations. 
 
(Reference to CS benchmarks:
"Shaping Information Societies for Human Needs", Civil
Society Declaration to the World Summit on the
Information Society 2003)
 
Over four years of conferencing have yielded mixed
results. Human rights, privacy, the open paradigm in
capacity building and education, financial mechanisms
have not been addressed according to our benchmarks. A
few areas produced more acceptable, if not totally
satisfying, results.  Internet governance much more
reflects civil society’s input, if not outcome.
 
We have produced an assessment of four years of WSIS
process in order to improve our own strategies and to
keep feeding back into the post-Tunis phase.
 
II. From Information and Society to Finance and Power
 
WSIS presented an opportunity to create conditions and
mobilize support of citizenry for the development of
democratic information societies, in which
communication would be the expression and interaction
of diverse voices, and knowledge a public good.
 
Governments have avoided most of the opportunities,
while they made some progress in a few areas. We are
glad and even proud to some extent to say that much of
this progress is based on ideas that came from civil
society, and they ended up in the official outcomes
because we pushed persistently for them.
 
Social Justice and People-Centred Development
 
WSIS had the single official mandate of addressing
long-standing development problems in new ways that
opened up with the ICT revolution.  The summit was
expected to identify and articulate new development
possibilities and paradigms made possible in the
information society, and to evolve public policy
options for enabling and realising these
opportunities. WSIS in general has failed to live up
to these expectations. Especially the Tunis phase
which was presented as the “summit of solutions” did
not provide concrete achievements to meaningfully
address development priorities. 
(TBD: Mentioning more of where concretely
implementation and solutions were put forward.)
 
While WSIS has recognised the importance of open
source software, it has not asserted the significance
of this choice for development. The WSIS failed to
recognize community-owned infrastructure as crucial
development enabler. No commitments for financing
ICT4D investments were made that could have put
developing countries on a new development trajectory.
No reflection has been made on guaranteeing the
maintenance of ICT infrastructure. The WSIS process
failed to introduce specific ICT contributions into
the debate of the international development community
on citizen participation, democratisation, fight
against corruption, political transparency and
monitoring of public services. WSIS aims to contribute
to the achievement of the Millennium Development
Goals, but did not establish mechanisms for dialogue
with the international gender, health or education
community. No attempt has been made to use ICTs as
participatory tools for debating and monitoring the
National Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP). The
WSIS has further advanced the neo-liberal and
neo-conservative influence on the institutions of
global governance which have grave implications for
disadvantaged populations. Weak follow-up mechanisms
to the WSIS process leave few credible options for
continued public policy engagements at the global
level. The WSIS documents praise market mechanisms,
deregulation and liberalisation at the expense of
public investments in crucial ICTD areas.
Disadvantaged populations, least developed countries
or rural areas are no markets!
 
“”””” Centrality of Financing mechanisms to ensure the
emplementation of aims and goals :
(To writen in good English) The lack of financing
resources in poor contries constitutes the main
difficulties to be faced if we want that the
Information technologies be used, mastered and dognaed
for poor, illeterate and non trained populations......
We need sufficient resources to be collected and to be
allocated in transparency with adequate mechanism of
periodical evaluation, follow-up, and sanctions if
any, both for bad donnors and for bad users.
The huge needed financing volume must be collected
through obligatory processes of Official development
Aid (ODA) as suggested in Monterrey Summit and as
proposed by European Presidents in many recent High
level meetings. Financing Information technology
development must be considered among other priorities
as prioritized in National policies and
programmes......
Internet Access, by everybody, everywhere induadually
or collectively in rural and poor area must be
considered as a global public good to be provide
regardless the market rules because of such population
have not revenus to compete in market conditions
In many poor and or rural areas, priority is more in
providing radio, tv, rural telephony and other
collective access to basic, relevant and useful
information, than individual INTERNET access  ””””””””


      
Centrality of Human Rights


Djilali Benamrane : dbenamrane at yahoo.com
Tel/fax : (227) 75 35 09 BP 11207 - Niamey - Niger
Tél/Fax : (331) 01 45 39 77 02 Paris - France
Page web sur le Sommet Mondial sur la Societe de l'Information (SMSI) (mecanismes de financement) http://www.wsis-finance.org et groupe de discussion : http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/ 
Page web sur l'Afrique et la globalisation : http://www.multimania.com/djilalibenamrane/
Groupe de discussion: http://www.egroups.com/list/afriqueglobalization


		
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