[WSIS CS-Plenary] CS Declaration: next steps

[Elizabeth Carll, PhD]

Dear Ralf and all,

I have pasted below the most recent draft of the CS Declaration for 2005,
which was posted by Karen Banks.  There appears to be some confusion between
the apparent 2 documents: the CS Statement and the CS Declaration, which is
pasted below.  The revised section on Access to Health Information, which I
submitted, was intended for the CS Declaration below.

Thanks again for all your help.

Elizabeth

Dr. Elizabeth Carll
Health and ICT Working Group

-----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org]On
Behalf Of karen banks
Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 6:33 PM
To: plenary at wsis-cs.org; plenary at wsis-cs.org
Subject: Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] please post draft CS Declaration


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hi sasha

here's a cut and paste text version - i haven't done any reformatting..

karen
=====

WSIS Civil Society Declaration DRAFT V1

18 November 2005


I. Introduction


The WSIS was an opportunity for a wide range of
actors to work together to develop principles and
prioritise actions that would lead to democratic,
inclusive and participate information societies;
societies in which the ability to access, share
and communication information and knowledge is
treated as a public good and take place in a ways
that strengthens the rich cultural diversity of our world.


Civil society entered the WSIS process with these major goals:


Agreement on financing mechanisms and models that
will close the growing gaps in access to
information and communation tools, capacities and
infrastructure that exist between countries, and in many cases within
countries

A vision of the ‘information society’ that is
human-centred, frame by a global commitment to
social justice and inclusive development

Achieving a sea change in perceptions of
participate decision-making. We want the WSIS to
be a milestone from which the inclusion of civil
society participation will become more
comprehensive and integrated at all levels of
governance and decision making at local, national, regional and global
levels


Civil society wants to affirm that it has
contributed positively to the WSIS process. This
contribution could have been greater if our
participation was allowed to be be more
comprehensive. Our contribution will continue
beyond the Summit. It is a contribution that is
made both through constructive engagement and through challenge and
critique.


While we value the process, and the outcomes, we
believe more could have been achieved,
particularly in terms of financial mechanisms and
capacity building (of governments and of civil society and other actors).


II: Issues addressed during WSIS phase II


A. Financing


The summit did discuss the importance of new
financing mechanisms for ICTD, however it failed
to recognize that ICTD financing presents a
challenge beyond that of traditional development
financing. It requires new means and sources and
the exploration of new models and mechanisms.


Investments in ICTD - in infrastructure, capacity
building, appropriate software and hardware and
in developing applications and services –
underpin all other processes of development
innovation, learning and sharing, and should be
seen in the light. Though development resources
are admittedly scarce and have to be allocated to
with care and discretion, ICTD financing should
not be viewed as directly in competition with
financing of other developmental sectors.


Financing ICTD requires innovation, with adequate
mechanisms for transparency, evaluation, and
follow-up. Financial resources need to be
mobilised at all levels – local, national and
international, including through realization of
ODA commitments agreed at the Monterrey Summit.


Internet access, for everybody and everywhere,
especially among disadvantaged populations and in
rural areas, must be considered as a global
public good. Markets may not address the
connectivity needs of these sections, and these
areas. In many such areas, initial priority may
need to be given to provide traditional ICTs -
radio, TV, video and telephony - while developing
conditions to bring complete internet connectivity to them.


Civil society was able to introduce significant
sections in the Tunis commitment (para 35) and in
Tunis agenda (para 21) on the importance of
public policy in mobilizing resources for
financing, which served to balance the pro-market
orientation of much of the text on financing.


B. Human rights


Centrality of Human Rights

The Information Society must be based on human
rights as laid out in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. This includes civil and
political rights, as well as social, economic and
cultural rights. Human rights and development are
closely linked. There can be no development
without human rights, No human rights without
development. This has been affirmed time and
again, and was strongly stated in the Vienna
World Conference of Human Rights in 1993. It was
also affirmed in the WSIS 2003 Declaration of
Principles. All legislation, politics, and
actions involved in developing the global
information society must respect, protect and
promote human rights standards and the rule of law.

Despite the Geneva commitment to an Information
Society respectful of human rights, there is
still a long way ahead. A number of human rights
were barely addressed in the Geneva Declaration
of Principles. This includes the cross-cutting
principle of non-discrimination, gender equality,
and workers rights. The crucial right to privacy,
which is the basis of autonomous personal
development and thus at the root of the exertion
of many other fundamental human rights, is only
mentioned in the Geneva Declaration as part of "a
global culture of cyber-security". In the Tunis
Commitment, it has disappeared, to make room for
extensive underlining of security needs, as if
privacy were a threat to security, whereas the
opposite is true: privacy is an essential
requirement to security. Other rights were more
explicitly addressed, but are de facto violated
on a daily basis. This goes for freedom of
expression, freedom of information, freedom of
association and assembly, the right to a fair
trial, the right to education, and the right to a
standard of living adequate for the health

and well-being of the individual and his or her family.


Furthermore, as the second WSIS phase has
amplified, one thing is formal commitment,
another one is implementation. Post WSIS there is
an urgent need to strengthen the means of human
rights enforcement in the information society, to
enhance human rights proofing of national
legislation and practises, to strengthen
education and awareness raising on rights-based
development, to transform human rights standards
into ICT policy recommendations; and to
mainstream ICT issues into the global and
regional human rights monitoring system – in
summary: To move from declarations and
commitments into action. Toward this end, an
independent commission should be established to
review national and international ICT regulations
and practices and their compliance with
international human rights standards. This
commission should also address the potential
applications of ICTs to the realization of human
rights in the information society.


C. Internet Governance


Civil society is pleased with the decision to
adopt its proposal for the creation an Internet
governance Forum (IGF). We are also satisfied
that it will have sufficient scope to deal with
the issues that we believe need to be dealt with.


We are concerned, however, about the absence of
details on how this forum will be created and on
how it will be funded. We insist that the
modalities of the forum be determined in full
cooperation with civil. We would like to
emphasize that the success of the IGF, as in most
areas of Internet governance, will be impossible
without the full participation of civil society.
By full participation we mean not merely playing
an advisory role, or being present, but in
setting agendas and influencing outcomes.


The Tunis Agenda addressed the issue of political
oversight of critical Internet resources. This,
in itself, is an achievement. It is also
important that governments realized the need for
the development of a set of public policy
principles that would frame political oversight of Internet resources.


It was important that governments realized that
developing these principles should be a shared
responsibility. It is, however, very unfortunate,
that the Tunis Agenda suggests that governments
are only willing to share this role and
responsibility among themselves, in cooperation
with international organisations. Civil society
persists in its demand that public policy is not
public if civil society is not involved in its formulation.


With regard to Paragraph 40 we are disappointed
that there is no mention that efforts to combat
cybercrime need to be excercised in the context
of checks and balances provided by fundamental
human rights, particularly freedom of expression and privacy.


To ensure that Internet governance and
development take place in the public interest, it
is necessary for people who use the Internet
understand how the DNS is functioning, how IP
addresses are allocated, what basic legal
instruments exist in fields like cyber-crime,
Intellectual Property Rights, eCommerce,
e-government, and human rights. Therefore the
ongoing creation of public awareness is the
responsibility of everyone involved in the
governance and development of the Internet and
emerging information and communication platforms.


D. Global governance


A world that is increasingly connected faces a
greater number of common issues which need to be
addressed by global governance institutions and
processes. We are concerned that during the WSIS
it emerged that many governments of the world
lack faith in, and appear to be unwilling to
invest authority and resources in the existing multi-lateral system.


While civil society recognises that there are
flaws and inefficiencies in the United Nations
system, we believe strongly that it remains the
most democratic intergovernmental forum, where
rich and poor countries have equal rights to speak and participate.


In our understanding summits take place precisely
to develop the principles that will underpin
global public policy and governance structures;
to address critical issues, and decide on
appropriate responses to these issues. Shrinking
global public policy spaces raises serious
questions of the kind of global governance that
we are headed towards, and what this signifies
for people who are socially, economically and
politically marginlised: people who most rely on
public policy to protect their interests.


E. Participation


In the course of four years, as a result of
constant pressure from civil society,
improvements in civil society participation has
been achieved, including speaking rights in
official plenaries and sub-committees and
ultimately right to observe in drafting groups.
The Working Group on Internet Governance created
an innovative format where governments and civil
society actors sat on an equal footing and civil
society actually carried a large part of the drafting load.


Due to the pressure of time and the need of
governments to interact with CS actors in the
Internet Governance field, the resumed session of
PrepCom3 was in act the most open. We would like
to suggest that this openess contributed to
PrepCom3a, against all odds, reaching consensus.


WSIS has therefore demonstrated beyond any doubt
the benefits of interaction between all
stakeholders. The innovative rules of
participation established in this process will be
fully documented to provide in the future a new
reference point and a benchmark for participants
in UN organizations and processes.


Civil society thanks those governments of that
greatly supported CS participation in the WSIS
processes. We hope and expect that these
processes of participation are taken further and
strengthened, especially in more politically
contested spaces of global policy making such as
IPR, trade, environment and peace and disarmament.


We note that some governments of the South were
not actively supportive of greater civil society
participation as they believe it can lead to
undue dominance of debate and opinions by
international and northern civil society
organisations. We believe that to change this
perception, they should engage in efforts to
strengthen the presence, independence and
participation of CS constituencies in their own countries.


As for the period beyond the Summit, the Tunis
documents establish clearly that the soon-to-be
created Internet Governance Forum, and the future
mechanisms for implementation and follow-up
(including the revision of the mandate of the
Commission on Science and Technology for
Development) must take into account the multi-stakeholder approach.


We want to express concern at the vagueness of
text referring to the role of civil society.
Currently in almost every paragraph talking about
multi-stakeholder participation, the words “in
their respective roles and responsibilities” are
used to limit the degree of multi-stakeholder
participation. This limitation is due to the
refusal of governments to recognize the full
range of the roles and responsibilities of civil
society. Instead of the reduced capabilities
assigned in paragraph 35C of the Tunis Agenda
that attempt to restrict civil society to a
community role, governments should have referred
to the list of roles and responsibilities
assigned to civil society by the WGIG report. Specifically these are:


Awareness raising and capacity building (knowledge, training, skills
sharing);

Promote various public interest objectives

Facilitate network building;

Mobilize citizens in democratic processes;

Bring perspectives of marginalized groups
including for example excluded communities and grassroots activists;

Engage in policy processes;

Bring expertise, skills, experience and knowledge
in a range of ICT policy areas contributing to
policy processes and policies that are more
bottom-up, people-centered and ­inclusive;

Research and development of technologies and standards;

Development and dissemination of best practices;

Helping to ensure that political and market
forces are accountable to the needs of all members of society;

Encourage social responsibility and good governance practice;

Advocate for development of social projects and
activities that are critical but may not be ‘fashionable’ or profitable;

Contribute to ­shaping visions of human-centred
information societies based on human rights,
sustainable development, social justice and empowerment.

Civil society has reason for concern that the few
concessions obtained in the last few days under
the pressure of time from countries refusing the
emergence of a truly multi-stakeholder format
will be at risk in the coming months.


Civil society actors therefore intend to remain
actively mobilized. They need to proactively
ensure that not only the needed future structures
be established in a truly multi-stakeholder
format but also that the discussions preparing
their mandates are conducted in an open,
transparent and inclusive manner, allowing
participation of all stakeholders on an equal footing.



III. Other issues


Social Justice and People-Centred Development

[unedited text] 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.


Gender Equality

[unedited text] Considering the affirmation of
unequivocal support for gender equality and
women’s empowerment expressed in the Geneva
Declaration of Principles and paying careful
attention to Paragraph 23 of the Tunis
Commitment, all government signatories must
ensure that national policies, programmes and
strategies developed and implemented to build a
people-centred, inclusive and
development-oriented Information Society
demonstrate significant commitment to the
principles of gender equality and women’s empowerment.


We emphasise that financial structures and
mechanisms need to be geared towards addressing
the gender divide, including the provision of
adequate budgetary allocations. Comprehensive
gender-disaggregated data and indicators have to
be developed at national levels to enable and
monitor this process. We urge all governments to
take positive action to ensure institutions and
practices, including those of the private sector,
do not result in discrimination against women.
Governments that are parties to CEDAW are in fact
bound to this course of action.


Equal and active participation of women is
essential, especially in decision-making. This
includes all fora that will be established in
relation to WSIS and the issues it has taken up.
With that, there is a need for capacity building
that is focussed at women’s engagement with the
shaping of an Information Society at all levels,
including policy making on infrastructure
development, financing, and technology choice.


There is a need for real effort and commitment to
transforming the masculinist culture embedded
within existing structures and discourses of the
Information Society which serves to reinforce
gender disparity and inequality. Without full,
material and engaged commitment to the principle
of gender equality, women’s empowerment and
non-discrimination, the vision of a just and
equitable information society cannot be achieved.


Access to Knowledge and the Public Domain

[unedited text and does not include health text]
Each generation of humankind is depending upon
its predecessors to leave them with a livable,
sustainable and stable environment. The
environment we were discussing throughout the
WSIS is the public domain of global knowledge.
Like our planet with its natural resources, that
domain is the heritage of all humankind and the
reservoir from which new knowledge is created.
Limited monopolies, such as copyrights and
patents were originally conceived as tools to
serve that public domain of global knowledge to the benefit of

humankind. Whenever society grants monopolies, a
delicate balance must be struck: careless
monopolization will make the our heritage
unavailable to most people, to the detriment of all.


In the discussions we had throughout the past
years, it became quite clear that this balance
has been upset by the interests of the
rights-holding industry as well as the
digitalization. Humankind now has the power to
instantaneously share knowledge in real-time and
without loss. Civil Society has worked hard to
defend that ability for all of humankind. Free
Software is an integral part of this
ability:Software is the cultural technique and
most regulator of the digital age. Access to it
determines who may participate in a digital world.


Access to health information

[unedited text] Access to health information and
knowledge is essential to collective and
individual human development and has been
identified as a critical factor in the public
physical and mental healthcare crises around the
world. Therefore, it is essential that healthcare
systems include a holistic approach that
addresses the prevention, treatment, and
promotion of mental and physical health care for
all people and in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).


Traditional and newer ICTs such as the Internet,
telemedicine and telecenters will facilitate the
expansion of physical and mental health expertise
and scientific knowledge to benefit disease
stricken, as well as traumatized populations
affected by war, terrorism, disaster and other
events. The implementation of ICT systems for
physical and mental health information and
services must be a two-way path recognizing
cultural and community norms and values.


Privacy of health information is paramount for
the well-being of all nations. Therefore sound
public policy must be developed to protect the
privacy of people's physical and mental health
information, as well as effective technological
security measures. It is essential that healthcare

specialists participate in the development of
public policy addressing privacy and other
healthcare issues affecting healthcare information and delivery systems.]


Education and research

[unedited] If we want future generations to
understand the real basis of the Technical
Culture of the Digital Age, the whole « open »
paradigm has to be taken in as a full package,
especially using free software and open content
and courseware as one of the best ways we can
recommend. If not, they will become only users
and consumers of information technologies,
instead of active participants and well informed
citizens in the information society. Free
Software and open courseware are the most
emancipatory choices for all education-based
activities as it encourages schooling of the mind
over product schooling, while upholding the
scientific principles of independence and creativity.


We are happy that universities, museums,
archives, libraries have been recognized as
playing an important role as public institutions
and with the community of researchers and
academics, but telecenters are missing. Community
informatics, telecenters and human resources like
computer professionals have to be promoted, so
that ICTs serve training and not training serve ICTs.


While WSIS has recognised the importance of open
source software, it has not asserted the
significance of this choice for development. It
is silent on other issues like open content

(which goes beyond open access to academic
publications), new open telecom paradigms and
community-owned infrastructure as important development enablers.


The WSIS fails to recognise that ICTD investments
have multiplier effects on all sectors of
development, and therefore require special
provisions. Open source and free modalities are
presented in the same paragraph as proprietary
software “ in accordance with their interests and
with the needs to have reliable services and
implement effective programmes for their people »
but the same paragraph reiterates « the
importance of proprietary software in the markets
of the countries ». so it defeats the purpose
somewhat and shows free software as ancillary,
wit the further risk of hybrid platforms and no
mention that there should be no patents for interoperability with open
source.


The two WSIS action lines on education and
capacity building are not really linked to ensure
they work together in the same direction. This
increases the risk for duplicates, for scattering
of finances and financing mechanisms. There is no
clear indication on where they are going; no
indication that they should build critical minds
for the sake of creativity; no indication that it
should be built on free software, the open
paradigm and the public domain. On the contrary,
the WSIS documents in general emphasize business
and private sector role and the reference to
“free flow of information, ideas, and knowledge »
is not satisfactory and should be replaced with
the whole open paradigm tools and ressources.


Media

We are pleased that the principle of freedom of
expression has been reaffirmed in the WSIS II
texts and that they echo much of the language of
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. While we are also pleased that the Tunis
Commitment recognises the place of the media in a
new Information Society, this should never have been in question.


In future, representatives of the media should be
assured a place in all public fora considering
development of the Internet and all other
relevant aspects of the Information Society. As
key actors in the Information Society, the media
must have a place at the table, and this must be
fully recognized both by governments and by Civil Society itself.


While recognizing media and freedom of
expression, the WSIS documents are weak on
offering support for developing diversity in the
media sector. They specifically neglect a range
of projects and initiatives which are of
particular value for civil society: Community
media, grassroots and civil society-based media,
and telecenters. Community-based and
community-owned media projects empower people for
the independent and creative participation in
knowledge-building and information-sharing. They
represent the prime means for large parts of the
world population to participate in the
information society and should be an integral
part of implementation of the goals of the Geneva Declaration.


Cultural Diversity

[unedited text]

The WSIS process has failed to introduce cultural
and linguistic diversity as a cross-cutting issue
in the information society. The information
society and its core elements - knowledge,
information, communication and the information
and communication technologies (ICTs) together
with related rules and standards - are cultural
concepts and expressions. Accordingly, culturally
defined approaches, protocols, proceedings and
obligations have to be respected and culturally
appropriate applications developed and promoted.
In order to foster and promote cultural diversity
it must be ensured that no one has to be mere
recipient of Western knowledge and treatment.
Therefore development of such cultural elements
of the Information Society must involve strong
participation of all cultural communities.


IV. Where to go from here – our Tunis commitment

[section to be developed based on following proposed structure]


Element one:

How CS is going to structure itself and continue
leveraging on the processes and structures that
were developed during the WSIS process (caucuses, CSB etc)

we will organise at a date to be determined to
launch the process of creating a CS charter

Element two:

How CS is going to structure itself to engage
with the IG forum {wait for outcome of IG caucus
meeting – whether a specific WG would be setup to
make recommendations on the modalities of functioning of the future IG
forum)

Element three:

In order to ensure that the future implementation
and follow-up mechanisms respect the spirit and
letter of the tunis documents and that
governments uphold the commitments they have made
during this second phase of the WSIS in terms of
implementing a multi-stakeholder approach, mechanisms will be created to
ensure

proactive monitoring at the national level of the
implementation by govs of their implementation of the Geneva plan of action

structured interaction with all UN agencies and
international organisations to ensure that they
integrate the WSIS objectives in their own
workplan, and put in place effective mechanisms
for multistakeholder interaction

CS believes that the information society is
complex social political phenomenon and it should
be reduced to a technology centred perspective.
The Commission on science and technology will
have to significantly change it's mandate and
composition to adequately address the needs of
being an effective followup mechanism for WSIS

that not only the reformed commission on science
and technology for development becomes a truly MS
commission for the information society, but also,
that the process to revise it's mandate,
composition and agenda is done in a fully open and inclusive

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-----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org]On
Behalf Of Ralf Bendrath
Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 5:59 AM
To: plenary at wsis-cs.org
Subject: Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] CS Declaration: next steps


[Please note that by using 'REPLY', your response goes to the entire list.
Kindly use individual addresses for responses intended for specific people]

Click http://wsis.funredes.org/plenary/ to access automatic translation of
this message!
_______________________________________

Elizabeth Carll, PhD wrote:

> Was the deadline today for the statement you mentioned, but the subject
> line refers to the CS Declaration.  I thought the deadline for the
> declaration was Nov 30th.  Is that correct?
First of all, in order to avoid confusion: There is no CS *declaration*
from 2005. We did that in 2003. This time, we agreed on a *statement* that
assesses the official summit outcomes from our perspective, measured
largely against the 2003 WSIS CS declaration.

And yes, the deadline was yesterday, as announced by Karen on 22 November
in a mail to plenary. We will of course still accept inputs until we have
a very final version (and French speaking folks will be able to comment on
the French translation), but I am already working on a new version now.

Best, Ralf
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