[WSIS CS-Plenary] Geiger reports on Host Country Agreement

[Rik Panganiban]

Dear all,

These are my notes from a short statement given by Charles Geiger to  
Content and Themes this evening.  I am not a lawyer, and was  
switching back and forth from the English and French.  So I may have  
missed some detail.  Someone else fill in my information or correct  
me if I am in error. Thanks.


Charles Geiger came to the Content and Themes meeting this evening to  
report on the Host Country Agreement with Tunisia and other  
logistical arrangements for the Tunis Summit.  He noted that he could  
not disclose the full text of the host country agreement, since it  
had not been ratified by the Tunisian parliament yet.  However he  
could give some information as it pertains to civil society.

*    He noted that the host country agreement covers both the  
official Summit as well as all of the parallel events that occur  
during the summit.
*    Participants included in the agreement included all accredited  
entitities, including NGOs, civil society and the private sector
*    The host country agrees to provide free visas to all accredited  
participants as well as "facilitate their access and circulation" to  
the Summit
*    Under the section on immunity, the agreement notes that outside  
of the perimeter of the Summit grounds, that participants are subject  
to the national laws of Tunisia
*   There are actually two kinds of privileges and immunity: one  
related to immunity of persons who are within the venue of the  
Summit, i.e. the Kram centre, and one related to persons who are  
accredited to the Summit, whether they are at the Kram Centre or not
*    Each kind of immunity relates to which rules you are under.   
Within the Summit, you are under the jurisdiction of the rules of the  
United Nations.
*    For the second category of immunity ("functional immunity") you  
are only considered under this immunity if you are engaging in  
activities that are "related to the summit."

He noted that he expected the full host country agreement to be made  
public once it is ratified by the Tunisian parliament.

RFID BADGES
Ralf Bendrath asked about privacy concerns during the Summit.  Mr.  
Geiger reported that the summit will employ RFID (radio frequency  
identification) badges, as were used during the Geneva Summit.  He  
noted that the company handling the badges is the same company that  
provided the RFID badges for the Athens Olympics, and thus he  
expected that they had should have a privacy policy available.  He  
noted that the Executive Secretariat was not giving them all  
information on the participants, only the name, affiliation, code  
number and type of badge.  He added that every day any data collected  
by the badges is deleted from their system.

"There will be no tracking in the Kram," he promised.  He noted that  
it would be easier to track people with their cell phones than with  
their RFID badges, particularly since there will be 15,000 participants.

Rik Panganiban
CONGO

===============================================
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
* Information on Millennium+5 at http://www.ngocongo.org/mdg

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/pipermail/plenary/attachments/20050927/e4d37ac9/attachment.html