[WSIS CS-Plenary] on going role of the CSB

[Tracey Naughton]

Dear Francis et all,

Your motivation to not be too hasty to dissolve WSIS/CS structures,  
in particular the CSB, is appealing. I agree that there is much  
unfinished business and that the current groupings working on follow  
up don't have a clear architecture nor a mandate, perhaps not even  
the scope yet, to deal with all the aspects that require further  
work. I am not convinced that there is adequate broad representation  
either. I refer particularly to those more distant and living in more  
challenging environments - those with a vested interest in  
developmental issues. My perspective is as one who works in extreme  
and remote parts of the world where there is no awareness of WSIS but  
where there is substantive effort directed at bridging 'the divide'  
in all it's guises.

Perhaps my distance from the locus of the current action and being  
outside the frame of the large NGO's or an institutional framework  
has influenced my perspective incorrectly. I absolutely agree that to  
continue in a negotiation process civil society would need to have a  
representative body and that key governmental stakeholders regard the  
CSB as the interface in conjunction with CONGO who's role it is to  
facilitate such interactions. So in that regard it remains a useful  
and key structure in advancing and entrenching in global  
negotiations, a multi-stakeholder approach. It would however need to  
be supported otherwise I predict that only some members, the  
resourced and the connected, would be able to participate. This would  
likely exclude valuable expertise and perspective.

Yes the CSB did have a review in phase two to ensure it was made up  
of active families, caucus's and working groups. Yes there are  
obvious seats that would no longer be required should the CSB have a  
continued role. For example there is no host country role now, though  
Tunisian people, as anyone, retain the right to participate as  
members of chosen civil society groups. My view of the CSB structure  
is that is was and was seen to be, by all but a cluster of people in  
civil society, to be a very democratic formation given it's  
representative make up. It certainly worked hard though under  
constant criticism from the cluster. I found this counter-productive  
and believe that it could have been viewed as a constructive division  
of roles - there was a lot of backbone work done by the CSB. This  
left others to focus their particular expertise. A further criteria  
based review of CSB could be conducted.

I think we need some direction on the way forward for negotiations  
and the potential requirement of a representative civil society body  
as different from the specialised bodies that remain active. We would  
also require a focal point for the gathering of a resource base to  
make continued work possible. Of course it would have been ideal to  
discuss these issues while we were still face to face, but I think we  
will all agree that this was not viable. we all worked to the last  
moments of the Summit.



regards

Tracey Naughton
tracey at traceynaughton.com