[WSIS CS-Plenary] RE: [Gov 89] Update on the GAID Steering Committeemeeting (NY, 19 September 2007)

[Avri Doria]

Hi,

While i agree with you - especially as i believe education is a life  
long process and that there are many places where just because   
someone is an adult does not mean they should not be brought out of  
illiteracy, at this point I will be very happy to see the ITU  
seriously take on the commitment to see that _all_  schools  
_everywhere_  are connected to the Internet.

a.

On 10 okt 2007, at 07.36, Parminder wrote:

>
>
>
> >An additional idea discussed was that Switzerland expressed the  
> wish to act to connect all schools free. ITU expressed the interest  
> to take as one of its operational >points so that a focal point  
> will be set up on that at the ITU.
>
>
>
> It is important to note the far-reaching significance of such  
> assertions, and early policy directions. ICT infrastructure has  
> hitherto been pushed in developing countries either as a pre- 
> dominantly business and commercial infrastructure, and even if to  
> be used for development, revenue models and financial  
> sustainability have been the first and foremost principle of every  
> ICTD project, distorting all other development objectives. This  
> thinking is now making some retreat, with the understanding that  
> (1) ICTs are even more importantly a social infrastructure and (2)  
> they have such fundamental role in many basic and valued social  
> processes that their provision as  public goods/ public  
> infrastructure is something that policies should give serious  
> attention to.
>
>
>
> If schools/ students should have free Internet access, there is  
> hardly much of a conceptual jump to communities needing free  
> Internet access for their basic knowledge requirements, as well as  
> access to and participation in society’s governance, education,  
> health, livelihood and all other systems. So, well, we are making  
> progress J. Not being at a school cannot be a disqualification for  
> all these basic needs, entitlements and rights – sooner or later we  
> all will see the absurdity of this notion.
>
>
>
> And good that civil society is explicitly excluded from ‘financial  
> contribution norms’, which acknowledges the CS advocacy on this issue.
>
>
>
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/pipermail/plenary/attachments/20071011/30314378/attachment.html