[WSIS CS-Plenary] Digital Solidarity Fund in risk of disappearing: action required

[Daniel Pimienta]

Dear colleagues,

I shall report on the critical situation of the Digital Solidarity 
Fund (DSF) in my quality of Latin America & Caribbbean civil society 
member of the Board. I wish to report in the WSIS civil society 
plenary list as well as in G at ID discussion list, in the hope to 
trigger some positive dynamics in both communities (and I am also 
informing the DSF Board of that initiative).

The last couple of months have been of acute crisis after a change in 
the DSF Presidency and coordinated complains from the new DSF 
President and the President of Senegal (speaking as "historical 
father") on General Secretary management: basically they do not trust 
the 1% principle could be effective and wish a centering and hosting 
of the DSF on Africa, as an ICT4D project management organization.

On November 25th a stormy General Assembly was held in Lyon (France) 
and was unable to reach consensus on further steps. An extraordinary 
Assembly was then scheduled in Bamako, January 27th, 2009. More 
confused than stormy this Assembly decided that a strategical and 
finance independant audit shall be organized and its results 
presented to a last extraordinary Assembly to be scheduled prior to 
May 27th. This last Assembly would finally decide on the proposition 
of the President of Senegal to take over the management of the DSF 
(he was also given the responsibility to contract this audit and 
manage the interim period).

The investment made so far has reached some 6 millions of euros (a 
substantial part coming from developing countries) and one of the 
argument for not letting go the situation was the responsibility to 
protect that invested capital (which is no more in cash but hopefully 
some part has transformed into people and project experiences and 
institutional moves). Furthermore, it appears that the cashflow would 
allow to stand until the next Assembly but no more.

The situation as of today is that the audit has apparently not been 
launched and the risk is extremely high, due to the shortness of 
cashflow, that the DSF will just fade out without any decision taken 
and no audit results presented. This could be the worst scenario for 
one of the most concrete products the WSIS process has tried to 
launch and a shameful situation for our ICT4D community in regard to 
the lost investment...

In that context, I want to call upon global civil society to put 
pressure on stakeholders in order to try to save whatever is possible 
from the disaster. I am wondering, given the particular situation, if 
the best approach would not be to try to convince a UN related structure to
take over the DSF, conduct an audit which appears a mandatory 
requirement (if only for accountability of public money invested!) 
and assess the situation, trying to preserve, as far as possible, the 
initial principles (multistakeholder global fund to overcome the 
digital divide based on innovative sources).

ITU, G at ID or UNDP (which has been out of that field for some years 
now) are possible options. I am not sure that any of them is eager to 
take over a project in such a difficult situation; what I am quite 
sure is that it is my duty as a civil society involved actor to 
alert, inform and contribute to the search for a solution (I shall 
also remember as a possible contribution that Agence de la 
Francophonie had offered during the DSF Board debates to take 
responsibility to contract an audit of the DSF... although it was 
decided to do it another way).

Daniel Pimienta
Networks & Development Foundation
http://funredes.org
Member of APC Network
As LA&C civil society member of the DSF Board