Day 2, Feb 18
Civil Society Plenary
Civil Society Plenary was held from 8:30 am. at ILO Headquarters building.
Renate Bloem from CONGO chaired the session. Some 100 people gathered.
The "Open-ended Civil Society Bureau Proposal" was presented, and consumed
almost all the time of the plenary. Alain Clerc, Civil Society Division of
Executive
Secretariat, made the presentation, and my memo was:
Idea rose to create a bureau, too late for the first prepcom, but the discussion
continued before Bucharest and after. The Bureau is of vital importance for
PrepCom process.
Next Thursday, the draft for final declaration and Plan of Action will be
negotiated.
Major families need to have their voice in the drafting process, but in
order for
that to happen, an organizational structure is needed. It will facilitate
and organize
participative fashion. The bureau has no provocative, substantive position
by itself.
There was one substantial change from the version presented the night before.
They added "Regions" as the family: Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia and
Arabic states.
(This follows the UN regional system where North America is included in Europe.)
Gender, Youth and Disabled groups were promoted from "sub-groups" of NGO into
full Family. They also added: Indigenous People, Disabled, Philanthropic
institution and
Think Tank. Someone from the floor pointed out that Volunteers was lost
from the list -
and it may be added.
Al Alegre pointed out that in many Asian countries, the local authority are
perceived
as part of central government and therefore it is difficult for us to
accept them as the
member of Civil Society. Several others expressed concerns on the definitions or
standards of these "family" still vague, or the platform for participation
may actually become
control platform for substantive decision making.
Asia NGO CCW/CS Caucus
From 1:30 pm to 2:30, Asia NGO CCW/CS Caucus meeting was held in the lobby area.
There were two new members joined from Iran, Sohrab Razzaghi and one more
guy (sorry,
I missed your name), Iranian Civil Society Organizations Resource Center,
and one from
Japan, Hiroshi Kawamura, Japanese Society for Rehabilitation of Persons
with Disabilities.
Others were: PatchA, Lee-in, YJ Park, Oh, Adam Peake, Al Alegre, Bobby, and
myself.
We discussed whether we should support the Civil Society Bureau proposal.
Some expressed
concerns of unclear definition of "family", and proposed "Region only"
approach (not accepting
sector/issue-based families). Another concern was even though they claim
that this Bureau
will not take any substantive positions over drafting or other decision
making process of
WSIS, it has the potential to become real decision making body to which we
may not have
much influence. There were other opinions to support this proposal though
not perfect
and noted these concerns, but if we pass or deny this, there will be less
opportunity for
us to meaningful participate in pragmatically limited conditions.
After good exchanges of views and opinions, Al Alrgre made the following wrap-up
as our Consensus:
1) Although we have problems of time, we welcome this proposal in the
context of this meeting
2) We will participate as the Asia Pacific Caucus, without prejudice to
some of us joining other families
3) We will nominate one as focal point, with one alternate
4) We will be forward looking, which is to strategize participation in
the content conference-
if we have the opportunity we will participate
With that, we agreed to meet again on Day 3, Feb 19, at 2 pm.
"Multi-stakeholder Roundtable" were the main progam of today and tomorrow.
In the morning, there were two roundtalbes held (but I did not attend them)
It was designed to have panel members from each sector, Government, International
organizations, NGOs and Civil Society entities and Business Entities
The speakers were:
#1 ICT Infrastructure and Financing
Gov:
Yang Zemin, President, China Academy of Telecommunication Research
Intl Org:
Yann Brenner, IADB, and
Hamadoun Toure, Director, ITU
NGO/CSO:
Artur Serra, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
Amadou Top, OSIRIS
Biz:
Francisco Gomez Alamillio, AHCIET (Moderator)
#2 Access to Knowledge, Open Access, Cultural and Linguistic Diversity,
Local Content
Gov:
Lyndall Shope-Mafole, Chair, Presidential National Commission on ISAD,
South Africa (Moderator)
Michel Peissik
Ambassadeur Charge du SMSI, France
Intl Org:
Abdul Waheed Khan, UNESCO
Richard Owens, WIPO
NGO/CSO:
Alan Alegre, CRIS Campaign
Francis Tusubira, Makerene University
Niv Ahituv
Tel Aviv Univeristy
Latif Ladid, ISOC/Ericsson-Telebit
In the afternoon, tow more roundtables were organized:
#3 ICT and Security
Speakers were:
Gov:
Andrey Korotkov, Ministry for Communications and Informatization, Russia
Intl Org:
Eduardo Gelbstein, former UN
NGO/CSO:
Urs e. Gattiker, EICAR
Olivia Bosch, RIIA
Biz:
Lanren Hall, Microsoft
Stuart Hotchkiss, Hewlett-Packard
#4 The needs of special groups
Gov:
Able Caine, Business & Systems Development for E-Government, Fiji
Intl Org:
Hendrica Okondo, UNIFEM (moderator)
Kathleen Gordon, Caribbean Development Bank
Pietro Sicuro, OIF/AIF, Francophonie
NGO/CSO:
Nick Moraitis, Youth Caucus
Bruno Tardieu, ATD Quart Monde
(I was attending this last session, and was a very informative and educational
session, especially, often these "special needs" were not reported in
more "general" sessions.)
= END of Day 2 =