Hi all,
I accidentally volunteered to write a Daily Report for the 1st and 2nd day
of WSIS
PrepCom2 here in Geneva, especially for those who could not come to Geneva.
Here follows is my personal observation and memo and may contain some
inaccurate descriptions, or may have missed something very important.
But in the interest of time, I will send this now anyway. I apologize if
I made any mistake to offend anyone... but hope not.
Day 1, Feb 17
On the first day, yesterday, the meeting started with formal adoption of
Agenda, including
reports from secretariat on Accreditation of NGOs, Civil Society and
business entities,
followed by Report of ITU Secretary General Yoshio Utsumi, Report of
President of
PrepCom, Adama Samassekou, and Reports from each Regional Conferences, from
African,
European, Asia & Pacific and Latin American conferences were presented.
The election of Chairman of Subcommitee 2, Content and Theme, was postponed to
the next plenary meeting because the preparation (or negotiation) by the
governments
were not complete. It is still negotiated, among Asian Governments, since
the Chair is
scheduled to be elected from Asian region.
Overall, it was much more quiet and orderly compared with that of Tokyo
conference.
NO question was raised from the floor.
Asian NGO Coordination Committee/Civil Society caucus group met at the cafeteria
at the lunch break. First, we briefly introduced each other. Those present were:
Alan Alegre, FMA, Philippines
Robert Carcia, PASPBAE, Philippines
Nick Moraitis, Taking IT Global
YJ Park, Korea
Adam Peake, GLOCOM, Japan
Pualine Chen, IRFD, Taiwan, ROC
Tin-An Wang, Taiwan, ROC
Lee-in Chen Chiu, IRFD, Taiwan, ROC
Oh Byoung Il, Korean Progressive Network Jinbonet, Korea
Kim Jeong Woo, "PatchA", Korean Progressive Network Jinbonet, Korea
Izumi Aizu, GLOCOM, Japan
Robert Sagun, Young Volunteers for Sustainable Development, Philippines
Umi Sabridh Haron Sharon, Taking IT Global, Malaysia
Roentgen Bronce, Taking IT Global, Philippines
Arief Prasetyo, Taking IT Global; Indoensian Electrical Engineering Student
Forum, Indonesia
Maitreyi Doshi, Taking IT Global, India
We exchanged some information around, then agreed to meet every afternoon
around 1:30 pm, to exchange the information and discuss the possible
actions during PrepCom2.
In the afternoon, there was the official "Visionaries Panel" under the theme of
"Future of the Information Society". It was chaired by Yoshio Utsumi,
Secretary-General
of ITU, and moderated by Ms. Maria Cattaui, Secretary-General of
International Chamber
of Commerce. Speakers were: Maitre Abdoulaye Wade, President of Republic of
Senegal,
Ion Iliescu, President of Romania, Laurence Lessig, Professor, Stanford Law
School,
and Jacques Attali, writer and Chiar, PlaNet Finance, France. No one was
from Asia Pacific.
Prof. Lessig received the biggest applause from the floor, since he gave
serious caution to
the dominating commercial interest over the free exchange of ideas made
possible by the
original end-to-end communication architecture of the Internet and strongly
called for the
balance between those commercial interests and the interest for freedom,
innovation and creativity.
He said, "I come here today with a guilty conscience - from US, and from
legal profession -
both were making the dominance of commercial interest, "Freedom - have been
corrupted
by our extremism coming from our own legal tradition." He then continued:
"This conference are framed with these questions of intellectual property
as if separate
from Information Society issues - I wish they were separate, but the last
five years have
demonstrated that the future of information society hangs fundamentally
there how to
respond to this question. Fundamentally - at odds, because the Information
Society -
is the place as both freedom and intellectual property must co-exist. These
two must
reconcile - I feel great guilt, as a lawyer, and as an American - There is
no question that
information society will be in next hundred years, the question is if it is
a free or feudal
information society. Freedom does not mean there is not property, nor market.
Freedom is built with market - with free exchange of ideas and innovation,
and that
balance must be found.
Civil Society Bureau Meeting
From 17:15 pm, "Civil Society Bureau Meeting" was held. This "Bureau"
concept was
first came up during and after the PrepCom1, and proposed by the Civil
Society Division
of Executive Secretariat of WSIS, with consultation by a number of key
people, with a
small group meeting on January 27.
The basic idea is to setup Civil Society Bureau as a channel to facilitate
Civil Society
participation in equal terms (hopefully) to Government Bureau of the WSIS. They
proposed to bring "family" concept, as thematic group to compose the
Bureau. They
were: Academia and education, Science and technology community, Media, The
creators
and active promoters of culture,, Cities and local authorities, Trade Unions,
Parliamentarians, NGOs including social groups such as: Youth, Women,
Indigenous,
Disabled, etc., Social movements And Multi-stakeholders partnerships.
Good exchange of questions, answers, (constructive) criticisms and suggestions
followed. I pointed out the need for "Region" as important channel for
input in addition
to sectoral family.
It was agreed that this Bureau is a mechanism to facilitate Civil Society
participation
to WSIS process, but is not taking any specific position in substantive issues.
= END of Day 1 =