Hi Izumi-san,
Many thanks for your efforts. We really appreciate the updates and hope that you
and others can continue to keep us posted.
There seem to be about 20 Asia Pacific civil society participants. What is the
approximate total from civil society. I assume that Eurupean based civil society
orgs have the largest turnout?
All the best to you and team.
Sacha
Izumi AIZU wrote:
> 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 =