----- Original Message -----
From: <sean@nexus.ie>
To: <crisinfo@comunica.org>; <alt.wsis@lists.riseup.net>;
<cris-active@comunica.org>; <cris-@loon.riseup.net>
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2005 10:35 PM
Subject: [alt.wsis] CRIS Plenary statement
Please see attached the CRIS presentation to the Plenary
Sean
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Statement to WSIS Plenary PrepCom 2, Geneva 18th February 2004.
CRIS Campaign (Communication Rights in the Information Society)
The following is the text delivered on behalf of the CRIS Campaign by
Claudia Padovani.
"Communication is a fundamental social process, a basic human need and the
foundation of all social organization. It is central to the information
society." If these words sound familiar it is because they are taken from
the WSIS Geneva Declaration. The CRIS Campaign takes these to heart. We
believe that communication, and communication rights, are at the heart of
the Information Society.
This point is very relevant to the issue of financing, and I want to focus
on a few dimensions of this.
First, people's right to communicate, and to engage with the communication
structures of society, should not be dependent on the ability to pay. Since
the market works on ability to pay, where it fails (and the Task Force
report acknowledges that it sometimes does) governance structures must find
the resources to make up the short fall and ensure people have at least a
minimum of communication rights. Thus governments, individually and
collectively, must create the environment in which the communication needs
of development are realised in all its dimensions. An environment to attract
private investment might be one aspect of it - but this is a means not an
end, and cannot fulfil all the needs. The centrality of public expenditure,
directed at the public good, must be recognised. This may in turn require
the redistribution of some of the considerable profits generated in the
communication sector towards the needs of poor communities. Such
redistribution may, in part, be most equitably and efficiently done at the
global level.
In short, inability to pay for a basic need implies redistribution of
resources: governments of the north, as well as the south, cannot shirk
their responsibilities here. It is also clear that the scale of the
problem, especially among poor rural communities, demands some new thinking.
Second, it stands to reason that the mechanisms that are put into place for
financing, the follow-up mechanisms for the WSIS, or indeed national
policies through which they are implemented, must have the active
participation of all parties, and this must include any Digital Solidarity
Fund. Of course, civil society is accepted on paper as a partner in the
process- but we need to translate this into reality, and I include here the
onus on civil society to understand the issues and come up with workable
realistic solutions.
Third, the structures into which finances are directed, especially where the
goal is explicitly to support development and enhance communication of the
poor, must be tailored specifically to those needs. The most effective
financing, ownership and management structures must be facilitated - and
this may mean community ownership of networks infrastructure, local SME
ownership, local authority ownership - and not just large corporate
ownership. Examples of community-driven networks can be found
everywhere -from the USA (where about 1,000 rural cooperative exist) to
Poland, to Argentina, Peru and India. These have often emerged against the
odds. We need an environment that will encourage them, enable community and
local entrepreneurship, and reap the development and empowering benefits.
Fourth, in relation to spending finances most wisely, w must observe
technology neutrality - the most appropriate technology must be used. I
refer of course to realising the potential of new and emerging technologies,
from VOIP to WiFi to WiMAX, and to regulating to maximise their contribution
to solving the problem of exclusion. But appropriate technology also
applies to old technologies. As we have heard community and local radio can
often hugely contribute to the capacity to communicate, and is still hugely
neglected - and for that matter television, increasingly controlled by
corporate and commercial interests, must also be re-imagined as a tool for
communication, not profit generation.
These comments are somewhat general in nature, still at the level of
principles. Over the coming days, weeks and months, the CRIS campaign and
its partners will be developing innovative, practical and workable ideas to
put these principles into action, and we look forward to collaborating with
everyone here in the time ahead. The Civil Society Working Group on
Financing, too, will be developing its own ideas to be conveyed to the
assembly.
Thank you
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