Hi all
Thought these two posts on the bytes for all list (see below) by two of
our colleagues (Ahmed of VOICE and Reza of BFES, both of Bangla Desh) are
relevant and incisive and am reposting it...
(apologies if you get this more than once)
Al
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Posted by: "Ahmed Swapan"
Hi all,
Congratulate friends who selected in the GAID. However, already you know
many questions around the GAID process have been raised, as Reza Salim,
Fuad from FOSSP raised. I also wonder when I see many of our friends who
are the pioneer in the ICT sector and/or actively involved in the WSIS
process have been dropped. So, I am in doubt whether the GAID can function
out of UN authoritarian process. There are many committees/processes of
UN, you know, which do not at all function. Rather, they are managed in
such a way that carries the extention of UN elitism.
So, already the questions raised are meaningful. And the whole scenario
demands a bit more expection from new GAID members so that they can
strategies ot how they can act best. Do they really? I know some of the
members even already showed a sort of frustation as yet they didn't get
any official letter from the UN and also they don't know about theor
participation in the Malasia meeting. These issues are also important to
consider that indicates the disfunctional (!) norms of UN.
However, we from the civil society groups are in the follow up/watching
what GAID can do to achieve the objectives. We doubt but same time we
expect activities on the real ground where our GAID friends can
contribute.
Let's expect and hope for the best.
Ahmed Swapan
VOICE, Dhaka
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On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 Reza Salim wrote :
>Dear Colleagues:
>
>I personally feel proud for inclusion many of my friends in the GAID
process; unfortunately, the behaviour of UN Secretariat over this process
is perplexing and not friendly; they do not even bother to confirm the
selected honorable personalities in GAID; I have seen mail from Izumi
that he doesn?t know about this except hearing from the website ? where
he was picked up for Panel of Advisers. Bangladesh is on Board of the SC
and there was no information till 14 June to the Government offices.
>
>The program for inaugural meeting (see
http://www.un-gaid.org/kl06/programme.html) has been completely changed
at the last moment, as on 15 June, there would not much participation by
global leaders of ICT4D whose names were mentioned earlier been dropped!
I can now see only a few names from Malaysia, which explained that the
leaders are not interested to be involved or present or they have little
interest to revise their travel schedule for this important GAID and on
this historical launching. Most surprising is that the selected Chair of
the GAID Governing Body M. Craig Barret is sending a video message for
the opening session!
>
>We do not expect that GAID Secretariat to be a place for dumped
bureaucrats and retired UN officials; neither have we wanted to see there
so called smart officials under UN are serving against the spirit of WSIS
urges for multi-stakeholder partnership for ICT4D in implementing Plan of
Action.
>
>The most important role is by our friends in GAID is to ensure the
challenges ahead of them to implement people-centered agenda taken by
WSIS process and, secondly, not be a part of so called decorated
secretariat offices of a new UN agency.
>
>Reza Salim