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Civil society sets out essential benchmarks for WSIS In a statement prepared at the end of PrepCom3a – the last preparatory meeting before the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva in December – civil society representatives stated that they do “not want to endorse documents that represent the lowest common denominator among governments.” They also produced a document that sets out the civil society’s essential benchmarks for WSIS. Civil Society Statement at the preparatory Process for the WSIS Geneva, 14 November 2003 Where do we stand now? We have come to the last day of PrepCom3a. This extra week of preparatory work was necessary after governments failed to reach agreement during the supposed final preparatory conference in September 2003. In spite of the extra expenditure of time and money, the deadlock continues – and sets in already on the very first article of the declaration, where governments are not able to agree on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, as the common foundation of the summit declaration. Through our observation of the process we have identified two main problem areas that impede progress in the WSIS: How to correct imbalances in riches, imbalances of rights, imbalances of power, or imbalances of access. In particular, governments do not agree on even the principle of a financial effort to overcome the so-called Digital Divide; this is all the more difficult to accept given that the summit process was started two years ago with precisely that objective. The struggle over human rights. Not even the basis of human life in dignity and equality, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, finds support as the basis for the Information Society. Governments are not able to agree on a commitment to basic human right standards as the basis for the Information Society, most prominent in this case being the freedom of expression. These are the essential conflicts among governments, as we see them now. There is also ongoing fight over issues such as media, Internet governance, limited intellectual monopolies such as copyright, free software, security and so on. This underlines our assessment that there is a lack of a common vision. Realpolitik or New Vision? The underlying struggle we see here is the old world of governments and traditional diplomacy confronting challenges and realities of the 21st century. We recognize the problems governments face in trying to address a range of difficult, complex and politically divisive issues in the two summit documents. But this situation just reflects power struggles that we are seeing around the world. A number of governments realize that much is at stake, and they are responding defensively and nervously. They have noticed that they can not control media content or trans-border information flows anymore, nor can they lock the knowledge of the world in the legal system of so-called “intellectual property”. Some governments are not prepared. They fear the power of new technologies and the way people are using them to network, to create new forms of partnerships and collaboration, to share experiences and knowledge locally and globally. This, combined with the fear and security paranoia of the past two years, compounds political uncertainty and is also played out in the WSIS process. But do we want to base our vision of the information society on fear and uncertainty or on curiosity, compassion and the spirit of looking forward? The WSIS process has slowly but constantly been moving from “information” to “society”. It was started with a technocratic infrastructure-oriented perspective in the ITU. We are proud to say that we were crucial in bringing home the idea that in the end, the information society is about people, the communication society is about social processes, and the knowledge society is about society’s values. In the end, it is not digital – it is dignity that counts. The whole process has shown a lack of interest among some governments in forming a common vision for the information society. It is not clear if this was ever the agenda. Probably governments are just not prepared to draft a vision anyway. They are not good at that.
The limits of good faith This is the first time that civil society has participated in such a way in a summit preparation process. We have worked very hard to include issues that some did not expect to be included. We have had some successes, while in a number of areas we were not heard or even listened to. If the governments want to agree, they can agree in 5 minutes. We now have the feeling that there is no political will to agree on a common vision. 
Therefore we will now stop giving input to the intergovernmental documents. Our position is that we do not want to endorse documents that represent the lowest common denominator among governments – if there will be anything like that. We have produced essential benchmarks – our ethical framework – of which we present the latest version today. The governments risk overlooking these key issues in the hair-splitting and compromise of negotiations if they do not take into account our input more seriously. The current stalemate deepens our belief in the need for the inclusion of all stakeholders in decision-making processes. Where rulers cannot reach consensus, the voices of civil society, communities and citizens can and should provide guidance. Bringing back vision into the process We don’t need governments’ permission. We take our own responsibility. Someone has to take the lead. If governments won’t do it, civil society will do it.We have now started to draft our own vision document as the result of a two-year, bottom-up, transparent and inclusive online and offline discussion process among civil society groups from all over the world. We will present our vision at the summit in Geneva in December 2003. We invite all interested parties, from all sectors of society, to join us in open discussion and debate in a true multi-stakeholder process.New mechanisms and structures are possible and can resolve these impasses and enable people to work together globally and inclusively. Looking beyond Geneva Without funding and real political commitment from governments, there is no real Action Plan today. But the present draft provides an agenda, a list of issues of common concern.Governments know they cannot address these issues alone. Any mechanism for the period following Geneva that does not closely associate civil society and other stakeholders is not only unacceptable in principle, it is also doomed to fail. Like many other actors, including some governments, we do not want the opportunities offered by the unique gathering in Geneva to be wasted. We hope to find substantial improvement for the phase leading us to the second phase of the summit in 2005.This process is going so badly, someone has to take the initiative to save it from destruction. If governments don’t, we today declare ourselves ready to assume this important responsibility with all actors sharing our concerns. Irrespective of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society in December 2003, civil society will continue what we have been doing all the time: Doing our work, implementing and renewing our vision, working together in local and global bottom-up processes - and thereby shaping a shared and inclusive knowledge society. (Source: Association for Progressive Communications) ‘Women can combat gender bias in cyberspace’ 
By Pamela Bhagat Women’s Feature Service BRISBANE: When Dr Dale Spender is scheduled to arrive at an appointed venue, the stationery and drapes are all exchanged for purple - the colour of women’s protest. Purple is her chosen colour. For over 30 years now, everything she wears - her pants and blouse, sneakers, watch and glasses - is purple. Spender is one of Australia’s best-known feminist scholars. An engaging speaker who never fails to provide journalists with pithy quotes, she travels to seminars, conferences and academic institutions both at home and abroad speaking about her feminist philosophy on the media. A philosophy she backs with hard empirical research. Spender wears many hats - Internet expert, educational consultant, writer and teacher - and describes herself as a ‘reformed academic’. She now has her own business and counts many universities as her clients. Her companies, Digital Style and AHOOT (Ahead Of Our Time), are primarily information brokerages that identify knowledge gaps and needs and make knowledge products that are tailored to the specific needs of her clients. Her many books - she has written and edited over 30 books - including Man Made Language (1980), For the Record: The Making and Meaning of Feminist Knowledge (1985) and Writing a New World: Two Centuries of Australian Women Writers (1988). Her latest book, Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace (1995), is a pioneering work on the new media that has changed the way people think about computers. Spender, however, is not entirely satisfied. She believes it suffers from the limitations of the print medium. “Statistics stand there as an indictment when there have been so many transformations,” she says. Speaking at an international workshop on Women and the Media, held in Brisbane recently, Spender said that the information revolution has shifted from print to digital. She drew a parallel with the manner in which the development of the printing press had impacted society and social change. All communication media so far - cave paintings, lectures, television - have all been one way, she said. The Internet is interactive and information here is dynamic and changeable. Power flows from information control and always has. The Net, though, is not controlled. Consequently, information flows freely and wealth flows from information. She suggests that small businesses based on new technology like the Internet present new opportunities. In this context, Spender also stresses on the need for a gender audit of all media. This, she says, should be structured to reveal how women are projected, how their voices are amplified and also how women’s issues are mainstreamed as general interest issues. Initially, Spender was very interested in the way women talked in a male-dominated society. Her research revealed that in almost every mixed sex conversation, men talked for two-thirds of the time. This told her a lot about language and power, about who has the right to talk. Man Made Language was the result of this research. She inferred that it was not that men had better ideas; the fact was that they had more power and could ensure that their ideas were taken more seriously. She says that these patterns were disrupted in print when women’s version of experiences began to appear. White, male narratives ceased to be the only authority and became part of many competing realities. “It was almost as if the knowledge-making world was preparing itself for the multiple realities and information explosion of the digital age.” Her sense of satisfaction soon gave way to doubt. It became quite clear that one of the reasons women had finally made it into print was because print was no longer the primary information medium. Power had moved to the digital medium and, within a decade, information sources had migrated from the book to the screen. There is a power shift from the author - who provided and controlled a single version and set narrative - to the user who actually uses the author's contribution. The page has readers but the screen has users. Spender spoke of a future when Internet access would be as necessary and as common as water, electricity or telephones. This is why, she warned, women must not allow themselves to be marginalized on the digital stage. "The Net is changing the nature of wealth which flows from information. Today, information is not a control issue but a management issue - something that women have always excelled at." Last preparatory session of WSIS ends inconclusive  Accessibility still remains the core issue of deliberations at the summit By Gustavo Capdevilla Inter Press Service GENEVA: Everyone wants to bridge the information and telecommunications divide — governments, the private sector and civil society — but with less than four weeks to go before the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), agreement on how to tackle the issue remains elusive. The final effort, a special session of the preparatory committee for the UN-sponsored summit, ended in failure in Geneva. Regardless, heads of state are to gather 10-12 December 2003 in this Swiss city to tackle the challenges created by the rapid development and expansion of information and communications technologies (ICTs). But the documents they are to discuss and put their signatures to have yet to be finalised. Dissent afflicts issues that are included throughout the texts of the declaration of principles and the plan of action that the WSIS is to adopt, says Mark Furrer, Switzerland’s communications minister. Among the matters of discord are the creation of a fund for reversing the digital divide, a demand of developing countries, and the inclusion of references to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the WSIS final documents, which some governments oppose. The differences grow deeper when it comes to the role of the communications media, Internet governance, limits to intellectual property rights, copyright and free software, says Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, an ICT expert and activist from Denmark’s Aarhus University. As for human rights, the Chinese delegation objected to the draft of the summit declaration because it includes binding provisions, beyond the standards of the UN Charter, said an observer of the sessions who spoke on condition of anonymity. The WSIS civil society media group issued a statement of regret that the reaffirmation of freedoms of expression and of the press had not been included in the drafts of the declaration and action plan. Nor did the delegates on the preparatory committee agree on including mention of the communications media as acknowledged actors of the information society. Failure to include the media would be like convening a conference on agriculture without farmers, says Tracey Naughton, head of the communications media group. The drafts of the proposals referring to the media included a call to promote pluralism of information and diversity in ownership. Such a policy would prevent the concentration of the news media in the hands of the few, according to Karen Banks, a coordinator of the civil society “content and themes group” in the WSIS process. Civil society wants governmental information services to be able to communicate their messages, but the state-controlled media should be transformed into organisations in the public interest with editorial independence, or they should be privatised, said Banks. Activists say they are frustrated by the difficulties that the governments in the WSIS preparatory process are having in hammering out agreements. There are some that lack political will, commented Kleinwaechter. But the failures of the summit preparatory committee have not cooled the enthusiasm of the civil society representatives involved. For the first time in UN history, non-governmental organisations are participating alongside governments and private sector delegates in preparations for a meeting of this type. ”We remain totally committed” to the objectives of the summit, Renate Bloem, president of the Conference of Non-Governmental Organisations (CONGO) that hold consultative status with the United Nations, told IPS. Kleinwaechter says that civil society has adopted a two-pronged strategy. The activists will remain involved in the WSIS, but if the governments are not committed to the process, “we are willing to take on the responsibility” with other sectors, he said. A special session of high-level officials from the participating countries will be needed in order to resolve the pending issues, said Pierre Gagne, executive director of the WSIS secretariat, designated by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which is sponsoring the summit in representation of the U.N. The meeting is slated for 7-8 December, just prior to the summit, he announced. |
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