Draft Civil Society Priorities Document

[Meryem Marzouki <marzouki@ras.eu.org>]

Hi,

This is the draft CS consolidated document on CS priorities, elaborated 
by the Content and Themes group and sent by Bill Mc Iver to the C&T 
list and to the CS plenary list on July 10, 2003.
Comments should be sent by Friday (today !!!) to ct@wsis-cs.org
Meryem
========
World Summit on the Information Society

10 July 2003

Civil Society Priorities Document:  (Draft of 10 July 2003)

WSIS - Civil Society Working Group on Content and Themes



The civil society organisations endorsing this document are well aware 
of the potential importance of the WSIS, which is why we are investing 
in this process.  While we understand that the WSIS has no explicit 
normative nor programmatic objective (no treaty is expected out of it, 
nor does it have decision-making power to unleash new funding), we 
consider that it offers a unique framework at the international level, 
where not only different visions can be shared among a variety of 
stakeholders and cultures, but also basic agreements on the shape of 
future policies could emerge.

Given the breadth and complexity of the issues involved, an integral 
vision is essential. A partial approach is likely to result in policies 
that could further deepen both digital and social divides, or 
exacerbate other negative impacts that are emerging.

We therefore welcome the broadened range of issues covered by the 
present draft documents for the WSIS.   We are concerned, nonetheless, 
that certain key areas are still missing inadequately addressed or do 
not make consensus.  The following lines will draw attention to these 
issues that constitute priorities for civil society.

As a starting point, the WSIS should avoid idealising the information 
society (IS).  It is one thing to describe the vision of the IS we 
rightly aspire to, as orientation for policies, ("The information 
society should be people centered...", Art 8:), and quite another to 
state that "The information society is a new and higher form of social 
organization...." (Art. 9), which could mislead us into ignoring 
dangers and undesirable effects.
Sustainable democratic development

An equitable Information Society must be based on sustainable economic 
and social development. This cannot be achieved solely through 
market-led solutions, which will not automatically lead to equitable 
service or lower cost, particularly in less profitable areas or for 
low-income social groups, or where virtual monopolies exist. In order 
to balance commercial objectives with legitimate social interests, a 
principle of equitable access to services and affordable cost should be 
reaffirmed, and recognition given to the need for appropriate 
regulation and development of public services.

Development cooperation in the area of sustainable development should 
reaffirm the principle of solidarity between richer and poorer areas of 
the world.

ICTs have great potential for developing more democratic, transparent 
and participative processes of governance, from the local to the 
international level, which should be more explicitly supported in the 
Action Plan.  But technologies also have the potential of enabling the 
perpetuation and expansion of existing, undemocratic power relations 
and inequalities within and between nations. This would be incompatible 
with the goals of sustainable development within the information 
society. Communities must therefore be empowered to develop their own 
productive forces within the information society, in particular to 
participate in its development and sustenance through fully democratic 
processes that allow them to share control of the decision making 
around economic, cultural, environmental, and other issues regarding 
ICT-based projects.

The action plan should address proposals to develop and nurture the 
discipline of community informatics, which responds to the particular 
characteristics and needs of communities, in relation to design, 
development, deployment, and operation of ICTs, as well as local 
content production.

ICTs can contribute to sustainability, but computers are also creating 
new environmental hazards.  In view of mainstreaming ICTs into 
sustainable development, the action plan should include concrete 
proposals and policies to: develop renewable energy resources, 
particularly for remote communities; improve resource efficiency; 
dematerialize and reduce waste; increase the useful life of hardware; 
improve recycling conditions and ensure safe disposal of discarded ICT 
hardware and parts.

Human rights:

An information and communication society that has people and human 
needs at its centre implies underlining the importance of human rights 
standards as the core set of principles guiding its development.  
Communication is a fundamental participative and interactive process 
and is the foundation of all societal organization.  In order to ensure 
freedom of expression and the right to information, the WSIS 
Declaration should therefore affirm that Article 19 of the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) must be not only adhered to but also 
actively enforced.

In addition, the principles of a better-balanced flow of information, 
free circulation of ideas, press freedom, participation in the 
communication process, and knowledge sharing will become meaningful 
inasmuch as they are supported by a consistent articulation of rights.  
This would include the reference to the relevant articles from the 
UDHR, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the 
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 
relating, among other things, to: privacy, freedom of thought, 
conscience, and religion, freedom of peaceful association, right to 
education and to participation in cultural life of the community, 
protection from discrimination or hate incitement, among others. We 
also welcome the references to communication as a right.

Similarly, the WSIS should refer to improvement of HR standards, such 
as human and social development, democracy and participation, as focus 
points for setting goals and measures for progress.

Literacy, Education, and Research

Literacy, education and research are fundamental components of 
information and knowledge societies. Knowledge creation and acquisition 
should be nurtured as a participatory and collective process and not 
considered a one-way flow.  But only an informed and educated citizenry 
with access to the means and outputs of pluralistic research can fully 
participate in and effectively contribute to knowledge societies.

Urgent attention should be paid to the potential positive and negative 
impacts of ICTs on the issues of illiteracy in national and 
international languages of the great majority of the world’s people.  
Literacy, education, and research efforts in the Information Society 
must include a focus on the needs of people who have physical 
impairments and the elderly.

The action plan should devote attention to the tools, facilities and 
resources that enable lifelong learning.  Capacity building designed to 
empower individuals and communities in the Information Society must 
include, in addition to just basic literacy and ICT skills, information 
literacy (i.e. the ability to find, appraise, use and create 
information).  Publicly funded and independent writing and research, in 
all parts of the world, are essential for building a pluralistic and 
diverse body of knowledge in information societies.  Gender sensitive 
educational programmes and appropriate learning environments including 
e-learning must be developed to increase women’s access to education 
and employment.

Also, computer and information science professionals must be encouraged 
to perform the continuous task of educating the public about both the 
social risks and benefits of existing and emerging technologies within 
the information society.

Global Governance

Global Governance in information societies should be based on a 
multi-stakeholder bottom up policy development process (buPDP), which 
should be as inclusive as possible and open to all groups, in 
particular to stakeholders most closely concerned by a certain policy.  
Global Governance should be based on the principles of openness and 
transparency.  Decision making bodies should be composed of 
representatives of all stakeholders, selected by their respective 
constituencies; with a geographically, functionally and gender balanced 
composition, and a consensus basis for operation.

Global Internet Governance (GIG) should include all public policy 
aspects of the global management of cyberspace.  This includes issues 
such as content regulation on the Internet, free speech, access, 
privacy, information security, data protection, e-commerce, 
intellectual property rights, information infrastructure development 
etc.

A special part of GIG is the governance of the core resources of the 
Internet, that are the internet identifiers such as domain names and IP 
addresses as well as the Internet Protocols (IP) and the root server. 
The governance of Internet identifiers should be based on the buPDP 
principle, including providers, users and relevant public policy 
bodies, and must serve the interests of the global and local Internet 
community.

Global knowledge commons

The Declaration should include, as a principle and theme, the 
maintenance and growth of the commonwealth of human knowledge as a 
means of reducing global inequality and of providing the conditions for 
intellectual creativity, sustainable development and respect for human 
rights. The privatisation of knowledge and information through 
copyright, patents and trademarks is ceasing to be an effective means 
of rewarding creative endeavour or encouraging innovation. Instead it 
is contributing to the growth of inequality and the exploitation of the 
poorest peoples and communities.

The Action Plan must defend and extend the global knowledge commons, 
through public policy and investment in open source and open content, 
including both applications and human capacity development, as well as 
through access to public communication platforms for sharing of 
knowledge and information. The Action Plan should commit to a 
fundamental review of the impact on poverty and human rights of current 
arrangements for recognition and governance of privately held knowledge 
and information, including the work of WIPO and the functioning of the 
TRIPS agreement.

The Action Plan should give particular attention to measures to 
maintain knowledge diversity and to protect the knowledge pool of 
indigenous peoples, especially botanical and agricultural knowledge, 
against "information mining" and other unfair exploitation.

Cultural and linguistic diversity

The Declaration should adopt as a statement of principle the need to 
respect cultural and linguistic diversity. Communications media and 
information technologies have a particularly important role to play in 
sustaining the world's cultures and languages. The implementation of 
this principle requires support for a plurality of means of information 
and communication including community-driven communications initiatives.

The Action Plan should promote legislative, regulatory, technological 
and financial measures to support communications media and information 
pluralism; and should allow for specific safeguards against the 
concentration of media ownership.  It should reinforce rights of access 
to the media and the means of information and expression for all 
peoples including rights of linguistic and cultural minorities. The 
Action Plan should support the development of public service broadcast 
media including community media.

The Action Plan should support new information and communication 
technologies, which can reinforce cultural and linguistic diversity 
through, for example, translation, voice recognition and other means of 
transcending cultural and linguistic barriers.


"Information security" issues.

Existing policies on information security often impinge unnecessarily 
upon the rights of individuals, and may be technologically and 
economically problematic.  The Declaration should contain, as a 
statement of principle, that the informed involvement of all 
stakeholders is an essential component to the development of any policy 
at the local, national, and international levels.

The action plan must address efforts to create a culture of security 
and confidence in technological, economic, and legal issues that help 
to ensure a technologically reliable infrastructure.  This includes 
calling for education and open discourse, inventories of recommended 
best practices, and impact assessments of potential policies.

The lack of civil liberties consideration in existing international 
frameworks and conventions makes these solutions inappropriate.  The 
action plan should include a call for developing means through which 
local and international stakeholders can ensure equitable and just 
protection of rights as international legal solutions are devised.

We are opposed to the Council of Europe's Cybercrime Convention. Civil 
society organisations have been working for a number of years to 
educate and inform the convention's development to little avail and are 
now opposing its ratification because of its overly broad mandate, its 
insensitivity to local issues and its disregard for civil liberties.

Access and infrastructure issues


Global universal access to communication and information should be a 
target of the WSIS action plan. The expansion of the global information 
infrastructure should be based on principles of equality and 
partnership and guided by rules of fair competition and regulation at 
both national and international levels.  The integration of access, 
infrastructure and training of the citizenry and the generation of 
local content, in a framework of social networks and clear public or 
private policies, is a key basis for the development of egalitarian and 
inclusive information societies.  The evolution of policy should be 
coordinated internationally but enable a diversity of appropriate 
solutions based on national and regional input and international 
sharing of information and resources. This should be people-centered 
and process-orientated, rather than technologically determined and 
expert dominated.

International bandwidth costs and allocation of spectrum and 
geo-stationary positions should be equitable and the current burdens of 
cost unfairly weighted to under developed contexts must be eliminated 
as an integral part of the process of equitable global communications 
infrastructure. All regions should participate in relevant decision 
making processes.

National access and infrastructure plans must address the divide 
between socio-economic groups and between urban and rural areas.  
Implementation should be measured by internationally agreed indicators 
and time frames that address access, and affordable energy.

Open source software that enables access and the development of 
capacity should be an essential component of all communications roll 
out plans.

Information infrastructure must allow for future expansion and 
development. Roll out plans should be inclusive of existing media 
distribution and ensure that long term comprehensive solutions to 
access and infrastructure are developed.

A digital solidarity fund should be established to ensure the 
implementation of roll out plans on infrastructure development. WSIS 
should agree to draw up an International Convention on a policy of 
subsidised tariffs and prices for Digital Inclusion projects and 
promote the creation of an International Fund for Internet Bandwidth 
for such projects.

Gender

Evidence of governments' commitment to gender equality and women's 
empowerment remain largely absent from the WSIS Agenda.

The Declaration must adopt as a statement of principle a fundamental 
commitment to gender equality, non-discrimination and women's 
empowerment, and recognize these as non-negotiable and essential 
prerequisites to an equitable and people-centred development within the 
Information Society.

To advance gender equality and women's empowerment in the Information 
society, the Action Plan must demonstrate commitment to redress the 
effects of the intersection of unequal power relations in the social, 
economic and political spheres, which manifests in differential access, 
choice, opportunity, participation, status and control over resources 
between women and men as well as communities in terms of class, 
ethnicity, religion, race, geographical location and development status.

The Action Plan should endorse the call of gender and ICT advocates for 
the development of governance and policy frameworks, the setting of 
quantitative and qualitative targets, programmes, activities, 
applications and tools, and a system of monitoring and evaluation which 
would redress shortcomings of current gender mainstreaming approaches.

Attention to other regional and international processes

Finally, we wish to draw the attention of the different stakeholders 
active in the WSIS process to a major risk.  Essential decisions are 
already being taken, in other regional and international political 
arenas that may not be consistent with the vision and values elaborated 
here.

Work in progress of supra-national organisations such as the Council of 
Europe (e.g. its CyberCrime Treaty, the European Union (e.g. its 
Directives on copyright and software patents, the WIPO, the ITU itself 
(e.g. its new rules on taxe de répartition), the WTO (e.g. its 
decisions taken within the frame of the AGCS) all have huge potential 
consequences for knowledge, education and culture.

We therefore recommend that the WSIS participants:

1. Establish a multi-stakeholders observatory committee that would be 
responsible for:

• mapping decision-making in other political arenas that impacts or 
intersects with the WSIS agenda;
• establish a monitoring system to ensure that decisions taken in other 
political arenas that relate to the information society are consistent 
with the general framework established by the WSIS process; and
• reporting to all stakeholders of the WSIS on a regular basis until 
December 2005.

2. In the development of international legal frameworks, give 
preference to those bodies which empower the effective participation of 
developing countries in decision making process to redress the current 
trend of exporting of frameworks developed by Western countries, to the 
global level.


Endorsements

[To be completed]