HR caucus co-organizer of the WFCR

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

Hi all,

As most of you might be aware, one of the major events organized 
alongside (see http://www.wsis-online.net/event/) with WSIS first phase 
in Geneva, is the World Forum on Communication Rights (WFCR), organized 
by the CRIS campaign on December 11th at Palexpo.
More information on WFCR is at: http://www.communicationrights.org/

The WFCR focuses on 4 themes, which are:
- Communication and Poverty
- Communication, Conflicts and Peace
- Communication, Copyright, Patents and Trade
- Communication and Human Rights

The HR caucus has been asked to be a partner of this event, and to 
organize the "Communication and Human Rights" track. This is a great 
opportunity to make HR issues more visible during WSIS, specially since 
they can be linked, through WFCR, to other important issues related to 
communication and also since, to speak frankly, it would have been 
difficult to organize an event by ourselves.
I hope you welcome this idea.

A rough description that has been provided to CRIS for the overall 
presentation fo the forum is the following;
"Communication and Human Rights: Its role not only in freedom of 
expression and privacy, but in all human rights, from the right to a 
fair trial and freedom of movement, to freedom of assembly and workers’ 
rights, together with democratic governance".

The format for all tracks would be more or less the same, with of 
course some flexibility. The WFCR organizing committee suggests the 
following for each session track (1h30 to 2h00 maximum, most probably 
1h30):

- Keynote speaker opens the session briefly (10-15mn)
- One presentation that gives a quick overview of Communication within 
the theme (10-15mn)
- and/or testimonies (what is going on on the ground, either by 
witnesses or through multimedia presentation)
- Then a panel of 3-4 people which will frame communication rights in 
the structural circumstances that make the situation that has been 
presented possible.

As I already had the opportunity to discuss with some HR caucus 
representatives in Geneva, it appears that it wouldn't be really 
appropriate to separate "witnesses" from "theorists", and we could 
preferably have a larger panel including testimonies and discussions on 
structural circumstances.
Any idea on possible multimedia installation, less "conference-like", 
would be most welcome.

Regarding keynote speaker, the first obvious option is Mary Robinson, 
who has been informally approached already. We're waiting for an 
answer. She must be very busy, specially since the day before (December 
10th) is the 55th anniversary of UDHR. So we need an option 2, with a 
well known name.

Regarding panelists, some names already come to mind (from countries 
with difficult situation Re: human rights, from indigenous people, 
etc.), but first we should clearly identify the content of the session.

First, we have to limit ourselves, not trying to raise all HR issues in 
details. In addition, this session shouldn't overlap with other 
sessions as well as with themes specifically highlighted by other 
events (e.g. there will be a panel on labor rights organized by ILO, 
another one on indigenous people, etc. list of events is at: 
www.wsis-online/event).

We also need to identify a main thread to make the session coherent, 
with different illustrations. I can propose two of them, and I'm 
willing to have your comments and perhaps other suggestions:

- 1st possible thread: "privatisation of rights" and social control 
converging agendas
- 2nd possible thread: human rights (true or false) conflicts raised by 
the use of ICTs, i.e. human dignity vs. freedom of expression, freedom 
of of information, ...,  right to information vs. privacy, right to 
safety vs. privacy, etc.

But let's discuss the whole idea before going on.

Meryem