Re: [hr-wsis] HR caucus co-organizer of the WFCR

[Rik Panganiban <rikp@bluewin.ch>]

Meryem et al,

The WFCR will be a great opportunity to showcase the key human rights dimensions of the information society.  There is obviously a lot of ignorance and misunderstanding in this area that we need to dispel.

We might think of organizing along two lines: 

(1) human rights challenges of the IS, i.e. surveillance, monitoring, censorship, etc. and 

(2) human rights opportunities of the IS, i.e. how HRs groups are using ICTs to enable their work, better HRs monitoring using ICTs, increasing transparency and accountability using ICTs, etc.

I believe that we need to demonstrate that the IS not a "rights-free" zone, that there are existing international, regional and national human rights standards that already cover the information society.  We might solicit views from authorities in this area.  I know that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is preparing a short paper highlighting which articles of the UDHR are most applicable to the information society.  Perhaps the ICRC could be asked to prepare an analysis of this.  We shouldn't have to defend the right to communicate and the right to a free press all over again when they are longstanding parts of the intl human rights legislation.

In terms of multimedia, we could ask Human Rights Watch's "Witness" program to set up a demonstration.  For those who don't know, Witness provides videocameras to human rights activists around the world to record the human rights situations/ violations in their countries and to make those videos available to authorities and the media. Also ICRC has some great mutimedia demonstrations that we could get them to set up, I'm sure.

Regards to all,

Rik Panganiban
WFM

On Vendredi, octobre 3, 2003, at 02:13  PM, Meryem Marzouki wrote:

> 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
>
>
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Rik Panganiban             email: rikp@bluewin.ch
Special Adviser            tel: +41 22 734 9774
World Federalist Movement  Fax: +41 22 734 9775
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