Summary of 2nd CSO Plenary
12th January, 2003
The agenda was put forward by by Al Alegre, Yesterday's summary was given
by Gaurab Raj Upadhaya. The CSO plenary appreciates the presence and
inputs from the President of the PrepComs, Mr Adama Samassekou. Small
revisions on the summary of the 1st CS plenary was suggested. There were
no other questions
The call for volunteers for translation of documents was renewed.
This was followed with a report on side events.
Youth Group Report by Maitreyi Doshi, India
The youth side event was organized by NITC Malaysia, GKP and UNU. The full
day session in the earlier day had discussed youth issues related to Youth
in Education and capacity, development, Youth and volunteerism in ICT, and
Partnerships. The participants actively discussed the case studies
presented. The recommendations from the side events are summarized below.
The detailed report of the side event would be published in time for the
preccom 2.
Recommendations
1. Youth declaration should be included in all the declarations
2. Young people face the same problems all round the world
3. There are duplications in youth projects, so partnerships were
stressed
4. There are existing declarations, but never implemented, so action
steps are need
5. youth people need involvement in policy making, thus there should
be youth representation in government delegations
6. Funding for innovative youth projects, thus encourage
volunteerism, and marketing and policy participation
The second side meeting presentation was done by Norbert Klein on
"Defining Information Society"
(These notes are as presented by Norbert in the plenary, his summary
report will be sent out to the list separately)
It started with the assumption that we are using "information society."
But there are different definitions and approaches. It was pointed about
WSIS being a multi stake holder meeting, governments, private
organizations, and civil society all have their own definitions.
We agreed that we will not try to give a single definition. There was
discussion on the vision provided as the basis for ongoing debate and
engagement.
"An inclusive information society is one where all persons, without
distinction, are empowered freely to create, receive, share and utilize
information and knowledge for their economic, social, cultural and
political development."
There was an interesting presentation by Prof. Kumon. He had an
interesting demonstration on how information society has developed and
matured from agricultural, industrial to information society. It was said
that the term 'information society' was first used in Japan in the 1960s.
There was complex discussion, a reason which didn't let us come to a
complete conclusion.
Report on the Pacific Island Meeting by Beris Gwynne of FDC.
This is also a verbatim of what was said in the plenary, pending a written
report.
The background started at a meeting in late 2002 (November ??) , at a GKP
meeting. We raised the issues of participation of smaller pacific island
nations, and we were glad to know that the participation was supported by
Glocom, GKP, SKINF and others. We were also glad to find the support of
others. We were able to put a one day event on pacific island - which was
a first for the pacific islands. We were able to focus on the issues of
small island states. some with population ranging from 20,000 to 4m. In
the past, these representation has not been there because of the scale of
participation.
During the course of our discussion today, we had varying level of
development issues. We looked at policy and regulatory issues, which were
common initiatives which are connecting communities, and bringing benefits
of ICT to remote groups.
It was innovate in a sense that it was also highly multi-stakeholder with
representation from media, academicians, private sector, NGO groups,
regional think tanks and of course the government.
The third session with development partners, we were thrilled to have
UNESCO, AUSAID, ADB, and also strong participation by regional
organizations. We would like appreciate help of SPINF and others. we also
had video feed from different pacific island countries, which demonstrated
the use of such technologies
Recommendation drawn out from the meeting
It was mentioned the level of awareness on IC T among government was low.
Among the pacific states, there are some relatively advanced, whereas
there are others where older media, print and radio were more relevant
there was signification discussion on human resource - in terms of IT
capacities, brain drain. There was consideration on intervention of women
and young people as particular sets of stake holders.
The next steps, There was apprehension that we had same type of meetings
in the past. and a smaller group made a special effort towards next step.
The possibilities of a e-conference as well as a meeting after Prepcom 2
was discussed.
This was a positive meeting and has let the pacific islands demonstrate
what could be done and has been demonstrated.
Report by the Gender group (written submitted by Mavic),
Full declaration will be communicated separately.
Tokyo, 13 January 2003--- Gender-based inequity in employment in the IT
industry. English language dominance of Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT) in software and in content that further isolates women.
Lack of support for women's effective participation in the information
society.
These are just some of the issues that are being raised by the 56
participants to the Asia-Pacific Gender Forum for the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS), one of the side events for the Asian Regional
Conference for the WSIS that is currently being held in Tokyo, Japan.
The Gender Forum participants also express concern over the absence of a
gender perspective in assessing the implications of national and
international ICT policies, programs and projects for women and men that
only further perpetuate the gender and digital divide.
They assert that the developments that shape the information society
should pursue goals of gender equality and women's advancement, as well as
social, political and economic justice, sustainable human development, and
support for cultural and linguistic diversity.
The women are also calling on all government delegates to the Tokyo
meeting to make mandatory the collection and accessibility of
sex-disaggregated data and the development of gender-sensitive indicators
in the access, use, and impact of, ICT.
As to the economic impact of the new ICT, the Gender Forum participants
drew attention to the jobs that are being generated especially in
developing countries. Most of these jobs, according to the participants,
are in the service industries in information processing, banking,
insurance, printing and publishing. Outsourcing jobs for women, notably in
India and the Philippines, are in call centres, information services and
data entry, as well as geographic information systems and software
programming. As in many other industries, Women have not reached
technical, managerial and decision-making high-level positions.
The Asia Pacific Gender Forum was organised by Asian Pacific Women's
Information Network Centre(APWINC), Association for Progressive
Communication Women's Networking Support Programme (APC-WNSP) and Japan
Women's Watch, in collaboration with Isis International-Manila, Hong Kong
Federation of Women' s Centres, IT for Change, NPO Coper, Korean Women's
Development Institute, Campaign for Popular Media Reform and the Centre
for Women's Research -Sri Lanka.
Communications Rights Side Event Report
Written provided by Toshimaru Ogura
Time: 1:30 to 8:00 p.m. ; Number of participants: about 40-45 ; Number of
speakers: 11
We discussed two major topics, people's security issues and civil liberty
issues from communication rights point of view. After these two
discussion, we adopted a resolution of the protest statement that Japanese
government does not invite Democratic People's Republic of Korea(North
Korea). On final session, we had a video show of a Korean documentary
video, Rip It Up that was censored by KBS.
On first session, Seiko Hanochi gave basic view point of the human
security that should not depend on national security. Kimiko Ogasawara and
Nasubi pointed out that for the people such as migrant workers and
homeless people who were excluded from society, the Internet or ICT
society had few effective influence, rather They were left behind ICT
oriented social circumstances. Kiyokazu Koshida told about his NGO
activity in East Timor, in which most people were excluded from ICT while
UN delegates and very few English speaking people dominated information.
On the other hand Akinobu Itho explained his experiences as a founder of
Labornet Nippon, the Internet brought about new possibility of solidarity
movement among the workers who worked separately. Also Yukihiro Yasuda
pointed out new possibility of people's alliance between Korea and Japan
beyond language barrier by using translation software.
Second session is regarding civil liberty issues. Nobuo Sakiyama pointed
out that filtering and rating software had characteristics violating
people's rights to know by exemplifying cases of the Internet Association
of Japan. Tadahisa Hamada explained overview of media circumstances
regarding civil society such as public access, media literacy, library
access and so on, and pointed out NGO should tackle with filling the gap
between the haves and have-nots. Patcha from Korea explained Korean
situation of civil liberty. He stressed ID card system and other personal
identity system had a serious violation of people's privacy by
exemplifying the repressive measure for labor movements. Myoung-joon Kim
from Korea gave an outline of public access in Korea from TV and video to
broad band based on his concrete experiences regarding several cases.
Bunmei Sato pointed out Japanese Residents Register Network has nothing of
personal data protection measures based international standard. He
explained the reason existed family register system based on the Japanese
emperor system which had discriminative characteristics. Izumi Yonezawa
pointed out gender that Japanese ID system indicating gender based on sex
in origin violated people's privacy from her experiences as trans gender.
We reach the common understanding that so called digital divide is deeply
embedded present social economic and political structure. Although ICT is
expected cultural diversity, unilateral tendency such as standardization
of English, westernization of ethics and way of life is dominant. Privacy
and civil liberty are not protected automatically by using ICT. Rather we
need more effort to tackle with them.
Through these sessions, we reconfirm that communication rights as an
essential keyword has been acknowledged more and more. Adding to this, as
a new view point, people's security point of view is also important for
communication as human rights is pointed out.
After two session, we adopted following resolution regarding
not-participation of North Korea. Then we had a video show of Rip It Up.
After the side events summary were presented, the report on working groups
were presented.
Report on Working Groups meetings
Report of the Content and Themes Group
It was reported by Garcia (Bobby) of Philippines. There were eight members
in the group. The group disclosed that there were 18 points identified as
inputs to the formal declaration. But it was later decided to prioritize 6
points. 3 in preamble, 3 for declaration. The six points are as follows.
Preamble statements elements
1. In the drive towards information society, we should not only be
concerned by productivity and similar quantitative issues, but we should
be more concerned about sustainable human development.
2. Information and communication technology should consider
political, socio-economic aspects of these technologies and their effects
on the society in consideration of issues like democratization, gender
issues, and globalization.
3. The common vision of the Information Society should include as an
inherent part the issues of Human rights and communications rights of the
individuals of the world, without infringing their personal right to
communicate and exchange information.
Declaration statement elements
4. Civil Society involvement in all level should be considered.
People participation should be at all levels of governance starting at the
policy level and during monitoring, evaluation of these policies and not
just in implementation.
5. The vision statement should seriously look into the piracy and
security of individual rights. We are against censorships and
surveillance. Progressive content to counter these issues of pornography,
and 'problematic' content rather then prohibitive regulation.
6. Consider and engage all the disadvantaged groups and other like
Gender, Women, disadvantaged, etc.. and get their issues considered. It's
difficult to enumerate all such groups.
Addition of cultural and linguistics issues was recommended
The consideration of internet governance and involvement with ICANN and
the decision making process.
Content group was requested to circulate all the points to the mailing
list. Also noted that, content group needs additional support from people
who would want to volunteer
Gender group comment - due to the side meeting, there could not be a
representation to the content and theme group, so it should be noted
Jaba, who represents the CS in the drafting committee, asked the plenary
to highlight few points seriously, so that the committee take is very
seriously.
Report on Lobbying Group
It was pointed out of the requirement of coming up with a flow chart to
have a holistic view of what is feeding into what in terms of documents
and events. The content group has been assigned to do this tasks. The
content group also provided a framework of lobbying and engagement
· Who do we lobby with - declaration, panels, session
· Through non-formal interaction with national delegations
· Through regional, global prep com
· Through direct interaction with Mr Adama Samassekou
· Through individual lobbying with the drafting committee meetings
· Center our intervention on action plans - as organizers have been
keen to accept these suggestion.
Address by Mr Adama Samassekou, President of WSIS PrepCom.
(not official address, based on notes)
It's a great please to share what we are doing together. My first purpose
is to thank a lot the organizers of this AP regional conference. Because
has been seen, as civil society and other organizations have has forum to
have two days to have side events and discuss issues.
In Montreal, (at the GCN ??) we are wondering, how this conference will
be organized, because we needed to have civil society and NGOs really need
to be involved. I am happy to see how powerful are your recommendation,
and how committed you are to the issues. Regarding gender perspective,
youth perspective and also the important matter of how to define
information society and also the inputs of the content committee gave me
good understanding of how deep how you have worked on it.
Indeed it is a special summit because of the matter of the summit. What is
information society, and each stake holder has his own understanding of
this matter.
Our first purpose would be to bring all these stake holders together and
bring a common vision of what a information society is. If we try listen
to each other and to bring other in a consensual way all our expectation
about coming new society, indeed we will be able to build a common vision,
but also find out ways to fight against major issues of the summit. For
example, digital divide - if we bridge it then it will help us fight the
social divide. This is a major issue if we can deal with it.
The expectation of each communities for better opportunities, about which
we can say that ICTs are important tool to achieve the millennium goals.
This is an important goal for me for the organization of the summit
The major thing with the summit is how to build confidence with all the
stake holders. This summit is organized by UN but our will to put together
the different stake holders, we have intentioned to let them be together
from the beginning to the very end. This is the most important decision
for me of the general assembly, which for the summit gives a new color and
perspective. If we build confidence among all stakeholder we will achieve
a very important goals, not only in the preparatory process but also
adoption of the declaration and help us implement action plans during and
after the conference.
I would like to urge you to keep building this confidence in all levels. I
hope that the regional conference will be able to enrich our proceedings
towards PrepCom 2, which is very important for me. This whole spaces will
let us collaborate and move forward.
It is important for us to incorporate all the regional inputs and develop
it as a autonomous event. I hope we will be able to share all in the next
two days.
--
Report by Logistics Group / discussion on procedures for the NGO meeting
The time/venue of the NGO CS will be declared after the NGO panel.
Logistics issues were notified and discussed.
Al Alegre then presented the agenda of the NGO panel scheduled for
tomorrow.
Report by Gaurab Raj Upadhaya
