[WSIS CS-Plenary] CRIS statement

[mciver at albany.edu]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: CRIS statement
From:    Agencia Alai <alai_ec at yahoo.com>
Date:    Thu, December 11, 2003 9:27 am
To:      mciver at albany.edu
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Speech for Intergovernmental Plenary.  WSIS

Seán Ó Siochrú.  CRIS Campaign. (Communication Rights
in the Information Society)

In some respects civil society has been the main
beneficiary of this event.

It is the first time that civil society has come
together in such diversity and is such numbers from
all over, to work together on information and
communication issues.  We have learned enormously from
each other, and from our interactions with others, and
have built what we believe to be enduring links and
bridges between us.

Most significantly, we managed to construct and
negotiate a process that resulted in broad consensus
on a coherent, comprehensive and convincing Civil
Society Declaration on our vision of the information
society just launched.

The CRIS Campaign has worked hard over the last two
years on this Summit, but we believe our efforts have
been well rewarded. The Civil Society Declaration is a
major outcome of this Summit. The CRIS Campaign
enthusiastically endorses it and is only too aware of
the sweat and tears, and compromise, that went into
ensuring that a single strong voice would emerge from
the bulk of civil society.

Interestingly, the Intergovernmental Declaration and
the Civil Society Declaration share one crucial
sentence:  “Communication is a fundamental social
process, a basic human need and the foundation of all
social organisation.”  The Civil Society Declaration,
however, goes further in proposing how we can build an
information and communication society that has people
at the centre.  It confronts key dangers such as
excessive copyright protection and monopolies on
intellectual products, concentration of media
ownership, censorship and the limitations of a purely
market driven approach.  It affirms for instance the
vital role of community media, of the public domain
and of the global commons. We present concrete
examples of these at our World Forum on Communication
Rights here on December 11th.

The role of ICTs in this process of civil society
networking, especially between physical meetings, was
significant – indeed it would have been impossible to
achieve what we did without them.  But the huge
imbalances in ICTs globally were also reflected in our
organising processes and we regret that so many in
civil society, especially from the poorer communities,
were excluded from the process; and that the resources
were unavailable to engage in more direct interaction.
During the preparations for this phase of the Summit,
some governments worked closely with civil society in
drafting their national positions. The next two years
offer an opportunity for all governments to extend
this and to involve civil society as equal partners in
their national processes and in the implementation of
national action plans.

In the coming two years, CRIS as part of civil society
must rise to the challenges outlined in our
Declaration.  We believe that civil society must build
on the process that was begun here, at all levels.
Furthermore, we invite governments, intergovernmental
organisations and all others to join with us in
creating an information and communication society for
all.


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