[WSIS CS-Plenary] Summary of the Briefing for NGOs on WSIS outcomes (7 december 2005)

[William Drake]

Hi,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org]On
> Behalf Of Ralf Bendrath

> McTim wrote:
>
> >> Mr. Utsumi <snip> mentioned the participation of civil society
> >> steadily increased throughout the process, so that at the end
> >> stakeholders fully participated in the final negotiations.
> >
> > I want some of what this guy was smoking !

Actually, it was even more surreal than this.  Utsumi,

*Was generally quite elaborate in claiming that WSIS was multistakeholder
because of him, we owe our participation to the ITU, which loves CS, and
indeed has "CS" members, meaning ISOC.  In reality, we are basically locked
out of the ITU, with just a couple of real CS organizations participating in
some parts of specific ITU sectors, and the UN--with which ITU generally has
a rather limited relationship--had a bigger hand in making room for
observers.

*Said that while he didn't attend the final prepcom negotiations, he was
told that all participants spoke freely when they wanted without even
identifying whether they were from government, PS, or CS.  In reality, we
had little snippets of time at the end of each session, and on several
occasions had to send people up to the podium to ask for our time because
the chair was wrapping it up without calling on us.  Unlike government reps,
we also were expected to submit statements in writing in advance and to
stick to the text so as to not confuse the translators, which makes for more
stilted interventions.

> 1. They obviously see a need for getting us more and more on board and
> enhancing our participation in order to have a legitimate outcome.

Definitely, and this has to be leveraged with respect to not only WSIS
follow-up and implementation stuff under ECOSOC's intergovernmental S&T
commission and the IG Forum (I almost fell out my chair when Geiger said it
wasn't clear that the forum would be open and peer-level, and could be more
like WSIS prepcoms), but also other relevant public and private
international organizations and networks.  That's why it's important that
the STC and IGF processes have some analytical capacity and look
horizontally at each mechanism's compliance with the Geneva principles and
make recs on how each can improve in terms of transparency, accountability,
inclusion, etc.  If CS doesn't really push and insist on this, it will
probably be marginalized or dropped entirely.   There will be serious
resistance on the part of secretariats and dominant members to such
scrutiny, as was demonstrated when the WGIG took an initial crack at it.

Best,

Bill