[WSIS CS-Plenary] health section - explanation

[Elizabeth Carll, PhD]

Dear Ralf and all,

Thank you for the work of those who participated in the drafting, as it was
surely a difficulty task.  I would agree with Hiroshi, that much information
was included however, the perspective of special interest groups was
unfortunately omitted.  Having links to additional statements would
certainly be helpful, however, obviously it would have been preferable to
have information as part of the text.

What is curious to me is why the drafting group did not decide to include
both a section on disability as was submitted by the Disability Caucus and
the health section as was submitted by the Health and ICT Working Group,
thereby being inclusive of both groups.  It was unfortunate that the
Disability Caucus decided to lobby to remove any reference to mental health
from the health section as opposed to writing and focusing on their own
section, but I cannot speak for their decision making, as at no time did the
Health and ICT WG attempt to eliminate or modify language from the
Disability paragraph contributions, although such could have been
recommended.  In the end, it is unfortunate that the Disability Caucus
lobbying resulted in your having to decide to make everyone "equally
unhappy" and I can understand your thinking as including neither was an
outcome which was mentioned, although including both would have been
preferable.

As far as disagreement with in the Health and ICT WG, having one person
disagree, does not constitute internal conflict, unless you had heard
similar recommendations for the removal of mental health from the Health
section from other members of the Health and ICT Group, of which I am
unaware.  It appears that coordinating a group and speaking for the group
makes no difference if one person is in disagreement and makes it known.
While everyone is entitled to make their thoughts known, this is an
important message as to where to place energies, as it appears, that CS has
great difficulty organizing and even recognizing its own informal
structures.  Perhaps until there is a more formal structure for broad CS
representation, investing time in various initiatives may prove rather
unproductive and focus should specifically be on lobbying government.

Thank you again, for all your work on this, and the process has given much
food for thought.

Best regards,

Elizabeth

Dr. Elizabeth Carll
Health and ICT WG

-----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org]On
Behalf Of Hiroshi Kawamura
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2005 5:29 AM
To: plenary at wsis-cs.org
Cc: Pwd at wsis-cs.org
Subject: Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] health section - explanation


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Dear Ralf and all:

I highly value yours and your collaborators effort to pick up different
input to formulate the CS Statement. The Statement contains lots of valuable
substances.

However I would like to draw your attention to the fact that Majority of
Disability Caucus participants including myself had to stay more than 60 km
away from the venue due to accessible accommodations available only there.
That limited the caucus contact with other CS group who could stay
relatively close.
Secondly, the Internet access at hotel was terrible. It meant that except
for being on the venue the entire participants of Disability Caucus were cut
off from the e-mail connection and even within the venue there were no space
or no time to work on e-mailing with good concentration. Thirdly, the
Disability Caucus held two major events on 15th and 18th. On 18th, we
adopted our own declaration following Geneva. Entire effort of Disability
Caucus participants was focused on formulation of the Tunis Declaration as
attached. Lastly, traveling back home for persons with disabilities with
very poor airlines services caused a lot of problems to many participants
that resulted in piles of unread e-mails in the mail box.
Those are the factors why we could not actively take part in the drafting
process.

Having received final text that does not address digital divide of persons
with disabilities at all, I would like to propose to the drafting group or
the web master of the official CS Statement web page host to list the link
to other statements of Civil Society Caucuses so that missing issues be
addressed by supplementary documents.

Best regards,

Hiroshi Kawamura
WSIS CS Disability Focal Point


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralf Bendrath" <bendrath at zedat.fu-berlin.de>
To: "wsis-cs-plenary" <plenary at wsis-cs.org>
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2005 3:45 PM
Subject: [WSIS CS-Plenary] health section - explanation


> [Please note that by using 'REPLY', your response goes to the entire list.
> Kindly use individual addresses for responses intended for specific
> people]
>
> Click http://wsis.funredes.org/plenary/ to access automatic translation of
> this message!
> _______________________________________
>
> Dear all,
>
> I was facing a difficult decision here, as there was no agreement on the
> exact wording of the health information section. I have tried to weigh
> all arguments, but in the end I had to make a decision myself as the main
> drafter and facilitator.
>
> 1. Elizabeth Carll wanted to include "physical and mental" health.
>
> 2. Sylvia Caras and others opposed it and proposed to add the sentence
> "Health includes biological, emotional, social, spiritual and vocational
> well-being".
>
> This seems to be an internal conflict in the Health&ICT WG, which is none
> of my business. But if there is open and public debate among caucus
> members about this, it is a bit hard to accept this as a consensus caucus
> decision.
> Elizabeth on the other hand pointed out, and rightly so, that "physical
> and mental" health was included in the Geneva CS Declaration. But: We
> don't really have the rule of "agreed language" like the governments have
> in the UN system, as CS is much more fluid, and many people have joined
> the process only in the second phase. (The governments who had to agree on
> something in Tunis had all been there already in Geneva.)
>
> 3. Hiroshi Kawamura as the Disability Caucus cordinator supported
> Sylvia's suggestion.
>
> This is something to seriously consider, and you could say it outweighs a
> "less-than-consensual" proposal from the Health&ICT Caucus. What to me
> added on this was the fact that the disability caucus does not have its
> own chapter in the statement.
>
> So, my job again was to make everybody equally unhappy. I therefore
> decided to delete "physical and mental", while at the same time not
> including "Health includes biological, emotional, social, spiritual and
> vocational well-being". The statement now only speaks of "health". Nobody
> objected to the word "health", right? ;-) This seems to be the lowest
> common denominator and is also understanable by normal readers who don't
> know anything about the conceptual struggles in tghe health care world
> around this.
>
> I had to make decisions like this in many parts of the document, when
> different people and caucuses were fighting over the exact wording. I have
> always tried to make a balanced and fair decision when they could not
> agree on a consensus text. Much of this facilitating happened offlist, as
> it is difficult to deal with these things on public email lists. You can
> blame me for not doing it in public, but I have always sent out the next
> version for everybody to give feedback, and I have alway tried to justify
> the decisions I was forced to make. (We went through ten different
> versions of the statement, by the way.)
>
> I hope you understand these explanations, and I hope in the end everybody
> is still able to sign on to the overall statement, which has evolved very
> well over the last month.
>
> Thanks a lot,
>
> Ralf
>
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