[WSIS CS-Plenary] format for Tunis Summit

[Rik Panganiban]

Dear Friends,

Prepcom II accepted the draft document from the Executive Secretariat  
on the modalities of the Tunis summit (doc # WSIS-II/PC-2/DOC/4), which  
can be found at:

	http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/listing-all.asp? 
lang=en&c_event=pc2|2&c_type=all|

General comments:  Below you will find the text which requires some  
action from civil society's "self-organizing mechanisms" to select  
speakers for the opening ceremony, the plenary sessions of the General  
Debate, and the official roundtables.  I am going to recommend that the  
Working Methods Working Group suggest some modalities for how we select  
among the accredited WSIS civil society organizations who will be  
nominated to speak at these venues.  The CS Bureau and Content and  
Themes should add this to their agendas as well.

And before we go into a feeding frenzy for scarce speaking slots, I  
would like to note that we should not divert so much energy and  
resources toward organizing our few minutes of interventions that we  
lose sight of our larger political objectives in the process.  That is,  
I would prefer that we get zero speaking slots, if in exchange we got  
rock solid commitments from governments to achieve the important  
objectives of bridging the digital divide, democratizing internet  
governance and protecting universal human rights in the information  
society.

Among the notable bits from the document (my emphasis added):

A. Speakers at Opening Ceremony:

> The Heads of State of the host countries, the Secretary-General of the  
> United Nations, the Secretary-General of ITU, the President of the  
> Preparatory Committee, and one top-level representative from civil  
> society (including NGOs) as well as one top-level representative from  
> a business sector entity (including ITU Sector Members), identified  
> through their self-organizing mechanisms, in coordination with the  
> Secretary-General of the Summit, will be invited to make opening  
> remarks.

My comments: The phrase "through their self-organizing mechanisms" is a  
nice gain for civil society, since many of us were incredibly unhappy  
with how the secretariat chose a speaker for the opening ceremony that  
did not reflect any of our significant efforts among ourselves to agree  
on a slate of proposed speakers from our own processes.  I personally  
am unhappy with one person speaking on behalf of all civil society, but  
perhaps we could think of some innovative way of sharing the one  
speaking slot, i.e. having three speakers from three regions speak  
simultaneously the same statement.

B. Interventions during General Debate:

> 4.	Immediately after the opening ceremony, the first plenary meeting  
> shall start with general debate. General debate will continue until  
> the eighth plenary meeting on Friday afternoon. The last fifteen  
> minutes of general debate of the first plenary meeting, the last half  
> hour of general debate of the second, third, fifth and sixth plenary  
> meeting and the last hour of general debate of the fourth and seventh  
> plenary meeting will be set aside for statements from representatives  
> of organizations and entities attending the Summit as observers.

> 6.	During the time reserved for observers, speaking time will be  
> limited to 3 minutes. All speakers should represent the top-level of  
> their organizations or entities. With regard to accredited civil  
> society entities (including NGOs) and business sector entities  
> (including ITU Sector Members), the spokespersons shall be identified  
> through their self-organizing mechanisms, in coordination with the  
> Secretary-General of the Summit. With regard to intergovernmental  
> organizations, in principle, High Level Summit Organizing Committee  
> members, represented at the top-level, may make statements.

My comments:  If my math is correct, assuming an equal division of  
speaking times among civil society, the private sector and  
inter-governmental organizations, that adds up to 85 minutes of  
interventions from civil society during the entire General Debate. If  
we assume 3 minutes interventions each speaker, that would be about 28  
individual speaking slots for civil society.

"Top-level speakers from organizations" I interpret to mean the  
Presidents and Secretary-Generals of accredited NGOs.  This is  
important to note, since for many of our organizations, our Presidents  
and Secretary-Generals might not be attending the Tunis Summit.  Or  
conversely, they might only chose to attend if they are speaking at the  
official plenary.


C. Parallel Roundtables

> 2.	Each round table will have a maximum of 20 participants. Half of  
> the participants will come from States and half from organizations and  
> entities attending the Summit as observers.
>
> 7.	Participants from organizations and entities attending the Summit  
> as observers will be nominated by the Secretary-General of the Summit,  
> in consultation with the High Level Summit Organizing Committee, and  
> self-organizing mechanisms of civil society (including NGOs) and  
> business sector entities (including ITU Sector Members).

My comments: Assuming an equal division of roundtable slots from CS,  
private sector and inter-governmental organizations, we would get 3-4  
roundtable seats per roundtable.

Rik Panganiban
===============================================
RIK PANGANIBAN       Communications Coordinator
Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations  
(CONGO)
web: http://www.ngocongo.org
email: rik.panganiban at ngocongo.org
mobile: (+1) 917-710-5524 
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