[WSIS CS-Plenary] GFC meeting today

[Wolfgang Kleinwächter]

If WSIS is NOT linked to MDG, it remains a isolated spaceship with a team of insiders flying through the endless cyberspace. The challenge is to bring the WSIS issues, including Human Rights, to the MDG and to make the whole process sustainable by pushing awarenmess that the MDG development goals will not be reached if we do not implement the WSIS Plan of Action. Linking villages to the net and guaranteering human rights to everybody is essential to reduce poverty and further development in all areas.  And without reducing poverty the call for bridging the digital divede and promoting human rights remain empty slogans. 

Best

wolfgang



----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org on behalf of Ralf Bendrath
Sent: Wed 9/7/2005 6:14 PM
To: plenary at wsis-cs.org
Subject: Re: [WSIS CS-Plenary] GFC meeting today
 
[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!
_______________________________________

Thanks for your report, Chantal.

> Here is a short summary of the GFC meeting of this morning. And also in
>  the annex a statment made on behalf of the informal coalition on 
> financing.
I would love to see the other CS speakers at that meeting sending their
statements to this list. I have only seen the ones from you (finance 
coalition) and Jean-Louis (CSDPTT) yet.

One remark, and this goes back to the heart of the political debate we 
already had in WSIS phase one:

> /c. About evaluation and policy debate/
> 
> According to ambassador Karklins, civil society and other organisations
>  should not fear that the topic of the information society disappears 
> from the international agenda after Tunis, because of the link between 
> the MDG's Summit and the WSIS Summit. The mention of WSIS in the MDG's
> documents means, for Karklin, that the topic of ICTs for development
> will remain on the agenda at least until 2015.

This is really not enough, and civil society should not buy into this. If
WSIS only stays on the agenda through the ICT4D discourse, then all the
other important things we have fought for will be lost. This especially
relates to the human rights dimension of the information society.

We can already clearly see it here in the EU: The governments have started 
again to see WSIS as purely a development summit. But they also have to 
look at themselves and how human rights can be supported and strengthened 
in the European information society. Currently, they forget about human 
rights in the WSIS context (or only think "Tunisia"), while at the same 
time the EU Council of Ministers will again discuss another proposal for 
mandatory retention of all communications traffic and location data in 
Europe for 6 to 12 month at its next meeting on Friday, which would imply 
a massive breach of human rights principles.

Therefore, we must insist that implementation is assured for WSIS, but 
that it definitely is not constrained to development issues.

Best, Ralf
_______________________________________________
Plenary mailing list
Plenary at wsis-cs.org
http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/plenary