[WSIS CS-Plenary] Statement made in sub-committee B yesterday

[Bertrand de La Chapelle]

Dear all,
 As Ralf has reported, inputing in the drafting process of Sub-Committee B
yesterday was impossible for Civil society.
 I exceptionnally send to the Plenary the statement made yesterday on behalf
of the CS Working Group on Follow-up to express our dissatisfaction.
 From now on, in order not to clog the Plenary list, posts related to the
Follow-up Working Group will only be sent to the group's list. Please
subscribe so that we can be able to fully associate everyone and get all
relevant inputs in drafting processes that are very demanding.
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 Best
 Bertrand

*Statement on behalf of Civil society Working group
on WSIS Implementation and Follow-up*

*Sub-Committee B – WSIS PrepCom3 – **Sept 21, 2005***

   Thank you very much Madam chair. We congratulated you yesterday on your
efforts to establish an inclusive process and your efficiency in speeding up
the process.

 But today, we must confess that your efficiency had involuntary detrimental
effects for the very inclusiveness you attempt to promote.

 Knowing what document was going to be the basis for discussion was only
decided this afternoon. As you know, preparation of any civil society
statement is a very inclusive and iterative process and such uncertainty on
what will be the topic of intervention is not allowing us use effectively
the few minutes that are allocated to us. In addition, the present
intervention had to be drafted on the fly and could not go through the
careful consultative process we normally respect.

 But more, contrary to the procedure adopted yesterday, the Document 6
(Friends of the Chair) did not contain any proposed written formulation
emanating from civil society for governments to consider, a drastic
difference of procedure between the way Paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
and 9 were handled.

 In addition, in the interactions among governments this afternoon, you took
note of contributions on the fly and made immediate decisions to integrate
them with or without brackets. There is no way civil society could submit
any comments in this procedure, let alone have governments comment upon
them.

 Last but not least, there is no way Civil Society could make all the
comments it needs to make in the few minutes available to me now. And in any
case, governments could not comment on them on the fly.

 As a result, if we were to apply strictly your procedure, discussion on
paragraphs 10, 11 and 12 are now closed without civil society having had any
opportunity to make any comment – this is true for private sector as well -.


 I don't have to underline the irony of the situation if we were to see our
comments taken so nicely into account and studied in detail on more minor
issues yesterday and have no way to participate meaningfully in the
essential debate on how to precisely implement a multi-stakeholder mechanism
that allows full participation of civil society !

This is certainly an unintended and not anticipated side-effect. We only
intervene here to help find a solution. We therefore suggest to keep with
the spirit and the practice of the procedure you have implemented yesterday
so efficiently;

 For that purpose, the Civil Society Working Group on Followup is ready to
provide the Secretariat with a compilation of written contributions on
paragraphs 10 to 13 in the same format as was used for paragraphs 1 to 9. We
strongly demand that those contributions be distributed to all delegations
and that this Sub-Committee, before the first clean version is finalized,
revisits the corresponding paragraphs in a specific session, so that
governments have an opportunity to comment on them the way they have for
other paragraphs.

 Given the consultation processes within civil society and editing
constraints, this document can hardly be drafted to be used during the
afternoon session of tomorrow and we suggest to hold this special session on
friday afternoon. Were that not possible, inclusion of our contributions as
proposed text in the clean document could

 In addition, with your agreement, we intend to use at the beginning of
tomorrow's session, a portion of our speaking time to address the key issues
related to paragraphs 10 to 13.

 We are at your disposition to explore further the appropriate modalities
and reiterate our strong desire to make this exercise as inclusive as the
subject requires.

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