[WSIS CS-Plenary] Report from drafting group III, subcom A

[Vittorio Bertola]

The drafting group would deal with paras 51-55, e.g. the section on
privacy, personal data protection, consumer protection and freedom of
expression.

I think the result is acceptable, even if we had to deal with the US
consistently weakening any statement in support of the aforementioned
values, and in particular of legislative approaches in the field (I was a
bit sad for their last minute addition of "national" in front of "consumer
protection mechanisms", but alas, that's the reality). The Chinese and
Arab delegations were surprisingly silent, the climate was productive and
most of the session went into exchanges between the US & friends, the
UK/EU, and some particularly active delegations (Norway, Singapore, El
Salvador, Nicaragua, Israel).

However, civil society proposals got broad support in principle and also
in practice (especially from the EU ;-) ), even if, in practice, only a
few of them were adopted. Before the break, Ralf was bold enough to raise
his hand and take the floor to promote CS positions. This, however, caused
a bit of havoc. During the break, the Chair was approached by China and
two Arab delegations, who raised the issue that, according to the
procedures agreed in phase I, civil society should not participate in the
session. The EU delegation countered this on the basis that no agreement
had been reached on Friday, and this was supported by a good number of
delegations from Western countries and Latin America. The Chair (Norway)
said that he had received no instructions to this purpose, so the meeting
was sovereign, and that his compromise proposal was that non-gov members
could stay and speak if directly addressed by some gov speaker or by the
Chair. In the end, he managed to get all delegations to accept this
proposal.

So I think we've almost set a precedent, unless Khan explicitly counters
the drafting group Chair's decision for the future.
-- 
vb.               [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<------
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