[WSIS CS-Plenary] Speaking up

[Vittorio Bertola]

I think the moment has come to speak up and read Avri's protest statement
against the exclusion of civil society and private sector from drafting
groups.

I have been spending the last 60 minutes speaking with some governments,
with the business people, and with some of us. The business people are
meeting right now to decide whether to speak up, but it seems likely they
will, especially if we do the same. Some governments (both EU, and non-EU
from the developed world) have told us that they would support us, but
that they need to get a strong, formal and public protest from
non-governmental actors first. The EU is meeting at the topmost level
today at 3pm (the only high level group meeting in the week) and so would
need that statement before then.

If we don't speak this morning, we risk missing the train. Yesterday civil
society people were repeatedly excluded from more and more drafting
groups. If we go down this path, it could even happen that the next round
of forum discussions, or even the forum itself, would adopt the same rules
of procedure, and be "multistakeholder" in the sense that CS and PS speak
in the first five minutes and then leave.

We need to not accept losing one inch of ground on this issue. We need to
get consistent support from as many countries as possible, in public, so
that it can't be easily withdrawn. To do so, I think we have to confront
them with the risk (which, I think, would actually become reality) of the
Internet community refusing to participate in any new mechanism due to
this kind of treatment, and contesting the Summit through the press, which
would possibly turn the entire Tunis Summit into a failure for what
regards IG.

These are my two cents. I hope that other people can support this point of
view, so that we can make a statement this morning. In any case, if we
can't manage to get proper closure on it due to shortage of time, I would
do it anyway, signing it with as many signatories as we can get.
-- 
vb.               [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<------
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