[Bureau] Re: Clarification, getting more funds, moving forward

[Alan Alegre]

Hi Nick and all

Firstly, Nick: Thanks for your prompt response. I hope you didn't take the
clarificatory question the wrong way--I have no problems whatsoever with the
youth representation, and I believe TIG as an apex (and accredited)
organization is coordinating the youth caucus very well. I was just
clarifying all the organizational affiliations of  all the "successful"
fellowship applicants, trying to head off any possible uninformed comments
about how the selection process went and which organizations and families
were chosen. There are too many legitimate issues being raised in the
fellowship process, and i wanted to clarify for the benefit of all the
possible questions on organizational affiliations.

On to the more important issues:

I strongly support your suggestion of renegotiating with donors, and this is
the context of the suggestion for a letter to be drafted, and where I had
appealed that everyone (including the CSD) support us in this, and support
the whole spirit of how the fellowship process was discussed in the Bureau.

Thank you very much Nick for taking the initiative of starting the letter
drafting process...this is certainly the way forward...it is a fine letter
from my point of view, and I hope Renata and Angela (and others) edit where
appropriate. (Renata, people are relying on you as you probably are in the
best position, being in Geneva and with CONGO, to communicate directly with
Louise and Alain, and with the donors in Switzerland.)

Amir: I do not think we want to "punish" anyone (cf. your last message). We
merely want that our participation be taken seriously, and the process we
follow is the best we can manage under difficult circumstances. The most
important thing for me (and I think for the Asia Family) is to learn from
our experience so we can decide once and for all the efficacy and rationale
of the continuing existence of the CSB. If in this crucial facilitating role
(i.e., in financing/fellowships process) we cannot make a significant
impact, then I for one will seriously listen to quarters within Civil
Society questioning the CSB's actual significance in the WSIS process,
especially beyond Geneva and towards Tunis.

One last point. I raise my small voice on this even as I am one of those who
was granted a fellowship (like Amir), because i precisely feel that some of
our colleagues (whose applications were not approved) but who have
legitimate feedback will  refrain from giving it lest they be accused of
raising issues with the fellowship process because their applications were
not approved (i.e., "sour graping"). I know they would rather keep quiet
even if they should not. Being displaced in the fellowship process by city
mayors is  not a very edifying process for people who have given so much of
their time and effort to WSIS only to be shut out of the actual summit. I
hope others support them as well.

IN any case, time is indeed very short. Nick raises a very practical
point--people are now at a point when they have to either cancel their
flights/hotel bookings, or reconfirm them. So, lets follow Nick's lead and
try to move forward.

Thanks

Al


----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick Moraitis" <nick at takingitglobal.org>
To: <bureau at geneva2003.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 19, 2003 5:01 AM
Subject: Clarification, getting more funds, moving forward


Hi Bureau,

(1) On Al Alegre's question:

"Related to the above: Will we assume that everyone from the youth
family is from one organization (Taking IT Global), or are they coming
from different organizations? (Nick, are these youth reps all from
TIG?)"

All different organizations. Most of the TIG delegation are from other
organizations active in the field of ICTs and youth, but lacking in
accreditation (as per the request from the Secretariat to act as an
umbrella organization). None of our staff applied for fellowships. All
fellowship applicants registered on the TIG delegation have their own
initiatives and do not officially represent TIG. In the case of those
being prioritized for fellowships in liaison with the regional focal
points, all have been working extremely hard on WSIS outreach virtually
full-time for the last several months at a national level -- you can
read about their activities in the online database.

(2) On getting more funds:

I am up for writing to the SDC and other donors asking them for
additional support at the last minute... Might as well try! In July,
when you'll remember the SDC had the rule that ALL fellowship applicants
had to come from LDCs, I wrote directly to SDC and they changed the rule
to 40-60, so I think they are interested in constructive feedback that
helps make the Summit a success. At this point, I think it might be
worth writing a general appeal to all donors for more funds and mail/fax
it to the heads of GTZ, CIDA, SIDA, SDC, DFID, etc. I agree that it
would be good if it came from Renate or Angela. I wrote a pretty
standard draft below that Angela or Renate or others might edit.

(3) On moving forward:

I think it would be important to move forward with the list that Claire
currently has because flights will become increasingly more expensive
and visas more difficult to organize as we are only a few weeks from the
Summit.

Cheers
Nick

VERY DRAFT LETTER TO DONORS

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing on behalf of civil society actors in the World Summit on
the Information Society to seek your urgent assistance in ensuring basic
representation of NGOs at the Geneva Summit this December 10-12th. As
you are aware, the WSIS is the major United Nations Summit of 2003, with
more than 50 world leaders and almost ten thousand people from
government, business and civil society expected to participate to
explore the impact of information and communications technologies for
development.

It has just now come to the attention of the Civil Society Bureau (the
formal structure coordinating civil society involvement with
representatives from more than 20 groupings such as Gender, Trade
Unions, Youth, NGOs, Community media etc) that the Civil Society
Fellowship Fund administered by the WSIS Executive Secretariat is
severely under-financed. It was expected (and communicated to us) that
almost 100 fellowships would be available, yet with less than half the
expected budget, we are left with less than 40. In addition, the
stipulation of the major donor, SDC requires that more than 60% of
available funds are spent on Least Developing Countries. We deeply
appreciate the committments already made, but are concerned that unless
more is pledged civil society will be have to have only a marginal role
in the Summit.

Many Civil Society actors are now in a difficult position - some of the
most active participants who could have expected fellowships were there
a slightly larger amount are now likely to miss out on funds to attend
the Summit. Their presence will be sorely missed and limit the ability
of our groups to coordinate activities such as presentations at side
events, speaking slots, and the brokerage of partnerships that should be
the culmination of a long process. The reality is that the majority of
those most active around WSIS have come from Developing rather than
Least Developed Countries. In addition, due to a significant gender
imbalance in those applying from LDCs, this imbalance is reflected in
the recipients overall - with only approximately one quarter of selected
participants being female.

We are urgently seeking:
- 150,000 CHF for 35 additional fellowships.
- 75% of those selected will be female.
- All will be from Developing Countries or Least Developed Countries.
- All will have played key roles within civil society in the leadup to
the Summit at a national, regional or international level.

All the processes are already in place to identify the participants and
to arrange their travel and logistics. We believe this is a modest
number of fellowships overall considering the importance of the World
Summit and the key role of civil society groups in this field.

Yours truly,
Civil Society Bureau.

-----Original Message-----
From: bureau-request at geneva2003.org
[mailto:bureau-request at geneva2003.org] On Behalf Of Alan Alegre
Sent: November 18, 2003 9:30 AM
To: bureau at geneva2003.org
Cc: bureau at wsis-cs.org
Subject: Re: Fellowships WSIS: SOME REQUESTS FOR CLARIFICATION +


Dear Claire/Louise

Thanks for sending this matrix of approved fellowships. It is in this
light that I am responding with some concrete questions of clafirication
It is becoming a very urgent issue given the fact that so many of people
we expected to be funded are not on the list. So please excuse the
lengthy message and requests:


A. Firstly I have some immediate requests for clarification of the list
elements so we can assess your list more rationally:

1. Could you identify the countries where the accepted candidates are
from. Listed down in the Excel file are only abbreviations (or internet
country codes) which we are not familiar with. It will help us situate
the countries of origin.

2. Could you also identify the names of the organizations with acronyms
which are not spelled out, so we may know what they are. (though I know
some of them, including mine--APC is Association for Progressive
Communications--others may not; I know that I am not aware several of
those organizations cited (e.g., FMCU, which has a grand total of 6
candidates accepted, five from one country, MR.)

Of course we particularly want to know this to find out what
organizations from our region have been accepted. Aside from verifying
how active they have been in the ongoing WSIS process, we should
eventually be touching base with them to integrate them into our
regional family structures and mechanisms.

Related to the above: Will we assume that everyone from the youth family
is from one organization (Taking IT Global), or are they coming from
different organizations? (Nick, are these youth reps all from TIG?)


B. Secondly, can you also help me to be clarified on the following,
based on your message:

"After merging the lists from the regional focal points and taking into
account the families who did not send their recommendations, please see
in attachement the selected candidates list."

(Do you have the merged list of all the recommendations from the
families that submitted names? I assume from your statment above that
you have this. If so, could you please send this to the list? This will
allow us to form a clearer picture of what choices were made relative to
our recommendations. I am aware it is on the database, but since I was
travelling when this was being discussed, I have not been able to access
it yet.)

1. when you say that you took into account the families who did not send
recommendations, what does this practically mean? I had assumed that if
some families were not able to recommend it was because they either did
not have any nominees, or did not come to an agreement among themselves
on who  to recommend. Therefore, I would just like to know what
families--aside from those of us who did submit something--you took into
consideration in your choices. (This is in the light of the request of
people like Amir for example who asks clarification on why certain
people were left out from their list.)

"Up to now, we have to decided what we will do with the money left for
the LDCs and how we may reduce the number of candidates from DCs/"

2. WE appreciate that donors do have their requirements; can you remind
us again on who these donors are (and contact persons)? This is in line
with a possibility that we may renegotiate with them on the application
of the LDC/DC ratio, given the fact that CSB has a more wholistic set of
criteria which we had worked very hard on, which acknowledges the LDC/DC
criterion as just one of many to consider. (For example, the gender
imbalance is quite apalling: 4 women out of 19 fellows in the DCs, 5 out
of 29 in the LDCs--or just 9 women out of 48 total!).

4. Related to this, is the DC/LDC ratio the reason why some of the most
hardworking people from the CSB and in the other working groups and
families (who had been previously awarded fellowships in the past
PrepComs), were not included in the list. I am referring to people like
Beatriz Busaniche and Olinca Marino (to name just two) who were left off
the list? (If people recall, Beatriz represented CS in some of the press
conferences, while Olinca even chaired the CS Plenary last
September!--both had been granted fellowships before...)

Louise and Claire, I think many of us appreciate how difficult your task
is, especially in this area of work. But that is precisely why we wanted
to share responsibility in both selecting fellows, and in talking to
donors as well, so that we share also in the work as full partners in
this process. We thank you for your efforts, but we now appeal to you as
well to now support us in ensuring that the spirit of the discussions
within the bureau on selection of fellows be upheld. I sense there is a
growing level of frustration in this whole fellowship process, and this
discussion may spill over to the other CS spaces; this will only serve
to strengthen the impression that the avowed "multistakeholder process"
being trumpeted by the WSIS organizers is just a slogan, and the real
decisions are left out of the hands of even the most active
"stakeholders" from civil society.


C. Lastly, I would like to invite the CSB to consider (quickly) drafting
an urgent letter to the WSIS Executive Secretariat? to Pres. Sammasekou?
to donors (e.g., Swiss Government), expressing our urgent concern that
the fellowship process has not resulted in the best result for civil
society stakeholders. For example, it bothers me no end that, as you
say, 20 mayors from all over the world (who are technically government
personnel, not civil society) will be funded to go to the Summit,
regardless of how much they contributed to the WSIS process (probably
very little, if any), while some of the most active civil society people
who have contributed immensely to the WSIS process will be left out of
the summit due to technicality or lack of endorsement from the powers
that be in Geneva.

I would like to suggest that this draft emanate from the Regional
Families (specifically Africa, LAC, Asia and Western Asia). Can we also
ask Renate to help in the appropriate wording of this letter, so that
this may be delivered this week.

Thank you for your attention and I am hoping for a quick response to my
requests for clarification. (Apologies for the longish response.)

Al Alegre
Asia Pacific co-focal point
----- Original Message -----
From: Claire Chombeau
To: bureau at geneva2003.org
Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 6:25 PM
Subject: Fellowships WSIS


Dear all,

With respect to our donors' criterias, here are the funds available for
the WSIS:

LDCs  = 192'409 CHF
Developing countries = 31'959.50 CHF

After merging the lists from the regional focal points and taking into
account the families who did not send their recommendations, please see
in attachement the selected candidates list. We accepted all the
suggestions you made for candidates from LDCs and we had to select the
most eligible candidates per country from DCs. The estimated total
amount for fellows from DCs is 57'785CHF which is already too much.

The Youth family negotiated special accommodations and perdiems (total:
85CHF per day instead of 180CHF) for their candidates. That is why there
are more representatives from this family.

Up to now, we have to decided what we will do with the money left for
the LDCs and how we may reduce the number of candidates from DCs.

As time is running, I already contacted selected candidates from LDCs, I
am just waiting for your comments to contact people from DCs.

For your information, more than 60 indigenous representatives and more
than 20 mayors from all around the world are provided for a fellowship,
thanks to the contribution of the city of Geneva.

Best Regards,

Louise - Claire

World Summit on the Information Society
Civil Society Division
Place des Nations
CH-1211 Genève 20