[Media Caucus] Fwd: Informal WSIS meeting in Tunis

Mon Feb 16 13:57:09 GMT 2004

> Von: Tracey Naughton <t.naughton at iafrica.com>
> Datum: Do, 12. Feb 2004  15:55:45 Europe/Berlin
> An: <media-admin at wsis-cs.org>
> Betreff: Informal WSIS meeting in Tunis
>
> Hello Again
>
> I have received an invitation from the Tunisian organisers of the 
> second
> phase of WSIS to attend a gathering there, to shape the process and 
> agenda.
> Clearly things are moving ahead at a pace. It is becoming a problem 
> that I
> don't have the resources to attend these meetings. In any event I feel 
> we
> have to meet as a caucus to look at membership and priorities, indeed 
> at the
> very matter of the media in Tunisia. I also feel that we should 
> participate
> in the Tunisia meeting. Any ideas as to how we can achieve this?
>
> I am pasting in below the original invitation and some follow up notes 
> from
> Charles Geiger Assistant Executive Director WSIS that were made to the 
> CSB
> list. At least you will then have this information.
>
> I look forward to hearing from you.
>
> Best regards
>
> Tracey Naughton
> Media Caucus Chair
>
> Feb. 11th:
>> Dear members of the Civil Society Bureau
>>
>> Please find attached an invitation letter, signed by the Minister for
>> Communication Technology and Transport, Republic of Tunisia, and by 
>> the
>> Secretary General of the ITU, to an informal brainstorming meeting at
>> Tunis.
>>
>> Please note that this meeting is not a part of the official 
>> preparatory
>> process. The idea of the organizers is to bring together a group or
>> persons which has been actively involved in the process of phase I of
>> WSIS. In order not to make an arbitrary selection of persons, the
>> organizers did choose to invite the members of the different bureaus 
>> as
>> well as the members of the HLSOC in their personal capacity. With 
>> regard
>> to the CSB, one member of each family is invited.
>>
>> The organizers will pay the costs of accommodation at Tunis (only
>> telephone charges and alcoholic beverages are charged to 
>> participants).
>> Travel costs have to be paid by the participants (there is a rebate in
>> case you use Tunisair). As the meeting has an informal character and 
>> the
>> invitation is restricted, we regret to inform you that no fellowships 
>> from
>> the ITU WSIS trust fund are available.
>>
>> With best regards
>>
>> Charles Geiger
>> Assistant Executive Director
>>
>
>
> Dear members of the CSB
>
> I would like to update you on some recent events in the Executive
> Secretariat (ES), and also answer the questions of Amir Barmaki and 
> Roberto
> Guerra.
>
> As you may have heard, the funding from the Canton of Geneva for the
> Foundation du Devenir, which was running the civil society division in 
> our
> ES, has come to an end. The ES, as a whole, continues to exist, but 
> with
> less personnel than before. We may get some new colleagues into the ES,
> which could be dealing with civil society liaison and accreditation 
> matters.
> We will inform you as soon as this becomes reality. For the time 
> being, we
> will inform the CSB members directly and as a whole.
>
> As you know, WSIS is a Summit in two parts. All Rules and Arrangements
> decided by Governments for the first part of WSIS continue to be valid
> during the second part. This includes Arrangements for accreditation 
> and
> participation. All entities from civil society and business who got
> accreditation during the first part of the Summit remain accredited 
> for the
> second part of the Summit. Accreditation is an ongoing process, and we 
> will
> prepare for each PrepCom of phase 2 a new list of civil society and 
> business
> entities having requested accreditation, for approval by the 
> Governments.
>
> Accreditation of civil society during the first part of the Summit was 
> done
> on the website of the Civil Society Division / Foundation du Devenir 
> (FDD)
> www.geneva2003.org , which was not the official WSIS website. As the 
> FDD is
> outgoing, this website will not be updated anymore, and we do not have 
> the
> capacity to manage the electronic registration they installed on their
> website. Therefore, new accreditation requests, from now on, have to 
> be sent
> to the Executive Secretariat electronically or by fax / normal mail, 
> and the
> respective forms are available on our WSIS website at
> http://www.itu.int/wsis/participation/accreditation/cs.html  .
>
> Let me now turn to the invitation of Tunisia:
>
> The host country of the second phase has invited the members of the 
> three
> Bureaus (Intergovernmental Bureau of the PrepCom, Civil Society Bureau,
> Consultative Committee of Business interlocutors) as well as the focal 
> point
> members of the HLSOC (High Level Summit Organizing Committee, 
> basically the
> interested UN Agencies) to a informal brainstorming meeting at Tunis. 
> This
> meeting is not part of the formal preparatory process.
>
> The meeting intends to kick-start the reflection process among all
> stakeholders on what should be the value added of phase 2 of WSIS. As 
> you
> know, agreed language was that phase 1 would end with a Declaration 
> and a
> Plan of Action (and it did!), and phase 2 would focus more on 
> developmental
> issues and also monitor and evaluate progress made since the first 
> phase of
> the Summit. This is a vague statement. For real monitoring and 
> evaluation,
> the time span of 23 month between the two phases is too short, as every
> development expert knows.
>
> My guess is that the second phase will work more through thematic 
> meetings
> (organized mainly by the UN Agencies, but also by some governments, 
> and even
> by Civil Society and business, perhaps). Africa and LAC will probably 
> have
> another regional meeting, to discuss regional implementation (and 
> perhaps
> come up with a blueprint for good national implementation). My guess is
> further that there will be two PrepComs, one near the end of 2004 and 
> one
> around September 2005. The discussion in Tunis will focus on the 
> process,
> but probably also on which themes should be deepended further (besides 
> the
> two themes Internet Governance and Financing, where the SG of the UN 
> was
> asked in the final documents to create working groups). Such themes 
> could be
> Internet Security, Spam, Ethics of the Information Society, to give 
> just
> some examples.
>
> I think we should also use the second phase to stress implementation 
> (a weak
> point of most previous UN Summits).
>
> At the actual stage, there is no Agenda for this informal meeting. 
> From the
> above, you can guess in which direction the discussion could go. 
> Perhaps we
> will create mixed working groups during these two days, to deepen one 
> or the
> other issue. The planning is done by our Tunisian colleagues. I do not 
> think
> that the meeting will produce a document, as such document may have 
> the same
> fate as previous external inputs into the WSIS process. The idea is 
> that we
> come all together to think what the second phase could/should look 
> like. It
> is then up to the formal process to decide.
>
> Please note also that we have used the list of CSB members from the 
> existing
> website of the Civil Society Division. When there was more than one 
> name for
> a family we sent to all addresses. As the invitation extends to one 
> member
> of each family, you may have to get in contact among yourself to 
> determine
> who should be the invited person. There is also no obligation to 
> accept the
> invitation. In fact, we are well aware that perhaps not all families 
> will be
> represented (or have the necessary means to travel to Tunis).
>
> To answer Roberto Guerra's 3 questions:
>
> 1. Tunisair flies to Paris, you could try to get a cheap ticket
> Canada-Paris. The ITU arrangements do not work for non-ITU personnel. 
> Air
> France was an official carrier for WSIS phase 1, you can always try if 
> this
> arrangements still work (it is likely that the advantages ended with 
> the
> Geneva Summit). Info are at
> http://www.itu.int/wsis/practical/carriers/index.html . At the actual 
> stage,
> Tunisair has not yet confirmed its "official carrier" status for the 
> second
> phase of WSIS. Therefore, we do not exactly know what rebates they will
> offer. A decision will hopefully be taken within the next few days.
>
> 2. The invitation is from Tunisia, and they are hosting the event. You 
> would
> have to ask them directly if they would be ready to host you longer. 
> There
> are also some inexpensive Hotels in Tunis (take the Lonely Planet 
> Guide), if
> you want to stay longer. There are interesting historical places in and
> around Tunis, and the weather is surely warmer than here in Geneva or 
> in
> Canada.
>
> 3. The idea of the meeting is to have some sort of retreat to think 
> about
> phase 2. So my guess is that there are no Audio or Video-conferencing
> facilities. It could also be contrary of the idea of a retreat. Again, 
> you
> may ask the organizers at the e-mail address indicated in the 
> inscription
> form. But I don't think they are equipped or will consider the request.
>
>
>
> One last information: Tunisair has direct flights from and to Geneva on
> Monday, Thursday and Saturday. This was also one of the reasons why the
> meeting is scheduled on Tuesday and Wednesday.
>
>
> Yours sincerely
>
> Charles Geiger
> Assistant Executive Director WSIS
>
>
>
>
>
> Nyaka - Communication & Development
> Tracey Naughton
> Consultant
> 201 Somerset Hall
> 239 Oxford Road
> Illovo  2196
> South Africa
>
> Phone/fax:    +27 (0) 11 880 5030
> cell:               +27 (0) 82 821 1771
> Email:              t.naughton at iafrica.com
>
>
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