[WSIS CS-Plenary] new version of WSIS CS statement - now also in plain text

[Ralf Bendrath]

WSIS Civil Society Statement DRAFT V3.1
last change: 30/11/2005 18:52 CET

I. Introduction – Our perspective after the WSIS process

The WSIS was an opportunity for a wide range of actors to work together to 
develop principles and prioritise actions that would lead to democratic, 
inclusive, participatory and development-oriented information societies; 
societies in which the ability to access, share and communicate 
information and knowledge is treated as a public good and takes place in a 
ways that strengthens the rich cultural diversity of our world.

Civil society entered the Tunis Phase of WSIS with these major goals:

•	Agreement on financing mechanisms and models that will close the growing 
gaps in access to information and communication tools, capacities and 
infrastructure that exist between countries, and in many cases within 
countries.
•	Ensuring that our vision of the ‘information society’ is human-centred, 
framed by a global commitment to human rights, social justice and 
inclusive development.
•	Achieving a sea change in perceptions of participatory decision-making. 
We wanted the WSIS to be a milestone from which the inclusion of civil 
society participation would become more comprehensive and integrated at 
all levels of governance and decision making at local, national, regional 
and global levels.
•	Agreement on strong commitment to the centrality of human rights, 
especially the right to access and depart information and to retaining 
individual privacy.

Civil society wants to affirm that it has contributed positively to the 
WSIS process, a contribution that could have been greater if our 
participation was allowed to be more comprehensive. Our contribution will 
continue beyond the Summit. It is a contribution that is made both through 
constructive engagement and through challenge and critique.

[Note: This paragraph still could be more comprehensive and better 
summarize the issues below]
While we value the process, and the outcomes, we believe more could have 
been achieved.  Each of the issue of greatest concern to civil society is 
discussed in sections II and III of this statement. For most of the items, 
the results were mixed with some small success but with much remaining to 
be done. Some of the greatest concerns involve people centred issues such 
as the attention paid to human rights and freedom of expression, financial 
mechanisms to promote the development that was the impetus for the WSIS 
process, and support for capacity building.


II. Issues addressed during the Tunis phase of WSIS

	Social Justice, Financing and People-Centered Development

WSIS had the official mandate of addressing long-standing development 
problems in new ways that have opened up with the ICT revolution. The 
summit was expected to identify and articulate new development 
possibilities and paradigms made possible in the information society, and 
to evolve public policy options for enabling and realising these 
opportunities. WSIS in general has failed to live up to these 
expectations. Especially the Tunis phase which was presented as the 
“summit of solutions” did not provide concrete achievements to 
meaningfully address development priorities.

The summit did discuss the importance of new financing mechanisms for ICT 
for Development (ICTD), however it failed to recognize that ICTD financing 
presents a challenge beyond that of traditional development financing. It 
requires new means and sources and the exploration of new models and 
mechanisms.

Investments in ICTD - in infrastructure, capacity building, appropriate 
software and hardware and in developing applications and services – 
underpin all other processes of development innovation, learning and 
sharing, and should be seen in this light. Though development resources 
are admittedly scarce and have to be allocated to with care and 
discretion, ICTD financing should not be viewed as directly in competition 
with financing of other developmental sectors.

Financing ICTD requires social and institutional innovation, with adequate 
mechanisms for transparency, evaluation, and follow-up. Financial 
resources need to be mobilised at all levels – local, national and 
international, including through realization of ODA commitments agreed in 
the Monterrey Consensus.

Internet access, for everybody and everywhere, especially among 
disadvantaged populations and in rural areas, must be considered as a 
global public good. Markets may not address the connectivity needs of 
these sections, and these areas. In many such areas, initial priority may 
need to be given to provide traditional ICTs - radio, TV, video and 
telephony - while developing conditions to bring complete internet 
connectivity to them.

While the summit in general has failed to agree on adequate funding for 
ICTD, civil society was able to introduce significant sections in the 
Tunis commitment (paragraph 35) and in Tunis agenda (paragraph 21) on the 
importance of public policy in mobilizing resources for financing. This 
can serve to balance the pro-market orientation of much of the text on 
financing.

The potential of ICTs as tools for development, and not merely tools for 
communication, should have been realised by all states. Therefore, 
national ICT strategies in developing countries should be closely related 
to national strategies for development and poverty eradication. Aid 
strategies in developed countries must also include clear guidelines for 
incorporation of ICTs. ICT should therefore be integrated in the general 
development assistance and thereby contribute to mobilisation of 
additional resources and increase the efficiency of development assistance.

Human Rights

The Information Society must be based on human rights as laid out in the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This includes civil and political 
rights, as well as social, economic and cultural rights. Human rights and 
development are closely linked. There can be no development without human 
rights, no human rights without development.

This has been affirmed time and again, and was strongly stated in the 
Vienna World Conference of Human Rights in 1993. It was also affirmed in 
the WSIS 2003 Declaration of Principles. All legislation, politics, and 
actions involved in developing the global information society must 
respect, protect and promote human rights standards and the rule of law.

Despite the Geneva commitment to an Information Society respectful of 
human rights, there is still a long way to go. A number of human rights 
were barely addressed in the Geneva Declaration of Principles. This 
includes the cross-cutting principles of non-discrimination, gender 
equality, and workers’ rights. The right to privacy, which is the basis of 
autonomous personal development and thus at the root of the exertion of 
many other fundamental human rights, is only mentioned in the Geneva 
Declaration as part of "a global culture of cyber-security". In the Tunis 
Commitment, it has disappeared, to make room for extensive underlining of 
security needs, as if privacy were a threat to security, whereas the 
opposite is true: Privacy is an essential requirement to security. The 
summit has also ignored our demand to ensure the privacy and integrity of 
the vote if and when electronic voting technologies are used.

Other rights were more explicitly addressed, but are de facto violated on 
a daily basis. This goes for freedom of expression, freedom of 
information, freedom of association and assembly, the right to a fair 
trial, the right to education, and the right to a standard of living 
adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and his or her 
family.

Furthermore, as the second WSIS phase has amplified, one thing is formal 
commitment, another one is implementation. Side events open to the general 
public were organised by civil society both at the Geneva and Tunis 
Summit, in line with a long tradition of UN summits. The Citizens’ Summit 
in Tunis was prevented from happening. At the Geneva Summit, the "We 
Seize" side event was closed down and then reopened. This is a clear 
reminder that though governments have signed on to human rights 
commitments, fundamental human rights such as freedom of expression and 
freedom of assembly can not be taken for granted in any part of the world.

The summit has failed define mechanisms and actions that would actively 
promote and protect human rights in the information society. Post WSIS 
there is an urgent need to strengthen the means of human rights 
enforcement in the information society, to enhance human rights proofing 
of national legislation and practises, to strengthen education and 
awareness raising on rights-based development, to transform human rights 
standards into ICT policy recommendations; and to mainstream ICT issues 
into the global and regional human rights monitoring system – in summary: 
To move from declarations and commitments into action. Toward this end, an 
independent commission should be established to review national and 
international ICT regulations and practices and their compliance with 
international human rights standards. This commission should also address 
the potential applications of ICTs for the realization of human rights in 
the information society.

	Internet Governance

Civil society is pleased with the decision to create an Internet 
Governance Forum (IGF), which it has advocated since 2003. We also are 
pleased that the IGF will have sufficient scope to deal with the issues 
that we believe must be addressed, most notably the conformity of existing 
arrangements with the Geneva Principles, and other cross-cutting or 
multidimensional issues that cannot be optimally dealt with within those 
arrangements. However, we reiterate our concerns that the Forum must not 
be anchored in any existing specialized international organization, 
meaning that its legal form, finances, and professional staff should be 
independent. In addition, we reiterate our view that the forum should be 
more than a place for dialogue. As was recommended by the WGIG Report, it 
should also provide expert analysis, trend monitoring, and capacity 
building, including in close collaboration with external partners in the 
research community.

We are concerned, however, about the absence of details on how this forum 
will be created and on how it will be funded. We insist that the 
modalities of the IGF be determined in full cooperation with civil 
society. We emphasize that success in the forum, as in most areas of 
Internet governance, will be impossible without the full participation of 
civil society. By full participation we mean much more than playing a mere 
advisory role. Civil society must be able to participate fully and equally 
in both plenary and any working group or drafting group discussions, and 
must have the same opportunities as other stakeholders to influence 
agendas and outcomes.

The Tunis Agenda addressed the issue of political oversight of critical 
Internet resources. This, in itself, is an achievement. It is also 
important that governments recognized the need for the development of a 
set of Internet-related public policy principles that would frame 
political oversight of Internet resources. These principles must respect, 
protect and promote the civil and political rights protected by 
international human rights treaties, ensure equitable access to 
information and online opportunities for all, and promote development.

It is important that governments have established that developing these 
principles should be a shared responsibility. However, it is very 
unfortunate that the Tunis Agenda suggests that governments are only 
willing to share this role and responsibility among themselves, in 
cooperation with international organisations. Civil society remains 
strongly of the view that the formulation of appropriate and legitimate 
public policies pertaining to Internet governance requires the full and 
meaningful involvement of nongovernmental stakeholders.

With regard to paragraph 40 of the Tunis Agenda, we are disappointed that 
there is no mention that efforts to combat cybercrime need to be exercised 
in the context of checks and balances provided by fundamental human 
rights, particularly freedom of expression and privacy.

To ensure that Internet governance and development take place in the 
public interest, it is necessary for people who use the Internet 
understand how the DNS is functioning, how IP addresses are allocated, 
what basic legal instruments exist in fields like cyber-crime, 
Intellectual Property Rights, eCommerce, e-government, and human rights 
and promoting development. The responsibility of creating such awareness 
should be shared by everyone, including those at present involved in the 
governance and development of the Internet and emerging information and 
communication platforms.

Global governance

A world that is increasingly connected faces a greater number of common 
issues which need to be addressed by global governance institutions and 
processes. While civil society recognises that there are flaws and 
inefficiencies in the United Nations system, we believe strongly that it 
remains the most democratic intergovernmental forum, where rich and poor 
countries have rights to speak and participate and make decisions together.

We are concerned that during the WSIS it emerged that many governments, 
especially from the North, lack faith in, and appear to be unwilling to 
invest authority and resources in the existing multilateral system.

In our understanding summits take place precisely to develop the 
principles that will underpin global public policy and governance 
structures; to address critical issues, and decide on appropriate 
responses to these issues. Shrinking global public policy spaces raises 
serious questions of the kind of global governance that we are headed 
towards, and what this signifies for people who are socially, economically 
and politically marginalised: people who most rely on public policy to 
protect their interests.

	Participation

In the course of four years, as a result of constant pressure from civil 
society, improvements in civil society participation have been achieved, 
including speaking rights in official plenaries and sub-committees and 
ultimately rights to observe in drafting groups. The UN Working Group on 
Internet Governance created an innovative format where governmental and 
civil society actors worked on an equal footing and civil society actually 
carried a large part of the drafting load.

Due to the pressure of time and the need of governments to interact with 
civil society actors in the Internet Governance field, the resumed session 
of PrepCom3 was in fact the most open. We would like to suggest [better 
formulation?] that this openness, against all odds, contributed to 
reaching consensus.

WSIS has demonstrated beyond any doubt the benefits of interaction between 
all stakeholders. The innovative rules and practices of participation 
established in this process will be fully documented to provide a 
reference point and a benchmark for participants in UN organizations and 
processes in the future.

Civil society thanks those governments that greatly supported our 
participation in the WSIS process. We hope and expect that these 
achievements are taken further and strengthened, especially in more 
politically contested spaces of global policy making such as intellectual 
property rights, trade, environment and peace and disarmament.

We note that some governments of the South were not actively supportive of 
greater observer participation as they believe it can lead to undue 
dominance of debate and opinions by international and northern civil 
society organisations and the private sector. We believe that to change 
this perception, they should engage in efforts to strengthen the presence, 
independence and participation of civil society constituencies in and from 
their own countries.

As for the period beyond the summit, the Tunis documents clearly establish 
that the soon-to-be created Internet Governance Forum, and the future 
mechanisms for implementation and follow-up (including the revision of the 
mandate of the ECOSOC Commission on Science and Technology for 
Development) must take into account the multi-stakeholder approach.

We want to express concern at the vagueness of text referring to the role 
of civil society. In almost every paragraph talking about 
multi-stakeholder participation, the phrase “in their respective roles and 
responsibilities” is used to limit the degree of multi-stakeholder 
participation. This limitation is due to the refusal of governments to 
recognize the full range of the roles and responsibilities of civil 
society.  Instead of the reduced capabilities assigned in paragraph 35C of 
the Tunis Agenda that attempt to restrict civil society to a community 
role, governments should have referred to the list of roles and 
responsibilities assigned to civil society by the WGIG report. These are:

-	Awareness raising and capacity building (knowledge, training, skills 
sharing);
-	Promote various public interest objectives;
-	Facilitate network building;
-	Mobilize citizens in democratic processes;
-	Bring perspectives of marginalized groups including for example excluded 
communities and grassroots activists;
-	Engage in policy processes;
-	Bring expertise, skills, experience and knowledge in a range of ICT 
policy areas contributing to policy processes and policies that are more 
bottom-up, people-centred and inclusive;
-	Research and development of technologies and standards;
-	Development and dissemination of best practices;
-	Helping to ensure that political and market forces are accountable to 
the needs of all members of society;
-	Encourage social responsibility and good governance practice;
-	Advocate for development of social projects and activities that are 
critical but may not be ‘fashionable’ or profitable;
-	Contribute to shaping visions of human-centred information societies 
based on human rights, sustainable development, social justice and 
empowerment.

Civil society has reason for concern that the limited concessions obtained 
in the last few days from countries that refuse the emergence of a truly 
multi-stakeholder format will be at risk in the coming months.

Civil society actors therefore intend to remain actively mobilized. They 
need to proactively ensure that not only the needed future structures be 
established in a truly multi-stakeholder format, but also that the 
discussions preparing their mandates are conducted in an open, transparent 
and inclusive manner, allowing participation of all stakeholders on an 
equal footing.


III. Issues addressed in the Geneva and Tunis phases

Gender Equality

Equal and active participation of women is essential, especially in 
decision-making. This includes all forums that will be established in 
relation to WSIS and the issues it has taken up. With that, there is a 
need for capacity building that is focussed at women’s engagement with the 
shaping of an information society at all levels, including policy making 
on infrastructure development, financing, and technology choice.

There is a need for real effort and commitment to transforming the 
masculinist culture embedded within existing structures and discourses of 
the information society which serves to reinforce gender disparity and 
inequality. Without full, material and engaged commitment to the principle 
of gender equality, women’s empowerment and non-discrimination, the vision 
of a just and equitable information society cannot be achieved.

Considering the affirmation of unequivocal support for gender equality and 
women’s empowerment expressed in the Geneva Declaration of Principles and 
paying careful attention to Paragraph 23 of the Tunis Commitment, all 
government signatories must ensure that national policies, programmes and 
strategies developed and implemented to build a people-centred, inclusive 
and development-oriented Information Society demonstrate significant 
commitment to the principles of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

We emphasise that financial structures and mechanisms need to be geared 
towards addressing the gender divide, including the provision of adequate 
budgetary allocations. Comprehensive gender-disaggregated data and 
indicators have to be developed at national levels to enable and monitor 
this process. We urge all governments to take positive action to ensure 
institutions and practices, including those of the private sector, do not 
result in discrimination against women. Governments that are parties to 
the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination 
against Women (CEDAW) are in fact bound to this course of action.

Culture, Knowledge, and the Public Domain

Each generation of humankind is depending upon its predecessors to leave 
them with a liveable, sustainable and stable environment. The environment 
we were discussing throughout the WSIS is the public domain of global 
knowledge. Like our planet with its natural resources, that domain is the 
heritage of all humankind and the reservoir from which new knowledge is 
created. Limited monopolies, such as copyrights and patents were 
originally conceived as tools to serve that public domain of global 
knowledge to the benefit of humankind. Whenever society grants monopolies, 
a delicate balance must be struck: Careless monopolization will make our 
heritage unavailable to most people, to the detriment of all.

It has become quite clear that this balance has been upset by the 
interests of the rights-holding industry as well as the digitalization of 
knowledge. Humankind now has the power to instantaneously share knowledge 
in real-time, without loss, and at almost no costs. Civil Society has 
worked hard to defend that ability for all of humankind.

Free Software is an integral part of this ability: Software is the 
cultural technique and most important regulator of the digital age. Access 
to it determines who may participate in a digital world. While in the 
Geneva phase, WSIS has recognised the importance of Free Software, it has 
not acted upon that declaration and fallen behind it in the Tunis phase. 
In the Tunis Commitment, Free Software is presented as a software model 
next to proprietary software, but paragraph 29 reiterates “the importance 
of proprietary software in the markets of the countries.” This ignores 
that a proprietary software market is always striving towards dependency 
and monopolization, both of which are detrimental to economy and 
development as a whole. Proprietary software is under exclusive control of 
and to the benefit of its proprietor. Furthermore: Proprietary software is 
written in modern sweat-shops for the benefit of developed economies, 
which are subsidized at the expense of developing and least-developed 
countries in this way.

While WSIS has somewhat recognised the importance of free and open source 
software, it has not asserted the significance of this choice for 
development. It is silent on other issues like open content (which goes 
beyond open access to academic publications), new open telecom paradigms 
and community-owned infrastructure as important development enablers.

The WSIS process has failed to introduce cultural and linguistic diversity 
as a cross-cutting issue in the information society. The information 
society and its core elements - knowledge, information, communication and 
the information and communication technologies (ICTs) together with 
related rules and standards - are cultural concepts and expressions. 
Accordingly, culturally defined approaches, protocols, proceedings and 
obligations have to be respected and culturally appropriate applications 
developed and promoted. In order to foster and promote cultural diversity 
it must be ensured that no one has to be mere recipient of Western 
knowledge and treatment. Therefore development of such cultural elements 
of the Information Society must involve strong participation of all 
cultural communities.

[needs agreement / editing from Cultural Diversity and PCT caucuses]
Indigenous cultures provide for rules and regulations on communicating, 
sharing, using and applying traditional knowledge. WSIS has failed to 
offer solutions on how to protect the traditional knowledge, lore and 
culture of indigenous peoples from exploitation by third parties. It has 
not even considered the problems that arise for Indigenous peoples who 
cannot rightfully access their traditional heritage lest they infringe 
some private company's copyright or patent.

	Education and research

If we want future generations to understand the real basis of our digital 
age, freedom has to be preserved for the knowledge of humankind: Free 
Software, open courseware and free educational as well as scientific 
resources empower people to take their life into their own hands. If not, 
they will become only users and consumers of information technologies, 
instead of active participants and well informed citizens in the 
information society. Each generation has a choice to make: Schooling of 
the mind and creativity, or product schooling? Most unfortunately, the 
WSIS has shown a significant tendency towards the latter.

We are happy that universities, museums, archives, libraries have been 
recognized by WSIS as playing an important role as public institutions and 
with the community of researchers and academics. Unfortunately, 
telecenters are missing in the WSIS documents. Community informatics, 
telecenters and human resources like computer professionals, and the 
training of these, have to be promoted, so that ICTs serve training and 
not training serves ICTs. Thus special attention must be paid to 
supporting sustainable capacity building with specific focus on research 
and skills development.

Problems of access, regulation, diversity and efficiency require attention 
to power relations both in the field of ICT policy-making and in the 
everyday uses of ICTs. Academic research should play a pivotal role in 
evaluating whether ICTs meet and serve the individuals’ and the public's 
multiple needs and interests - as workers, women, migrants, racial, ethnic 
and sexual minorities, among others - across very uneven information 
societies in the world. Furthermore, because power relations and social 
orientations are often embedded in the very designs of ICTs, researchers 
should be sensitive to the diverse and multiple needs of the public in the 
technological design of ICTs. Similarly, educators at all levels should be 
empowered to develop curricula that provide training not only in the uses 
of ICTs as workers and consumers, but also in the critical assessment of 
ICTs, the institutional and social contexts of their development and 
implementation, as well as their creative uses for active citizenship. 
These issues have largely been ignored by WSIS.

We furthermore have repeatedly underlined the unique role of ICTs in 
socio-economic development and in promoting the fulfilment of 
internationally agreed development goals, including those contained in the 
Millennium Declaration. This is not least true in the reference to access 
to information and universal primary education. To secure the fulfilment 
of these goals, it is of key importance that the issue of ICTs as tools 
for improvement of education is also incorporated in the broader 
development strategies at both national and international levels.

	Media

We are pleased that the principle of freedom of expression has been 
reaffirmed in the WSIS II texts and that they echo much of the language of 
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While we are also 
pleased that the Tunis Commitment recognises the place of the media in a 
new Information Society, this should never have been in question.

In the future, representatives of the media should be assured a place in 
all public forums considering development of the Internet and all other 
relevant aspects of the Information Society. As key actors in the 
Information Society, the media must have a place at the table, and this 
must be fully recognized both by governments and by Civil Society itself.

While recognizing media and freedom of expression, the WSIS documents are 
weak on offering support for developing diversity in the media sector. 
They specifically neglect a range of projects and initiatives which are of 
particular value for civil society: Community media, telecenters, 
grassroots and civil society-based media. These media empower people for 
independent and creative participation in knowledge-building and 
information-sharing. They represent the prime means for large parts of the 
world population to participate in the information society and should be 
an integral part of implementation of the goals of the Geneva Declaration.

The WSIS documents also mostly focus on market-based solutions and 
commercial use. Yet the internet, satellite, cable and broadcast systems 
all utilize public resources, such as airwaves and orbital paths. These 
should be managed in the public interest as publicly owned assets through 
transparent and accountable regulatory frameworks to enable the equitable 
allocation of resources and infrastructure among a plurality of media 
including community media. We reaffirm our commitment that commercial use 
of these resources begins with a public interest obligation.

Health Information
[Health and ICTs WG is working on making it more specifically relate to 
the WSIS outcomes]

WSIS has failed to recognize the importance of access to health 
information and knowledge as essential to collective and individual human 
development and a critical factor in the public physical and mental health 
care crises around the world.  It is essential that health care systems 
include a holistic approach that addresses the prevention, treatment, and 
promotion of mental and physical health care for all people and to achieve 
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

It is important to recognize that physical and mental health expertise and 
scientific knowledge is essential to aid disease stricken, as well as 
traumatized populations affected by war, terrorism, disaster and other 
events, and the implementation of ICT systems for physical and mental 
health information and services must be a two-way path recognizing 
cultural and community norms and values.

It is essential that healthcare specialists, practitioners, and consumers 
participate in the development of public policy addressing privacy and 
related issues regarding physical and mental health information affecting 
information and delivery systems.

Children and young people in the information society

[Current text is edited Children’s Rights Caucus contribution. Youth 
Caucus will submit its part later.]
We support articles 11, 13 and 16 of the Geneva Declaration of Principles 
and Plan of Action; articles 90q and 92 of the Tunis Declaration and 
article 24 of the Tunis Commitment. In doing so, we encourage the greater 
inclusion of children and young people – as key current and future telecom 
users and creators. We support the great opportunities that ICTs offer 
children and young people and recognize the potential dangers that 
children and young people face in relation to ICTs.  In this regard we had 
hoped that WSIS supports our proposals on children’s rights, participation 
and protection in the information society. These include, inter alia, 
making ICTs and connectivity available to all children; making ICTs an 
integral part of the formal and informal educational sectors; protecting 
children and young people from the potential risks posed by using new 
technologies, including access to inappropriate content, inappropriate or 
unwanted contact and commercial pressures; fighting the use of ICTs to 
exploit and abuse children. Through this, we are committed to work in the 
WSIS follow-up process towards a world where telecommunication allows 
children and young people to be heard one-by-one and through their voices, 
fulfil their rights and true potential to shape the world.

Ethical Dimensions

Values and ethics should be held as the ideal vision to underpin all 
aspects of individuals and organizations. Both should be regarded as 
central and thematic when evaluating ICTs as tools to enable just and 
peaceable conditions for humanity. The ethical dimensions are overarching 
and imperative and not value-added dimensions. These dimensions are 
clearer and stronger in the Geneva Declaration than the Tunis texts.

The Tunis Agenda and Commitment are commendable in that they affirmed the 
Geneva Declaration’s emphasis on a people-centred, sustainable 
development-oriented and human rights-based information society. But WSIS 
in Tunis failed to restate what Geneva considered acts inimical to the 
information society such as racism, intolerance, hatred, violence and others.

Geneva lifted the ethical values of respect for peace and the fundamental 
values of freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, shared responsibility, 
and respect for nature as enunciated in the Millennium Declaration. Tunis 
should have improved on these by including the principles of trust, 
stewardship and shared responsibility together with digital solidarity.

The strong emphasis on technology in the Tunis texts must not eclipse the 
human being as the subject of communication and development. Our humanity 
rests in our capacity to communicate with each other and create community. 
The technologies we develop, and the solidarities we forge, must build 
relationships, trust, and cohesion. It is in the respectful dialogue among 
peoples and in the sharing of values among peoples, in the plurality of 
cultures and civilizations that meaningful and accountable communication 
thrives. The Tunis texts do not give clear indications on how this can happen.

Beyond Tunis, we must encourage all stakeholders to weave ethics and 
values language in working on semantic web knowledge structures. This can 
help balance current dominant market values and the commodification of 
knowledge and attendant business logic. Communication rights and justice 
is about making human communities as the home of technology and human 
relationships as technology’s heart.


IV. Where to go from here – our Tunis commitment

Civil society is committed to continuing its involvement in the future 
mechanisms for policy debate, implementation and follow-up on information 
society issues. To do this, civil society will build on the processes and 
structures that were developed during the WSIS process.

Element one: Evolution of our internal organization

Civil society will work on the continued evolution of the current 
structures. This will include the use of existing thematic caucuses and 
working groups, the possible creation of new caucuses, and the use of the 
Civil Society Plenary, the Civil Society Bureau, and the Civil Society 
Content and Themes Group. We will organise at a date to be determined to 
launch the process of creating a Civil Society charter.

Element two: Involvement in the Internet Governance Forum

In specific reference to the Internet Governance Forum, in addition to 
continuing to develop the consensus notion of the CS Internet Governance 
caucus, discussions are under way to create a new working group that will 
focus on making recommendations on the modalities of the new forum.

Element three: Involvement in follow-up and implementation

In order to ensure that the future implementation and follow-up mechanisms 
respect the spirit and letter of the Tunis documents and that governments 
uphold the commitments they have made during this second phase of the 
WSIS, civil society mechanisms will be used and created to ensure
•	the proactive monitoring at the national level of the implementation of 
the Geneva Plan of Action and the Tunis Agenda by governments;
•	a structured interaction with all UN agencies and international 
organisations to ensure that they integrate the WSIS objectives in their 
own work plan, and that they put in place effective mechanisms for 
multistakeholder interaction;
•	that the information society as a complex social political phenomenon is 
not reduced to a technology-centred perspective. The ECOSOC Commission on 
Science and Technology for Development will have to significantly change 
its mandate and composition to adequately address the needs for being an 
effective follow-up mechanism for WSIS whilst re-affirming its original 
mission of developing science and technology, in addition to ICTs, for the 
development objectives of poor countries;
•	not only that the reformed Commission on Science and Technology for 
Development becomes a truly multi-stakeholder commission for the 
information society, but also, that the process to revise it's mandate, 
composition and agenda is done in a fully open and inclusive manner.

Element four: Lessons learned for the UN system in general

We see the WSIS process as an experience to be learned from for the 
overall UN system and processes. We will therefore work with the United 
Nations and all stakeholders on
•	developing clearer and less bureaucratic rules of recognition for 
accrediting civil society organisations in the UN system, for instance on 
obtaining ECOSOC status and summit accreditation, to ensure that national 
governmental recognition of civil society entities is not the premise for 
official recognition in the UN system;
•	ensuring that all future summit processes be multi–stakeholder in their 
approach, allowing for due flexibility. This would be achieved either by 
recognition of precedents set in summit processes, or by formulating a 
rules of procedure manual to guide future summit processes and day-to-day 
civil society interaction with the international community.

Element five: Outreach to other constituencies

The civil society constituency that closely associated with the WSIS 
process is conscious that the information society, as its name suggests, 
is a society-wide phenomenon, and advocacy on Information society issues 
need to include every interest and every group. We therefore commit 
ourselves in the post-WSIS period to work to broaden our reach to 
different civil society constituencies that for various reasons have not 
been active in the WSIS process, may have shown scepticism over the role 
of ICTs in their core areas of activity, or for other reasons have 
remained disengaged from the information society discourse.