WSIS- by Wikipedia

Wow,  I see a budding report on WSIS on Wikipedia. Hmmm, I didn't know that the conferences established 17 May as World Information Society Day.  There is a growing list of resources of sites, news and reports on WSIS. 

Official Sites & Organizations

• WSIS - Official site by the ITU
• UNESCO and WSIS Official site by UNESCO
• WSIS Tunis 2005 - Official site by Tunis
• WSIS ICT discussion - Development Gateway community focusing on Millennium Development Goals
• WSIS Civil Society Meeting Point - Mailing lists
• Worldsummit2003.org - Official WSIS site by Heinrich Boell Foundation, maintained by the German WSIS Civil Society Coordinating Group
• Tunisia Monitoring Group - Official TMG WSIS site by IFEX
• WSIS? WE SEIZE! - Anti-WSIS group from December 2003, supported by the Information Program of the Open Society Institute
• Citizens' Summit on the Information Society
• The World Summit in Reflection - compendium of submission to Information Technologies and International Development

WSIS News & Blogs

• WSISBlogs.org - a multilingual coalition of bloggers attending WSIS; includes text, photos, podcasts and video.
• WSIS: Internet Governance Forum Endorsed by World Leaders by Dick Kaser, Information Today.
• WSIS WIRE - latest news on the World Summit - en, fr, de
• i-Witness | journalists shaping the information society - debate, news and resources for journalists creating a fairer information society
• The Daily Summit - WSIS (2003 only) and similar World Summit coverage by the British Council Science Team
• The German netzpolitik.org - Blog has a huge coverage on the WSIS in German language
• David Weekly's Tunis PBwiki - a wikiblog of the Summit & Tunisia
• Choike - WSIS in depth report has information on the Geneva and Tunis phases of WSIS
• A transcript of Richard Stallman's WSIS 2005 presentation

Articles & Reports

• Information Society for the South: Vision or Hallucination? A book by the WSIS Papers Project (Instituto del Tercer Mundo, ITeM) with Southern perspectives on the Information Society
• Visions in Process II A brochure collecting female perspectives on WSIS
• Orientation kit on WSIS A booklet for civil society representatives on WSIS development just before the Tunis Summit
• "Information Society: The Next Steps" - Development Gateway Special Report
• Tunisia, host of WSIS and destination of choice for IT Outsourcing - Economist Advertisement Feature

Work Bank and Legal Empowerment of the Poor

Just as I was announcing the World Bank's Justice for the Poor (J4P) workshop last month, a Bank colleague told me about the Bank's recent efforts to look into issues relating to the Legal Empowerment of the Poor. Given that the Bank's President is on the Advisory Board of the Commission (the President Paul Wolfowitz is represented by Ana Palacio), and the fact that the Commission met for the first time in January of this year, I am curious to see where the Bank might be heading with it's J4P program, or it's strategy on legal issues and the poor. 

Ana Palacio, under an initial consultancy with the Bank to look into property rights, has broadened her focus to Legal Empowerment and recently released a paper highlighting the Bank's previous experience with legal empowerment, as well as recommendations for the Bank moving forward.  Her paper is titled: Legal Empowerment for the Poor: An Action Agenda for the World Bank. She has also prepared a follow-up summary Powerpoint presentation to present her findings to key stakeholders. 

Ana did an excellent job summarizing Legal Empowerment practices as well as in her honest reflections of and  recommendations to the Bank. Brief Summary follows:

• One of the main objectives of the paper is to contribute to orient the positioning of the World Bank vis-à-vis the High Level Commission for Legal Empowerment of the Poor (HLCLEP)

• Over the past decade, the World Bank’s involvement with legal programs for the poor has been characterized by an often “piecemeal/scattered” approach:
• Valuable work on LEP but partial and scattered across Bank units, lacking a common thrust and vision 
• Parallel approaches that need better coordination:
• supply-side (institution- building) 
• more recently, demand-side of governance (community driven development) 
• Timid engagement with local governments

• Recommendations for the Bank in creating a “LEP Action Agenda”:
• The World Bank should articulate a shared internal vision on LEP 
• Develop a strategic integrated framework 
• Rethink Bank’s engagement with local governments, which entails exploring direct sub-sovereign lending and grant financing 
• Expand current engagement with civil society 
• Improve coordination and integration of Bank activities related to LEP 
• Use (and adjust when necessary) existing lending instruments and analytical tools to operationalize the LEP agenda 
• More systematic use of political and historical analysis in Bank operations and programs 
• Develop benchmark indicators against which to set baselines and measure performance 
• Identify and manage potential risks and misconceptions

Wow. I'm excited- the World Bank, working more directly with the poor on legal issues? It certainly does not fit well with the Bank's mandate to work with governments and guidelines of non-interference. I definitely will be following this issue. 

UNDP Commission of the Legal Empowerment of the Poor at http://www.undp.org/legalempowerment

Last year, I blogged about the formation of a high level commission by the UNDP to look into law and development from the angle of the poor. I came across that topic again with a UNDP colleague that I met for coffee today to chat about development and such. I learnt that the Commission is in full swing, and that he wanted me to help coordinate and rally the NGO world into the efforts. I readily agreed, and admitted that I have continued to do my law work with both a grassroots as well as an institutional reform lens. I also learnt that the UNDP has started a website for the Commission so that the general public can keep track of its activities and achievements: http://www.undp.org/legalempowerment

USAID and Legal Empowerment of the Poor

It seems the Legal Empowerment of the Poor has become some kind of a new and exciting development fad to be checked out, given the recent establishment of the UN Commission of Legal Empowerment of the Poor. First the World Bank held a series of Justice for Peace events, and also commissioned a strategy paper on the the topic. (UPDATE 5/30: which you can view the paper via this post). Now USAID has contracted ARD to study the same issue. 


Might this really turn out to be the new Development kid on the block, up-seating the current reign of 'Rule of Law'? What surprises me is that this is not a new field- it has been around for as long as local, grassroots NGOs have been, working with issues of poverty, some of which can be addressed using legal means. My worry is that, with the big aid agencies giving this so much attention, it becomes yet another promising 'field' of development, evoking independently of other sectors or being the 'flavor' of the month without much concern with realities or long term potential. Let's see how this all evolves- the Commission will be meeting later this month for the first time.

Development Gateway - Special Report on Information Society

Nadia Afrin, a colleague and content coordinator at the Development Gateway (whom I'd had numerous phone conversations and finally met in person recently), pointed out this Special Report on "Information Society: The Next Steps" by DG. Interesting network of folks talking about WSIS and other ICT4D related topics.

I've visited DG a couple of times during visits to Washington DC, and met some of their awesome staff.  In case you didn't know, the organization started within the World Bank and morphed into  an independent nonprofit (though some dispute the 'independent), supported by government donors as well as private sector pioneers. It aims to promote development through the use of ICT, mainly through knowledge sharing, although other programs are being created as well.

From their official website: 

Development Gateway is an international nonprofit organization with themission to reduce poverty and enable change in developing nations through information technology. It envisions a world in which the digital revolution serves people everywhere—creating greater opportunity through increased access to critical information; greater reliance on local capabilities; and more effective, better coordinated international aid. 

Development Gateway provides Web-based platforms that make aid and development efforts more effective around the world.  It focuses on three areas where even small investments in information and communications technology can make a major difference:

• Effective government – enabling better aid management and coordination, and more efficient and transparent government procurement.
• Knowledge sharing and collaboration – leveraging the Internet for online communications among development practitioners worldwide.
• Local partner programs in nearly 50 countries – connecting developing country organizations into a global network to empower them to use information and communications technologies to bolster local development efforts

The second part of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)- Tunis 2005

was held in Tunis on 16 -18 November 2005.

Observations from Worldsummit2005.org:

Heads of state and government from all over the world have adopted a Tunis Commitment and a Tunis Agenda. The most contested issue in the final negotiations was Internet governance, but the summit itself put financing ICT for Development and related questions back on the table.

Independent news coverage We were in Tunis with a couple of reporters and have brought you daily news, analyses and documents from a civil society perspective, from 13 to 18 November 2005. A complete listing is at the end of this page. Other news sources:

APC | Terraviva | WSIS blog aggregator | Inter Press Service | WSIS Wire news aggregator |British Council news aggregator

Venue / Webcast

The summit, the accompanying ICT4ALL exhibiton, and most parallel events took place at the Kram Exhibition Park in Tunis. For those not able to participate - or who could not get into the rooms because of the mass of particpants - there is an archive of the webcast audio/video stream. 

Parallel Events The ICT4ALL exhibition and the parallel events took place from 15 to 19 November. There were also high-level round tables, a high level panel on ICT for Development and "side events" that are related to WSIS but take place somewhere else - sometimes not in Tunisia.

Civil Society Concerns around the Summit / Citizens' Summit on the Information Society 

Civil society groups have a number of concerns around the summit. Therefore, a number of them have tried to hold a Citizens' Summit on the Information Society (CSIS) parallel to the summit, together with independent Tunisian NGOs. Detailed information is available at the CSIS website. The announcement is here: (rtf): English | French | Spanish | Arabic The CSIS was prevented from happening by Tunisian authorities, without any written documentation and reference to legal reasons.

The preparatory process was mostly occupied with Internet Governance debates, which implies that there was no time for a real discussion about how to move from decisions and declarations (the Geneva phase) to implementation (the Tunis phase and beyond). So there still is a real danger that the summit in the end has produced tons of paper and documents, but has had no impact on the real world and on the conditions of living for a great number of people.

Where there was discussion around implementation and follow-up, the organizers have planned the summit in the style of a trade fair or a showcase for "best practices" and were determined to sell the the event as "the summit of solutions". This approach avoided speaking about the tougher questions that come up when assessing the summit from a human rights and global justice perspective. WSIS civil society had to decide if it again distances itself from the official outcomes and the techno-liberal attitude of the official summit process and develops an independent summit document. It did not draft another declaration, but a month after the summit issued a joint assessment of the WSIS outcomes and process:

WSIS Civil Society Statement on WSIS: "Much more could have been achieved", final version (revision 1), 23 December 2005

english: pdf | doc

Also, the host country Tunisia is known for its bad human rights record, and civil society groups were afraid that the summit would only lead to internationally legitimizing the non-democratic regime of president Ben Ali. Therefore, there was some discussion about completely boycotting the summit if Tunisia does not radically minimize its human rights violations. Independent Tunisian civil society groups instead asked for international support. Tunisian independent groups have issued a declaration about this in January 2005. One outcome was the Citizens' Summit effort. The WSIS Civil Society Bureau had also submitted an official position about the summit preparations and the summit itself in March 2005.

Worldsummit2005.org news and analysis on the Tunis Summit

22 December 2005: Creating Spaces for Civil Society in the WSIS. A Reply to Michael Gurstein, By Willie Currie

22. December 2005: Networking the Networked/Closing the Loop. Some Notes on WSIS II, By Michael Gurstein

19 December 2005: “Much more could have been achieved”. Civil Society Finishes Assessment of Summit Outcomes

28 November 2005: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Part II. Rik and Ralf’s Take on the WSIS, By Ralf Bendrath and Rik Panganiban

23 November 2005: Civil Society Best Practices to bridge the digital divide. Evaluations of the involvement in WSIS, By Charlotte Dany18 November 2005: “The End of the Beginning” – WSIS is over. Documents adopted, Civil Society preparing assessment

18 November 2005: Civil Society groups reflect on WSIS process. Where to Next?

18 November 2005: The panel I never attended. About a journey of a WSIS participant who tried to seize the day, By Johannes Schunter

17 November 2005: The WSIS "High Level Panel". A missed opportunity? A comparison of two panel events

17 November 2005: "Art and Free Knowledge" event in Tunis. When Richard Stallman and Gilberto Gil sing a duet...

17 November 2005: One long month of hunger strike for three basic democratic objectives. Increasing international support for eight Tunesian opposition leaders on strike, By Christine Wenzel

16/17 November 2005: The citizens summit is dead – long live the citizens summit! CSIS press conference becomes major human rights gathering

16 November 2005: Summit Agenda switching to “ICT and development”. Governments use final statements to reiterate their pet subjects.

16 November 2005: "Visions in Process II" released at World Summit. New Publication of the Heinrich Böll Foundation

16 November 2005: Second WSIS summit officially opened. Kofi Annan: Challenges are political, not financial – Ben Ali receives deep criticism for Tunisian human rights record

15 November 2005: Negotiations closer to agreement. Consensus on Internet Governance Forum and - almost - ICANN oversight

15 November 2005: “Abnormal Circumstances”. Civil Society Organisations cancel events, protesting human rights violations in Tunisia, By Charlotte Dany

15 November 2005: Broadcast Media in the Information Society? World Electronic Media Forum

14 November 2005: Meeting Tunisian civil society – and Tunisian secret police. The strategy of intimidation

14 November 2005: Tunisian authorities escalate conflict with civil society. Citizens Summit meeting blocked

13 November 2005: PrepCom3 has re-convened. Trying to find common ground under chaotic circumstances

9 November 2005: Tunisian Authorities block our Side-Event. Harassment can lead to summit being not in Tunisia, but about Tunisia

e-Paliament : Global Center for ICT in Paliament launched

The Global Centre for Information and Communication Technologies in Parliament is a joint initiative of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and a group of national and regional parliaments launched in November 2005 on the occasion of WSIS in Tunis.

The Global Centre pursues two main objectives:

• to strengthen the role of parliaments in the promotion of the Information Society, through fostering ICT-related legislation, in light of the outcome of the World Summit on the Information Society;

• to promote the use of ICT as a means to modernize parliamentary processes, increase transparency, accountability and participation, and improve inter-parliamentary cooperation.

The Global Centre for ICT in Parliament intends to achieve these objectives by providing a framework for sharing knowledge, coordinating actions, providing technical assistance and pooling information and resources across legislatures around the world, regardless of their country’s economic development level.