African civil society participation at Tunisia PrepCom 1 critically low
By Emrakeb Assefa - Highway Africa News Agency

YASMINE HAMMAMET, TUNISIA. June 23, 2004 Civil Society Organizations (CSO)
attending the First Preparatory Committee (PrepCom1) meeting of the Tunis
Phase of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) expressed today a
deep concern over the low level of African participation in the meeting.

“Representation of African civil society organizations is very poor, and the
number is so minimal as to be non-existent,” Baguma Tinkasimier Richard,
General Secretary of United Nations Association of Uganda, said, noting that
attending such meetings would be too expensive for most African NGOs. He
was one among the four sub-Saharan African NGOs currently participating in
the Civil Society caucus meeting, a pre-event to the PrepCom1 which will
open tomorrow here in Hammamet, Tunisia.

Charles Geiger, deputy executive director of the WSIS Executive Secretariat
also voiced a similar concern and blamed a lack of funding for the low
African attendance in the PrepCom one.

Geiger said, “We were concerned over the low level of participation from
Africa in the previous WSIS in Switzerland. But we are more worried now
because it has reached a critical point.” He believes the level of African
participation in the Tunisia phase would be even lower because Switzerland,
the host country of the first phase of WSIS, no longer provided financial
support to NGOs.

Meanwhile, Moncef Achour, seconded by the Tunisian government to serve as
Civil Society liaison with WSIS Executive Secretariat, admitted that African
participation was indeed limited, but his government is doing its level best
to overcome the financial problem. He promised that by PrepCom Two, which
is scheduled to take place in February, more finance would be made available
to the African NGOs to a grater representation.

The difficulty for African participants in the Tunisia Phase has been
further exacerbated by the practical problem of travelling. Several African
delegates arriving in Tunisia complained of the time consuming and
exhausting travel they had to endure in order to reach Tunisia.

“I have to travel over three continents before reaching Tunisia,” Baguma
Tinkasimier Richard complained, stating that on leaving Uganda he had to
make a 30-hour trip via Nairobi, Dubai and Paris. “Yet, Tunisia is on the
same continent as my country Uganda.”

The PrepCom 1 is the first of a series of PrepCom meetings to be held ahead
of the Second Phase of WSIS scheduled to be take place in mid November in
Tunis. WSIS is the first UN Summit to be held in two phases to address the
issue of Information Society. The First Phase, which was held from 10-12
December 2003 in Geneva, Switzerland, closed with governments endorsing
declaration of principles and plan of action, documents aiming to address
the issue of bridging the digital divide between developing and developed
world.

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