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Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Opening session of civil society
By Steven Lang, Highway Africa News Agency (HANA)

YASMINE HAMMAMET, TUNISIA. June 23, 2004 Civil society appears to be upbeat,
if slightly disorganized ahead of tomorrow’s preparatory meeting (Prepcom)
for the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).
The loose grouping of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is meeting at
the Yasmine Hammamet conference centre to decide on strategies and positions
to adopt during the official meeting on the Tunisian coast.

The Civil Society session began half an hour late, as many representatives
had not factored in the 80km drive from Tunis airport to the resort town.
The opening session was used to bring up to speed representatives who had
not attended the first phase of the summit in Geneva or those who had not
been closely monitoring developments in the field.

Renate Bloem, president of the Conference of NGOs (CONGO), and chair of the
session explained that one of the most important tasks at hand was to decide
on how to use the time allocated to Civil Society during the plenary
sessions of the government meeting. Bloem said that so far, Civil Society
would have two 15-minute slots to address the government representatives.
She stressed the importance of making best using of the two slots, and said
that speakers should take great care not to overrun their allotted times.

The WSIS is one of a series of United Nations summits that began in the
1980s. The series includes the World Food Summit in Cairo, the Women’s
Summit in Beijing, the World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg and several others. The summits were called by the UN because
the focus of these meetings could not be incorporated in the normal workings
of the organization.

Each summit has its own rules that are normally drawn up and agreed to at
the first preparatory meeting, or Prepcom. The UN summits tend to have three
or four Prepcoms as well as a number of technical gatherings in the run-up
to the summit itself. It is also common practice to have at least one
regional Prepcom on each continent.

The WSIS meeting is the first in two phases – the first in Geneva in
December 2003 and the second is set for Tunis in November 2005. It is also
the first time Civil Society and the business lobby have been allowed to
make direct inputs into the governmental sessions.

UN summits are specifically for governments and all other organizations such
as business, NGOs and international organizations attend summits as
observers. Even the UN body responsible for organizing each summit is only
present in its capacity as an observer. In the case of both phases of the
WSIS, the International Telecommunications Union, (ITU) has been entrusted
with organizing the meetings.

Charles Geiger – deputy executive director the WSIS Executive Secretariat
said that the ITU, established in 1865, and responsible for allocating radio
frequencies has a long history of dealing with business. He admitted
however, that the ITU is still trying to work out how best to deal with
Civil Society.

Geiger said that at the first phase of WSIS in Geneva there were significant
breakthroughs in the relationship between governments and Civil Society.
These included a substantial input from Civil Society into the final Geneva
Declaration of Principles and a series of constructive meetings between the
Civil Society Bureau and the Summit Bureau.

Highway Africa reports from Tunis come courtesy of the Swiss Agency for
Development and Cooperation. Editorial decisions are solely the
responsibility of Highway Africa.

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