Friday, June 25, 2004
WSIS meeting disrupted due to quarrel within civil society group
By Emrakeb Assefa, Highway Africa News Agency (HANA)
YASMINE HAMMAMET, TUNISIA. June 25, 2004. A heated quarrel among members of Civil Society organizations (CSOs) over its official statement, disrupted a plenary session of the Preparatory Committee (Prepcom) meeting of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in Tunisia today.
The inter-governmental plenary session had to be suspended for over two hours when the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations (CONGO), an umbrella group for some 150 international NGOs, failed to come up with an official statement to be read at the plenary meeting. The meeting was put on hold to give the CSOs time to reach to a consensus.
The bone of contention in the CONGO statement was a paragraph which called for the protection of human rights and freedom of expression for the people of Tunisia, the host country, and the countries of the South. Heated debate over whether the statement should include any direct reference to an individual country, or group of countries, led to the showdown.
A Tunisian official, who wished to remain anonymous, angrily retorted, “Why should the statement pinpoint Tunisia as a country requiring protection of human rights when many countries in the world have similar problems.”
However, Annette Muehlberg, a representative of the Network New Media NGO, and a member of the group responsible for drafting the statement, defended the document, saying that it was normal to focus on issues that related to the host country of a summit.
“It is normal practice of NGOs to speak out when they see something wrong. We have done it before in WSIS Geneva. We pinpointed Tunisia because it is the host country,” she maintained. During the first phase of WSIS in Geneva, Switzerland, civil society came out with an official statement which accused the government of Switzerland of restricting NGO access to the WSIS process.
Several human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have accused the Tunisian government of violating human rights and of restricting the freedom of expression. Amnesty International recently accused the government of creating a fake website called www.amnesty-tunisia.org to laud the human rights achievements of Tunisia.
Meanwhile, Elsa Mapilele, Executive committee member of the United Nations Association of Mozambique, complained that the statement was “discriminatory” and biased when it singled out countries in the South as being guilty of violating human rights.
“I don’t understand why only countries in the South should be mentioned when we know that there are many countries in the North which violate the rights of their citizens. This is discriminatory,” she stated.
The disagreement over the wording was so divisive that no consensus could be reached even after a prolonged and tense debate. Angry words were once again exchanged and the meeting ended in disarray.
By Emrakeb Assefa, Highway Africa News Agency (HANA)
YASMINE HAMMAMET, TUNISIA. June 25, 2004. A heated quarrel among members of Civil Society organizations (CSOs) over its official statement, disrupted a plenary session of the Preparatory Committee (Prepcom) meeting of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in Tunisia today.
The inter-governmental plenary session had to be suspended for over two hours when the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations (CONGO), an umbrella group for some 150 international NGOs, failed to come up with an official statement to be read at the plenary meeting. The meeting was put on hold to give the CSOs time to reach to a consensus.
The bone of contention in the CONGO statement was a paragraph which called for the protection of human rights and freedom of expression for the people of Tunisia, the host country, and the countries of the South. Heated debate over whether the statement should include any direct reference to an individual country, or group of countries, led to the showdown.
A Tunisian official, who wished to remain anonymous, angrily retorted, “Why should the statement pinpoint Tunisia as a country requiring protection of human rights when many countries in the world have similar problems.”
However, Annette Muehlberg, a representative of the Network New Media NGO, and a member of the group responsible for drafting the statement, defended the document, saying that it was normal to focus on issues that related to the host country of a summit.
“It is normal practice of NGOs to speak out when they see something wrong. We have done it before in WSIS Geneva. We pinpointed Tunisia because it is the host country,” she maintained. During the first phase of WSIS in Geneva, Switzerland, civil society came out with an official statement which accused the government of Switzerland of restricting NGO access to the WSIS process.
Several human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have accused the Tunisian government of violating human rights and of restricting the freedom of expression. Amnesty International recently accused the government of creating a fake website called www.amnesty-tunisia.org to laud the human rights achievements of Tunisia.
Meanwhile, Elsa Mapilele, Executive committee member of the United Nations Association of Mozambique, complained that the statement was “discriminatory” and biased when it singled out countries in the South as being guilty of violating human rights.
“I don’t understand why only countries in the South should be mentioned when we know that there are many countries in the North which violate the rights of their citizens. This is discriminatory,” she stated.
The disagreement over the wording was so divisive that no consensus could be reached even after a prolonged and tense debate. Angry words were once again exchanged and the meeting ended in disarray.
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