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 Event Reviews [ add ] |
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Posted By: Terri Willard. Rating: 5 / 5. |
Having left the Summit in December with a profound feeling of lack of closure, this 1-day workshop went a long way towards helping me to step back and understand what was accomplished and what remains to be done. Kudos to the team from the Canadian Commission for UNESCO (particularly Francois-Pierre Le Scouarnec and Pauline Dugre) and Marie-Isabelle Massip (DFAIT Director of UN and Commonwelath Affairs Division) for doing such a great job of fielding questions and facilitating the discussion amongst 35+ people.
I took about 12 pages of notes, but the key things that stood out for me were:
* The timeline for developing the next Phase of the Summit. As yet, the coordinating officials have not been elected. Nothing can/will happen officially until that procedural step has been completed. It will likely occur at a PrepCom in April.
* Canada is the only country which created a high-level report based on the perspectives of civil society. The report was released at PrepCom3 and was sent to all 190 member states of UNESCO.
* Things were more touch and go at PrepCom 3B than most of us realized. There was a real possibility that the declaration and action plan were not going to be completed in a form that was acceptable to all participating governments. Canada stuck it out until the wee hours of the morning to make sure that human rights stayed in.
* Media-wise, WSIS may have been a victim of its own success. The media pretty much ignored the summit once the juicy issues were resolved at 3B. They wanted stories of conflict, not feel-good stories of people working together. No conflict = no press. Very frustrating. And it makes it very hard to mobilize organizations to participate in Phase II. Many organizations around the table had sold their participation in the Summit to their Boards based on being able to generate profile for their work. No profile in Phase I = less chance to be able to use core funds to participate in Phase II.
* The WSIS Summit broke new ground for the UN - not just for new processes to enable the full participation of civil society - but also for tackling an issue in a forward-thinking way. Most Summits deal with existing problems. WSIS was dealing with existing opportunities.
* The most effective civil society groups in Phase I were groups like women, youth and human rights, who had participated in previous UN processes and understood the importance of building relationships directly with national government delegations and who provided timely and concise draft text which could be incorporated by the governments in the negotiations.
* As we head into Phase II, we need to come up with better processes for engaging the double, triple, etc marginalized. I flagged the experience of Katelin Gillis at PrepCom 2. As a young aboriginal woman with a broken arm, she was run ragged between all of the different caucus groups. Yet, she had very little opporunity to actually sit down and explain what kinds of projects she works on and what she knows/believes as an individual working in ICT4D. We need to engage people as people, not as a series of overlapping categories.
* Phase II is going to be a challenge. Most governments do not want to re-open negotiations on the declaration and action plan. They would like to see the Tunisia Summit as a monitoring point. But, there is always some pressure from the national organizaing committee for a big event like this to launch some type of declaration or statement. There is going to be a lot of backroom arm-wrestling over whether or not some sort of Digital Solidarity Charter is written. One compromise idea might be to turn that document over to writers and poets to come up with something inspirational, but which doesn't break new policy ground.
* In Phase II, there will be divergent strategies amongst three groups - 1) Those who feel that their issues were adequately covered in the Phase I documents and want to focus on on-the-ground project implementation (e.g. youth, women); 2) Those whose issues were not conclusively dealt with and were held over to Phase II for resolution (e.g. internet governance, freedom of expression, financing); 3) Those who missed the Phase I process and are trying to figure out how to introduce the missing issues into the process and/or some sort of document (e.g. disabilities).
* Funds for implementing WSIS commitments from/in Canada are lower than hoped due to the abdication of responsibility/authority for WSIS from CIDA. Some of that had to do with the unfortunate death of Tony Zeitoun, CIDA's champion of K4D, early in 2003 from Cancer. But, deeper than that are real structural challenges within CIDA that are blocking its ability to recruit/retain staff in ICT4D and for the staff they do have to mainstream ICT4D through the various regional desks and thematic areas. And beyond that is the dawning realization that the Canadian civil society groups involved in WSIS COMPLETELY forgot to do any outreach/advocacy to the big development players in the country to get them involved in the issue. CIDA listens very closely to groups like the Canadian Council on International Cooperation and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities -- without their support for a topic, it's not likely going to receive funding. And we forgot to bring them onboard the issue of ICT4D. We need to remedy that QUICKLY for Phase II.
* There was considerable interest around the table in holding some type of Canadian National Summit on the Information Society in early 2005. The goal would be to provide a platform for national level discussions, sharing of experience and technology, and the mobilization of the groups mentioned above. The Summit could also be a step in doing an inventory of Canadian initiatives (domestically and abroad) in the e-applications areas. It should also contribute to benchmarking (both qunatitatively and qualitatively) Canadian progress.
The take-away messages for me in terms of YCDO was a confirmation that:
1) The national youth campaigns need to be the focus of youth participation ICT4D policy-making in WSIS Phase II. This gives us an opportunity to shape national e-strategies, PRSPs, national development plans, and national SD strategies to make sure that youth and ICTs are incorporated clearly aand coherently in each. This is what will drive the availabitlity of funding at the national and local levels for grassroots activities in the future.
2) We should send smaller groups of people to the PrepComs in Phase II. These individuals should split their attention between procedural issues of the summit, keeping on top of mechanisms being suggested monitoring progress on commitments made in Phase I, and adding extra representation for the young people who were underrepresented in Phase I (e.g. children, young women, disabled youth, aboriginal youth, Latin American and Pacific Island youth).
3) The Phase II Summit, on the other hand, may be a bigger deal than the Geneva one in terms of a trade-show, conference opportunity. The GKP is considering whether or not to hold GK3 as a parallel event to the Tunisia Summit. That decision should be made soon. If it happens, youth leading grassroots ICT4D projects should start talking to their project funders to see if they could be funded to present about the project at GK3. DO NOT COUNT ON GENERAL SCHOLARSHIPS.
4) Projects. Projects. Projects. While ICT awareness-raising and basic connectivity projects are still needed in many regions, as many youth as possible should start shifting over to e-applications projects. There is a real desire to be able to show progress on using ICTs to achieve the MDGs by 2005. With ICT4D funding being mainstreamed, projects will increasingly have to deal specifically with 1-2 key development concerns such as health, education, environment, agriculture, girls empowerment, employment, etc. A cautionary note on employment... while youth employment is an MDG, no one seems sure how to tackle it. Projects using ICTs to strengthen youth employment opportunities/entrepreneurship in another development sector (e.g. agriculture, health, water, etc) are more likely to be given serius funding consideration.
5) Resources for projects - We all need to be VERY nice to <a href="http://ycdo.takingitglobal.org/community/profile.html?memberid=22183">Leticia</a> this year. As the 2004 GKP Youth Focal Point, she's been handed a renewed mandate as the YCDO Projects Coordinator. What does this mean? It means that she (with all of our help) is the point person for bringing organizations together to figure out how to expand support for young people working on ICT4D projects. My suggestion: try not to flood her with individual requests for assistance. She may be able to give thoughts on some. But, we should be even more able to expand support if she can focus her efforts on building partnerships and convincing the private sector to team up with us to support youth-led projects. If all goes well, we should be able to have some sort of new commitments in place by September 2004.
All in all, a very good day! It was too bad that Jennifer Correiro missed the conference call at the end. I did what I could to represent TIG as well as IISD, but it's just not the same....
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Canadian Commission for UNESCO
The Commission is an arm's length consultative forum that advises the Canadian Government on its relations with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and coordinates its activities in Canada.
Canada and the world face crucial challenges in working to...
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