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 Event Reviews [ add ] |
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Posted By: Alex. Rating: 3 / 5. |
My review is poor not because of the performance of the Youth Caucus, but of the progress in general. Even with the sense of urgency, we still have no consensus.
Overall, things went very slowly and are far from being completed. Governments and civil society are very frustrated, to the point where civil society have refused to continue their input to the documents and are drafting their own "Visionary Document". The Civil Society meetings were quite raucus trying to develop consensus on the "Essential Benchmarks" (very important points) document. In general, civil society was very poorly represented due to lack of fellowships. The civil society documents are available at www.worldsummit.org
The outstanding issues that failed to gain consensus are (in order of contention) human rights/media freedom, financing, and internet governance. It is now a intertwined process as certain countries (Europe) won't move on financing until others (like China) move on human rights. China has refused any mention of human rights, and is in large part, holding up the whole process. The question of the "Digital Solidarity Agenda" is also a major division between northern and southern countries. Now, it is up to former President of Switzerland Adolf Ogi (last-minute champion) to engage in bilateral negotiations with major countries in an effort to come to consensus. Good luck, Adolf!
There will be a PrepCom 3 (c) that will take place December 5-6. It will be open to civil society and offer a last chance to agree on the documents. The hope is that countries will be represented at the ministerial level for this PrepCom. We also hope to have a numerous Youth Caucus for this last PrepCom.
The Declaration (check it out on www.wsis.org) does not include any reference to Human Rights, media freedom, open source software in the sections agreed upon by governments. Whether to refer to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in the WSIS documents is still contentious for countries like China. Other countries It is seriously lacking in civil society concerns, most specifically community media, human rights, intellectual property rights, open source software and "right to development". Civil society on the whole are very disillusioned at this point
The Youth Caucus Paragraph was approved by all governments and reads:
"We are committed to realising our common vision of the Information Society for ourselves and for future generations. We recognize that young people are the future workforce and leading creators and earliest adopters of ICTs. They must therefore be empowered as learners, developers, contributors, entrepreneurs and decision-makers. We must focus especially on young people who have not yet been able to benefit fully from the opportunities provided by ICTs. We are also committed to creating conditions that provide for the development of ICT applications and services that take into acoount the rights of children as well as their protection and well-being."
Youth Caucus numbers was around 6-10, depending on the day, and we continued to lobby for the inclusion of our "action points" that follow the youth paragraph in Declaration to concrete actions to "empower youth as learners, developers,contributors, entrepreneurs and decision makers." The Action Plan was not the focus, and most of the time was spent on the Declaration, still the most contentious of the two documents.
A very interesting time was the meeting between the Swiss (including the current and former president, Minister Marc Furrer and Ambassador Daniel Stauffacher) and civil society and the private sector. Adam Jantunen and I represented the youth family and engaged in informal negotiations on the documents and how to move forward. The Swiss realize that if this Summit fails, they will fail, as this is their first ever UN Summmit. This is why even the President is now involved.
In a general sense, the priority for many, including the Youth Caucus has become the Summit itself, and we are focusing on having a critical mass of youth and exciting side events during Youth Day (December 10) and in the Youth Hub space. Keep checking the Youth Caucus website for updates (www.ycdo.net/wsis)
Signing off,
Alex
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Posted By: Adam Jantunen. Rating: 2 / 5. |
Alex has provided a solid overview of what transpired at the last Prepcom, so I won't go into a lot of detail. Suffice it to say that it seems unlikely that there will be an agreement for December, or if there is one, it will be largely gutted of references to human rights, media freedom and other issues of vital importance. The only reason I didn't give this event one star is because the youth paragraph was left in. Although we didn't succeed in lobbying for any of our other text changes (mainly because governments were focused on areas of text that didn't pertain to the ones that we recommended changes to), I think that PC3a was a relative success for the Youth Caucus ... our meetings went well, we worked well together (aside from a phantom meeting that transpired on the last day that I was only informed about today (Nov. 23) ... I had assumed that nobody else from the YC was still there on friday evening, and I missed the meeting because I was at the press conference) and did some planning for the main event.
I'm looking forward to the main summit ... I think that the youth activities will go well (including my own, hopefully) ... but at this point, I suspect that there's a pretty good chance that politically, the WSIS will be as successful as the WTO meetings in Cancun last summer.
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