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COMMUNICATIONS: Tunisia Pledges Openness for Second WSIS

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Feb 9 2004 (IPS) - The government of Tunisia has assured that all civil society organisations will be allowed to participate in the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, to take place in Tunis next year, the follow-up to last December’s meet in Geneva.

Accredited groups will be welcome to take part, including "those that enjoy criticising" the government of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s representative to the WSIS, Habib Mansour, said Monday.

With these statements, Mansour sought to remove any doubts among non-governmental organisations and other members of civil society about the atmosphere of freedom he assures will prevail at the United Nations-sponsored Summit, slated for Nov. 16-18, 2005.

At that second-phase gathering, delegates are to continue deliberations on fair access to information and communications technology (ICTs).

Mansour offered these assurances during a meeting convened here Monday by CONGO, the Conference of Non-Governmental Organisations that hold consultative status at the United Nations.

CONGO president Renate Bloem took Mansour’s words to heart: "Now we know that in Tunis all of civil society will participate, including the organisations that are critical of the government; that is clear."

A representative of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Beatrice Quadranti, had called on Mansour to explain what his government’s policy would be during the WSIS towards the organisations that work for freedom of expression in Tunisia.

Quadranti objected to the Tunisian delegate’s statements about the supposedly clean record of his country in terms of human rights. She noted that human rights activists had been rejected entry into Tunisia in recent weeks.

Mansour responded that there would be no such problems during next year’s Summit. "The NGOs will have the opportunity to come and see that the people are happy and have a decent life."

The first phase of the WSIS, held last Dec. 10-12 in Geneva, marked the first time that civil society representatives participated in an international conference at this level.

There the delegates approved a declaration of principles about the expansion of information technology and a plan of action aimed at bridging the "digital divide", the disparity between rich and poor countries in access to these resources.

The second part, in Tunis, the international delegates are to assess the progress made towards the goals set out in the declaration and in the plan of action.

Among the issues left pending from the Geneva meet are the policies for governing the Internet and plans to finance the dissemination of ICTs in developing countries, the latter based on a digital solidarity fund proposed by several nations, mostly from Africa.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan received the mandate from the first WSIS to advance in the consideration of those two matters.

As for Internet governance, some developing countries have proposed a reform of the system under which the U.S.-based private Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) holds authority over a great portion of the worldwide web in terms of domain names.

The private sector has challenged the proposal of developing countries to give inter-governmental agencies – like the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) – a role in Internet governance.

The International Chamber of Commerce, which represents the private sector in the WSIS negotiations, says the countries pushing for reform have governments that control most infrastructure, such as telecoms, but at the same time provide only limited Internet access.

An open world forum on Internet governance is to take place in New York, Mar. 25-26, convened by the U.N. Information and Communications Technologies Task Force.

Expected to emerge from that debate – to involve representatives of government, inter-government agencies, the private sector and civil society – will be the guidelines and criteria that Annan is to follow for setting up the working group on Internet governance, as mandated by the WSIS in Geneva.

Prior to that, on Feb. 26-27, the issue will be taken up in a workshop on Internet governance, organised in Geneva by the ITU, which is also sponsoring the WSIS process in representation of the United Nations.

Shortly thereafter, Mar. 3-4, a meeting is to take place in Tunis about the future of the Summit itself, with invitations going out to representatives of the same groups – government, private sector, NGOs.

But the degree of participation of civil society in the Summit in 2005 will depend on the resources available. Bloem told the delegates from Tunisia and from the ITU on Monday that this is a matter that requires "serious discussion".

The Swiss government, which financed a large portion of the expenses for the civil society’s participation in the Geneva Summit, has already announced that it will not be able to maintain that level of support.

But Switzerland will not abandon civil society, which together with the communications media have become "major stakeholders" in the information society, said Daniel Stauffacher, a member of the Swiss delegation to the WSIS.

The NGOs that participated in the first phase of the WSIS in Geneva are assured of being registered for the second phase in Tunis.

Charles Geiger, head of the WSIS executive secretariat in Geneva, announced that the registration of new civil society participants should be carried out via the ITU web site.