Africa, Civil Society, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Human Rights, Press Freedom

COMMUNICATIONS: Road to Tunis Paved With Questions

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Oct 4 2005 (IPS) - With just six weeks to go before the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, a number of key issues remain unresolved, including the highly debated questions of Internet governance and civil society participation.

The future of the Internet will now supposedly be decided at a meeting to be held in the Tunisian capital immediately prior to the Summit itself, which is taking place Nov. 16-18.

Other matters also left pending – such as the wording of the political document outlining the commitments of participating member states and provisions for the implementation and follow-up of the WSIS Action Plan approved at the first phase of the Summit, held in Geneva in 2003 – will be addressed in coming weeks at meetings held in this same Swiss city, ahead of the gathering in Tunis.

But perhaps the greatest uncertainty looming over the upcoming Summit is the human rights situation in the host country of Tunisia. From the time when the decision to hold the second phase of the WSIS in the North African country was first announced, scores of non-governmental organisations, both local and international, have voiced grave concerns in this regard.

The Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of 14 civil society organisations set up in 2004 to monitor freedom of expression in Tunisia in the run-up to and following the WSIS, stated in its latest report that “Tunisia is not a suitable place to hold a United Nations world summit.”

Steve Buckley, the chair of the TMG and president of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), maintained that “the minimal conditions for the holding of this Summit are not met,” and as a result, “the credibility of the United Nations is at stake, as well as that of the international community,” since their acceptance of the status quo in Tunisia would serve to “legitimise practices and policies contrary to international commitments.”

These same concerns have been echoed by the vast majority of the industrialised countries. At the closing session of the WSIS preparatory committee meetings held in Geneva from Sept. 19-30, the Canadian delegation issued a strongly worded statement, endorsed by the 25 member nations of the European Union and a number of countries seeking membership in the bloc, namely Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, and Serbia and Montenegro.

The statement was also backed by Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Monaco, New Zealand, Australia and the United States.

The Canadian delegation felt compelled to take this step “because of several incidents which occurred during this Preparatory Committee, raising concerns about the participatory nature of the Summit,” the statement says.

“Our governments expect the governments, institutions and non-state actors taking part in the WSIS process to respect fully the Declaration of Principles agreed in Geneva on Dec. 10-12, 2003,” it stresses.

In particular, the Declaration of Principles establishes a commitment to the right to freedom of opinion and expression, including “the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

“We expect Tunisia, as host of this Summit, to demonstrate that it strongly upholds and promotes these rights,” the statement emphasises.

The signatory countries also recall that the WSIS is envisaged as a multi-stakeholder process, with an “important and inclusive role” for the private sector and civil society.

“We expect Tunisia, as host country, to do all it can to eliminate any grounds of concern and to ensure that arrangements for the Summit take account of and guarantee the unhindered participation of the non-governmental organisations and their members,” the document says.

For its part, the Tunisian delegation denied the allegations of human rights abuses and maintained that it would guarantee the participation of all civil society entities.

In response to the Canadian delegation statement, a number of governments expressed their support for Tunisia as host country of the WSIS, including representatives of the African Group, Saudi Arabia on behalf of the Arab nations, and Cuba, which clarified that it was not speaking on behalf of Latin America and the Caribbean as a whole.

The “incidents” referred to in the Canadian delegation’s statement had already been reported by Comunica-ch, the Swiss civil society coalition formed to establish a common platform on the information society.

The co-chairs of Comunica-ch, Chantal Peyer and Wolf Ludwig, denounced that the working conditions for civil society caucuses and meetings during the preparatory commission sessions in Geneva “are deteriorating to an extent that a reasonable basis for discussion is not granted anymore.”

According to the Swiss activists, “Most of the meetings are invaded and almost paralysed by ‘special observers’ of the Tunisian government who do not allow subject-oriented discourses any longer.”

Peyer and Ludwig directed their complaints to the head of the WSIS Executive Secretariat, Charles Geiger, a high-level official from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the agency mandated by the United Nations to organise the Summit process.

In their message to Geiger, Peyer and Ludwig reported that a Tunisian staff member of the WSIS Executive Secretariat had burst into a meeting between Comunica-ch and independent civil society representatives from Tunisia, declaring, “I am the police of the UN and you have no right to conduct an illegal meeting here.”

The man in question was not a part of the UN security forces, but rather, according to his card, a Secretariat staff member “in charge of relations with civil society.”

“The omnipresence and undesired interference of semi-official or official Tunisian observers and reporters is not promoting any constructive civil society dialogue inside the U.N. venue,” the activists said.

Peyer told IPS that Geiger had yet to respond to their message a full week later.

For his part, Buckley remarked that “if there are not significant improvements in the human rights situation in Tunisia before Nov. 16, we would then need to reconsider the modalities and level of our participation at this Summit.”