Children surf the net in a remote island community in the Philippines where fishing is the main source of income. Credit: eKindling/Lubang Tourism.

By Branislav Gosovic *
VILLAGE TUDOROVICI, Montenegro, May 21 2015 (IPS)

More than four decades ago, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) launched the concept of a New International Information Order (NIIO).

Its initiative led to the establishment of an independent commission within the fold of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), which produced a report, published in 1980, on a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO).Incomprehensible to the general public and not suitable for consideration in multilateral policy forums, the Internet governance deliberations have largely been under control of the world superpower and its cyber mega-corporations from Silicon Valley.

The report, titled “One World, Many Voices,” is usually referred to as the MacBride Report after its chairman.

The very idea of venturing to criticise and challenge the existing global media, namely the information and communication hegemony of the West, touched a raw political nerve, apparently a much more sensitive one than that irked by the developing countries’ New International Economic Order (NIEO) proposals.

A determined, no-punches-spared counteroffensive was launched by the Anglo-American tandem, which silenced UNESCO, effectively banning the MacBride Report and excluding the concept of NWICO from the international discourse and U.N. agenda.

The neo-liberal globalisation and neo-con geopolitics tide was on the rise and reigning supreme on the world scene.

The common front of the South was wavering and unsure vis-à-vis the well orchestrated challenge from the North and its multilateral arsenal deployed via the Bretton Woods and WTO troika – and, indeed, via the global media it controlled.

On the defensive and in retreat, with individual countries and their leaders targeted, pressured and tamed, the Global South lowered its profile and, facing stonewalling developed countries, it effectively shelved much of its 1960s/1970s agenda, including its quest for NIIO.

A decade ago, at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the developing countries did not have the collective will and were not prepared and organised to raise and press these broader issues.

They focused on the “digital divide”, as their key concern, which, although important, was not politically sensitive and did not represent a challenge to the existing global information order.

The rise and evolution of the Internet found the South ill-prepared to deal in a comprehensive manner with its implications, challenges and opportunities that it presented, not only for the developing countries individually and collectively, but also for the world order – economic, information and political – and for humankind in general.

The U.N. was marginalised and not allowed in depth to analyse and in an integrated, cross-sectoral and sustained way to deal with the Internet, and as a result did not provide a focus and platform that could have prompted and assisted the Global South in building and evolving its own case and vision.

The Internet-related debates and analyses have largely been focused on and limited to highly specialised and technical, often esoteric, acronym-dominated questions of its governance, which, though of vital importance, has helped to conceal or bypass many fundamental concerns.

Incomprehensible to the general public and not suitable for consideration in multilateral policy forums, the Internet governance deliberations have largely been under control of the world superpower and its cyber mega corporations from Silicon Valley, and the US-centric nature of the Internet has been defended tenaciously and preserved.

The WSIS+10 Review will be taking place shortly. There is an apparent attempt by the West – assisted by its transnational corporations (TNCs) dominating and providing key services on the Internet – to minimise the political importance and limit substantive outputs of this event.

The Group of 77 (G77) and NAM have to focus not only on the non-implementation of the Tunis agenda, but also to work out their position concerning the basic, underlying issues, including the linkages between the Internet and the international development agenda, and, more broadly, the Internet’s relevance to the international economic and political order and world peace.

There is the risk that WSIS+10 Review may turn out to be a missed opportunity for the South, and yet another encounter forced to remain within the parameters drawn and preferred by the traditional, well-entrenched masters of the global information and communication order.

Waiting one more decade for the next WSIS+20 Review may not be a recommended approach given the global economic and geo-political trends.

This relative circumspection of the Global South regarding the nature and future of the Internet is compensated in part by the voices coming from some sectors of the civil society that dare stray beyond what is allowed and permissible under the reigning global paradigm.

Thus, for example, the workshop “Organizing an Internet Social Forum”, held at the 2015 World Social Forum (WSF) in Tunis, articulated an alternative vision of an Internet and its directions for the future radically different from the current dogma.

And, an international conference on the Internet as a Global Public Resource was recently hosted by government of Malta and DiploFoundation.

“Global public resource” is a term akin to “global public goods”. The latter is a concept first launched by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) but expurgated from its work and the U.N. discourse during the recent period, probably seen as unsuitable and a threat to the ideological purity of the privatisation gospel, a move to accommodate the political predilections of dominant elites and the current doctrinaire aversion to anything “public”.

To move the global debate and multilateral negotiations in a desired direction largely depends on the developing countries as a collectivity, the Global South.

These countries need to grasp the gravity of the systemic issues involved, on par and indeed in some ways more important than those of the traditional international economic, financial, political and social agendas.

The moment is ripe for them to brush up on the original NAM NIIO initiative and the Report of the McBride Commission on NWICO, and consider their relevance in the age of the Internet.

They should work on an alternative vision of the Internet, its functions and governance, which should evolve into the backbone of a future global information and communication order needed in a multipolar world of the 21st century.

Currently, the Internet remains a prisoner of the dominant neo-liberal paradigm and its mantras forced upon the planet by the Western powers and in the service of their global, geopolitical and corporate interests. It needs to be liberated from these shackles.

Debate and study that view the Internet from humankind’s point of view need to be launched. This will require the Global South to do its homework in depth and fully on the implications and potential roles of the Internet, in order to prepare its platform and press for the initiating of all-inclusive multilateral negotiations and debate.

The BRICS countries together possess the necessary expertise, experience and power to provide the leadership and motor force for mobilising the Global South’s collective stand and action on the Internet.

With the high likelihood that the core countries of the West will react negatively, pressure individual developing countries (as appears to have been the case with Brazil, which has lowered its traditionally forceful public stance on Internet issues), and that obstacles within the U.N. system will persist, doing something concrete independently, via South-South cooperation will be required, and indeed is the only way out of the current impasse.

Here many options exist, including creating supporting institutions and expert bodies and organising regular deliberations, at both technical and political levels.

Bridges should be built with the progressive civil society and possibly with some like-minded countries in the North that are not too happy with the existing system.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
OAKLAND, California, Nov 17 2008 (IPS)

Thirty-three-year-old Walter Williams was among the thousands of revelers who flooded into the streets of Oakland on Nov. 4 to celebrate Barack Obama’s election as the 44th president of the United States.

Williams, a U.S. Army veteran who served tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, initially had trouble coping with his return from the war zone. He did drugs and slept in his car and the homes of his friends, before stabilising himself and landing a job at the San Francisco non-profit Swords to Plowshares, where he helps other veterans find work.

On election night, Williams told IPS he had sworn off participating in the electoral process after “the lies I saw in the desert”, but became excited about Obama’s campaign after he saw the president-elect speaking to veterans on MTV.

“He cared enough to ask,” Williams said. “He didn’t just turn away, turn his back like most people do… He actually cares about the common man, and the common man is who’s over there fighting.”

Professional veterans’ advocates also have high hopes for an Obama administration. They note that as a senator, Obama co-sponsored the Dignity for Wounded Warriors Act, which was designed to solve problems with the military medical system after the Washington Post revealed deplorable conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in 2007.

Obama was also a strong supporter of strengthening educational benefits for returning soldiers through a more generous GI Bill, and has consistently voted to appropriate more money to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) as it copes with the more than 350,000 veterans who have turned to the VA for medical treatment after returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In his speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president in Denver in August, Obama referred to the plight of the country’s veterans numerous times. “We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty,” he said.

“In the faces of those young veterans who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, I see my grandfather,” Obama said, “who signed up after Pearl Harbor, marched in Patton’s army, and was rewarded by a grateful nation with the chance to go to college on the GI Bill.”

Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, said his organisation believes “President-elect Obama is already pro-veteran. We believe that he has a generally favourable disposition toward veterans, we’ve been pleased to see him give veterans issues a very high profile, and we hope that continues while he’s in the White House.”

Donald Overton, executive director of Veterans of Modern Warfare, shared a similar sentiment with IPS.

“I had the opportunity to meet with President-elect Obama’s team at the Democratic National Convention,” Overton said. “President-elect Obama really seems to have his heart in the right place. He is engaging the veteran community and he is looking to make significant changes so we’re hoping his administration and their transition team will assess the situation, put the right people in office, and really bring about change within the VA system.”

On his official transition website change.gov, Obama promises to increase the number of VA mental health providers, reform the government’s bureaucratic disability claims system, and increase the number of Vet Centres, where returning veterans can find community as they make the difficult transition from war to civilian life.

If he makes good on those promises, it will make a tremendous difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. But it will not be easy, because George W. Bush is leaving the Department of Veterans Affairs in a state of disarray.

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, 18 veterans commit suicide every day and 200,000 sleep homeless on the streets on any given night.

An April 2008 study by the Rand Corporation found that 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans currently suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression. Another 320,000 suffer from traumatic brain injury and physical brain damage. A majority are not receiving help from the Pentagon or VA system which critics say are more concerned with concealing unpleasant facts than they are with providing care.

Both Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans of Modern Warfare are suing the Bush administration for failing to care for the country’s wounded veterans.

Veterans for Common Sense’s class action lawsuit aims to force the VA to treat Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Veterans of Modern Warfare filed suit last week to force the VA to give disability payments to wounded veterans in a timely manner.

Both of them will be pushing their lawsuits forward even as Barack Obama assumes the presidency of the United States.

*IPS Correspondent Aaron Glantz is author of the upcoming book “The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans”.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
NEW YORK, Nov 4 2008 (IPS)

The year is 1994. Pictures of Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley cover the pages of prominent U.S. newspapers and magazines. Yet hidden from national view is the attempted elimination of the Tutsi ethnic group in Rwanda.

When news of pop stars and their marriages and divorces takes precedence over stories about the Iraq War or privacy concerns in an age of increasing security measures, U.S. citizens are faced, as described by the director of Project Censored, "with a truth emergency".

To address this emergency, Project Censored, a non-profit media project within the Sonoma State University Foundation, each year compiles 25 stories which they say have been neglected by the mainstream media. Since 1976, when Carl Jensen founded the research facility, these stories have comprised a yearbook of controversial stories that have gone largely unread and underreported.

The organisation, now headed by Peter Phillips, a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University, works with students and faculty of SSU to review and select which of the 700-1,000 annually submitted stories make the final cut. A panel of judges that includes noted writers Noam Chomsky and Susan Faludi then ranks the 25 stories in order of importance.

How do they determine what constitutes "censorship"? An explanation on ProjectCensored.org states, "We define Modern Censorship as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets."

The organisation outlines a set of criteria by which individuals can determine if a story is suitable for the "censored" list. The first of these criteria reads, "A Censored news story is one which contains information that the general United States population has a right and need to know, but to which it has had limited access."

Indeed, none of the selected stories have appeared in the mainstream press, a category encompassing widely read publications such as The New York Times and the network news channels. Rather, the stories have been covered by a select number of independent media that are free from the constraints of corporate ownership.

The number one story this year gave a staggering answer to a question that has been glossed over in the mainstream press – just how many Iraqi lives have been lost because of the U.S. occupation? The answer is one million, and it exceeds the death toll of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, points out the Censored entry.

But that figure, calculated by British the polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB), was reported in just three independent media outlets – AlterNet, Inter Press Service (IPS), and After Downing Street.

Michael Schwartz, of the nonpartisan coalition After Downing Street, also refuted in Censored the idea that most violence occurs only between Iraqis, placing the percentage of U.S.-inflicted Iraqi deaths at about 80 percent.

Censored also points to what may be the most ominous consequence of media censorship – a public lack of awareness.

Schwartz, in Censored, refers to a February 2007 Associated Press poll in which U.S. citizens were asked how many Iraqis died because of the U.S. occupation. The most common answers placed casualties at below 10,000.

"This remarkable mass ignorance, like so many other elements of the Iraq War story, received no coverage in the mass media, not even by the Associated Press, which commissioned the study," he writes.

Many of the stories included in this year's compilation dealt with the aftermath of the Iraq War as well as privacy concerns in an age of increasing security measures.

At number three on the list, "InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business" reveals that members of the business community may be part of an anti-terrorism line of defence, but are also the first ones reaping the benefits of it. This programme is called InfraGard, and goes as far back as 1996, when it started in Cleveland with 350 members from the Fortune 500.

By transmitting information about private individuals to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, 23,000 members of private industry guarantee that they will receive warnings of a terrorist attack before private individuals – even before certain elected officials, reported The Progressive in an article by Matt Rothschild.

Rothschild's article also asserts that an InfraGard member can even shoot to kill in the case of martial law "without fear of prosecution".

Although in February, the FBI released a statement denouncing the piece, Rothschild is sticking by his story.

The Winter Soldier hearings, which took place in Silver Springs, Maryland in March of 2008 organised by Veterans against War, also found a place on the list at number nine. The testimonies of more than 300 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans revealed atrocities they not only saw, but also participated in, such as desecrating corpses and targeting civilians.

These revelatory hearings were covered in just three print media outlets – The Nation, One World, and Inter Press Service – as well as one radio station, Pacifica Radio.

If the U.S. government deems that a person, directly or indirectly, poses the risk of threatening U.S. operations in the Middle East, the U.S. treasury department can seize their property and freeze their assets – a story on this is number five on the list.

Two executive orders were established giving the treasury department this power, one in July of 2007 and more recently in August of 2007. The first executive order is limited to Iraq, and threatens seizure of property in the event someone committing, or posing a risk of committing violent acts in opposition to U.S. operations there.

The second order, targeted to operations in Lebanon, goes a little further, broadening the scope to actions, non-violent or otherwise, that undermine U.S. involvement in Lebanon. Under this order, dependents of the individuals (spouse, children) would also have their assets frozen, and would not be allowed to receive humanitarian aid, Censored states.

The two executive orders were covered in The Progressive, and Global Research.

While mass media closely followed such stories as Angelina Jolie's pregnancy and Alec Baldwin's marital problems, reports regarding the aftermath of the Iraq War and privacy concerns were hidden.

News of abuse and death in juvenile detention centres, unprecedented rates of arrests for marijuana possession in the U.S., corporate profiteering from No Child Left Behind, and the American Psychological Association's sanctioning and aiding in torture methods lay buried underneath images of Paris Hilton's new escapades. And those are just the top 25.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
PORTLAND, Oregon, Oct 20 2008 (IPS)

Veterans from the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, along with Iraqis, Afghanis, Vietnam veterans, and family members of U.S. military personnel converged in this west coast city over the weekend to share stories of atrocities being committed daily in Iraq, in a continuation of the "Winter Soldier" hearings held in Silver Spring, Maryland in March.

Even Knappenberger, Iraq war veteran: "We are murderers of over one million Iraqis." Credit: Mike Hastie

The goal of the event is to give veterans a platform by which to disseminate information about their experiences abroad to the general public.

"War changes people. You do not come out of a combat zone the same," Iraq war veteran Chanan Suarez Diaz told the audience while moderating the veteran's panel. "War is very numbing…it comes to a point that you see so much destruction you become numb. This bullshit about bringing democracy or liberation is nonsense – we've killed over one million Iraqis."

Jan Critchfield, an Army National guard specialist, discussed his job working in Iraq as an army "journalist", that in his words, "I was a propagandist, pure and simple."

A somber Critchfield said, "I'm not proud of any of what I did over there – it was inhumane and it changed me as a person. I didn't do anything but yell at people, push people around, and aim my gun at people."

Other vets spoke as photos taken by soldiers were shown on a large screen above the stage.

Josh Simpson explained his work as an army counterintelligence agent in Iraq. "We would go to houses without any evidence, arrest people, and pay our source hundreds of dollars. This was common, it was a crazy cycle."

"We were raiding houses every night in Mosul," he continued. "You ransack their stuff, then ask our officer who he wanted to detain."

The number of people detained was a measure of success for a unit, Simpson explained. "People's mothers would be grabbing me, asking me why I was taking their child away, and I never had an answer. It's terrible to push an elderly Iraqi woman away so you can take her child and load her into your Stryker vehicle, when you don't even believe they belong there."

Evan Knappenberger served one year in Iraq with the Army 4th Infantry Division working as an intelligence analyst. "We are responsible as soldiers, we are murderers of over one million Iraqis," a visibly shaken Knappenberger said. "I participated in burglary, trespassing, knowledgeable negligence, criminal assault and battery, rape by association, and gangsterism, I am standing here today as a criminal – in a sense of the word that only someone who has worn the uniform can understand."

"While I was in Iraq, I did many things, but nothing for freedom," he added. "We've lost this war on the polemic battleground of semantics. By naming arbitrary rules of engagement, we rationalised murder – this I witnessed…by calling it liberation, we justified occupation, this I witnessed…"

Chris Arendt, who was a block guard at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre during 2004-05, spoke of his experiences "working at a concentration camp, and the people I was working for were invading other countries."

He explained, "I had a lot of time to think about things. What we do there is completely contrary to our own set of laws. We have 650 people in Gitmo right now waiting for us to do something with them. What have they done? They don't even have charges! We are ruining people's lives."

"Time is the silent killer there," Arendt explained, "You just put people in a cell and tell them they are never going home, and watch them slowly break apart. I wish I was angrier when I was there, but it was impossible to feel there, you can't feel, feelings are just not something you want to bring there in your rucksack., but I'm still trying to unpack them, three years later."

David Mann was an Army Specialist who was deployed to Nasiriyah, Iraq in 2003 and forced to return after his tour ended under the "stop-loss" policy for a second deployment to Balad, Iraq in 2005.

"We were told not to stop when children ran in front of our vehicles as we invaded Iraq," he explained, his voice cracking. After being stop-lossed, Mann checked himself into an emergency room after threatening to kill himself.

Weeping he continued: "I told them I was going to kill myself if I had to go back to war. I was sent back…every man, woman and child who has died in this war has died in vain, because it was a war based on lies and profits."

The event was sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) Seattle Chapter, the American Friends Service Committee, PDX Peace Coalition, and the American Iranian Friendship Council, among many others.

On another panel, Dr. Baher Butti, formerly the chief psychiatrist at a mental health clinic Baghdad, told the stunned audience, "The Iraqi population has mass post-traumatic stress disorder, everybody is just trying to survive."

Dr. Zaher Wahab, professor of Education at Lewis & Clark College, who serves as a senior advisor to the Minister of Higher Education in Afghanistan, spoke eloquently of the catastrophic situation in Afghanistan.

"There is now more bombing in Afghanistan than in Iraq, because they are so short of troops," Dr. Wahab explained, "The average family lives on one dollar per day, two million people are seriously mentally ill, 70 percent of Afghanis are traumatised. The society is being murdered by the occupation, and it's being done on live television."

Iraq war veteran and former Marine Benjamin David Lewis, 23 years old, also attended the event. Lewis, who has served two tours in Iraq and four years as a Marine, including being in Fallujah during the November 2004 siege that killed thousands of Iraqis and destroyed much of the city, had just received his involuntary activation order to redeploy, as he is in the Individual Ready Reserve.

"My plane to Kansas City that takes me to be screened and get my orders leaves tomorrow," Lewis told IPS on Oct. 18. "Presumably I'll get my orders to go to Iraq or Afghanistan, but I'm going to refuse to activate."

Lewis explained that when a soldier is screened for deployment, they have five months to get their affairs in order before being shipped abroad. At the end of this five months, he has decided he will publicly refuse his orders to deploy.

When asked why he would refuse the orders, Lewis said his decision was based on educating himself about the goals of the U.S. government and military, coupled with his experience in Fallujah during both 2004 sieges, of which he said, "My battalion in spring 2004 was operating in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions (GC)."

"During the spring siege we sent military-age males back into the city, and were ordered to kill them," he told IPS.

Of the November siege, Lewis added, "The intention of the military was to take over and occupy the main hospital in Fallujah, which violates the GC's, as well as our being ordered to target all 'military age males'."

The intention of his refusal to activate is "To let the American public and other veterans know that this is an illegal war, and everyone should be opposing it."

The first Winter Soldier event was organised in 1971 by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in response to a growing list of human rights violations occurring in Vietnam.

From Mar. 13-16, 2008, IVAW held a national conference titled "Winter Solider: Iraq and Afghanistan" outside Washington, DC. The four-day event brought together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"If we are going to end these occupations, we have to share this pain," Camilo Mejia, Iraq veteran and Chair of the Board of IVAW stated to conclude the veterans panel. "Only by sharing this pain, and acting to end it, can we heal ourselves and educate the American public."

Excerpt:

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 12 2007 (IPS)

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) being held in Rio de Janeiro Monday through Thursday, with more than 1,500 people attending, is discussing issues that are not yet a concern for the majority of users, but are already having a major impact on their lives.

Key aspects of the Internet, such as infrastructure, the domain name system, access, diversity, openness and security will be debated under the overall theme of “Internet Governance for Development”, by representatives from government, the private sector and civil society.

The IGF is not a decision-making body but a forum for dialogue on equal terms between stakeholders. It was created at the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in November 2005, and is promoted by the United Nations.

The first IGF, held in Greece in November 2006, was attended by 1,350 participants. The next two annual meetings will be hosted by India and Egypt.

The second IGF is addressing the same themes as the first, but Brazil led a move to include infrastructure as well, which allows tabling the need to create international authorities to make decisions affecting all Internet users, such as issues related to domain names, which identify websites, thematic areas and countries.

The domain name system continues to be administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), linked with the United States Department of Commerce, an arrangement which many regard as incompatible with the international character of the Internet.

This is an issue that many governments, especially the administration in Washington, and Internet related agencies do not want to discuss, arguing that it works just fine.

“But decisions need to be internationalised so that no one government has overall control,” Carlos Afonso, a civil society representative on the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br), which is helping to organise the IGF in Rio de Janeiro, told IPS.

ICANN operates as a monopoly broker in a sort of stock exchange of Internet names and domains, under the guise of a technical caretaker, said Afonso, who is known as the “father of the Brazilian Internet” because of his role in setting up the first server and early e-mail networks between computers.

But decisions about domains may be purely political, and they should not be made unilaterally by a non-representative institution that depends on just one government, ICANN critics say. For example, proposals to create a domain for pornography websites, to be called .xxx, were rejected by a majority of the ICANN board in March.

This was a decision about the content of the Internet, which goes beyond ICANN’s brief, Afonso said.

International Internet connections, which go through nerve centres concentrated in the United States, Europe and some Asian countries, like Singapore, are another case in point, showing the need for multilateral, democratic mechanisms for Internet management.

The income generated by this flow of information remains in the hands of rich countries. In this unregulated space, powerful countries like Australia can negotiate bilateral agreements, but poor countries such as those in Africa end up only paying the cost of communications, without receiving any income, Afonso said.

This makes for “perverse imbalances,” such as users in poor areas paying much higher charges for Internet connections than in wealthy areas, he complained.

Thus in Manaus, in the heart of Brazil’s Amazon jungle region, access to broadband Internet connection costs 16 times more than in the European Union, and even Brazilians living in rich regions have to pay two or three times more.

Added to the hook-up costs, the telecommunications corporations operate pricing policies that charge more for services provided to people who live far away from industrial centres.

These imbalances only widen the gap between rich and poor in relation to information and communication technology, said Afonso.

In his view, a global compensation mechanism is needed to regulate prices, that would reduce imbalances, in order not to leave the countries most in need of cheap connections at the mercy of the powers-that-be in telecommunications and the Internet.

International governance systems are also essential to deal with security problems on the Internet, which is not restricted by national borders. For instance, Brazil has created mechanisms which have successfully reduced online crime, such as hackers gaining access to electronic banking systems and stealing fortunes.

But today the criminals are using servers in other countries that do not have control and protection systems. The Internet Steering Committee’s statistics on hacking attacks indicate that the majority originate in Taiwan, the United States and South Korea, Afonso said.

The Internet has around one billion users at present, less than one-sixth of the world’s population. Widening access to it is a permanent challenge, and public policies to promote this will be discussed at the IGF.

Adapting to diversity is another issue. The vast majority of Internet content is in English, and people whose languages do not use the Latin alphabet face enormous barriers to full inclusion on the net.

This week’s IGF in Rio will include five special sessions on the central themes, as well as seminars, forums and meetings of special interest “dynamic coalitions”.

The meeting is co-chaired by Nitin Desai, an Indian national who is the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Adviser for Internet Governance, and Hadil da Rocha Vianna, head of Scientific and Technological Affairs for the Brazilian Foreign Ministry.

Excerpt:

By Sanjay Suri
GLASGOW, May 26 2007 (IPS)

When, came the question from a Ugandan delegate at a Civicus world assembly meeting in Glasgow, will the West ever stop giving aid on unequal terms? “We are unequal by the fact that, speaking as a donor, we are providing the funds,” said Jan-Petter Holtedahl from the civil society department at the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.

Plain speech there, and there has been a good deal of it at the civil society gathering. But Holtedahl added a sweetener. “We start from inequality but need to mitigate that by having a comprehensive dialogue.”

There were others. “Obviously there is in that sense a power relationship between the northern NGOs and the southern NGOs,” Sylvia Borren, director of Oxfam-Novib in the Netherlands told IPS.

It all depends on how you deal with power relationships, she said. “We as Oxfam Novib have 850 partners, and we think that by sitting together and saying what is your vision, what is your strategy, what is our vision, what is our strategy, and what are the opportunities we see, and can we come to enough common ground.”

But however politely that giving of aid is presented, it is in all instances a fraction of the money intended as aid. The variation lies in just how fractional it is.

The usual subtractions are 15 percent for the northern NGO from a donor agency or government, another 10 to 15 percent for the southern NGO through which that aid is channelled. That leaves about two-thirds or so for the beneficiaries. A fair-looking chunk, except that further subtractions must follow.

The money left over is “money to the programme, not necessarily the beneficiaries,” said Borren. “Some of the programme is about advocating our own governments, for instance, or advocating the EU, or advocating the World Trade Organisation. That is not getting directly into the hands of the programme participant.”

Subtract further. An ActionAid study on aid found that almost two-third of bilateral aid given is “phantom aid”. That money, John Samuel international director of ActionAid told IPS, “is being spent on technical support, which means advice and support by agencies and consulting groups in the donor countries.”

Within bilateral aid, substantial amounts in what is budgeted as aid money have been written actually to companies like KPMG and PriceWaterhouse Coopers at a high consultancy rate, said Samuel.

That profile varies vastly across countries. ActionAid found that the British and the Irish governments had among the best aid programmes; the United States and France were among the poorest.

The Department for International Development of the British government has “effective systems of transparency and accountability, a more international team, plus sensitivity and an understanding of the dynamics of aid,” Samuel said. “And it has offices in those countries; outside London, its biggest office is in Delhi.” And a big chunk of that aid goes directly to beneficiaries, he said.

In the USAID budget, some of the biggest beneficiaries are Afghanistan and Pakistan, where money goes to security issues, he said. Iraq is the biggest aid beneficiary, but very little of that money is benefiting people. “Only a miniscule part of American and French aid goes towards poverty eradication,” Samuel said.

Other familiar ghosts continue to haunt the aid business. Like fixing the books to write off debt cancellation as aid, after a green light for this kind of accounting by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of 30 rich nations. That is not a mandate the OECD has been able to undo, despite progressive policies on many other fronts.

“There is additional duplicity when some of the rich say they have increased aid and decreased debt, because they cancel each other,” said Samuel.

The subtraction business goes on. Add up the subtractions, and the total that filters through as aid is not a very impressive fraction of the 50 billion dollars or whatever in aid that the rich nations like to proclaim in collective boast.

Yes, aid giving is unequal, as the Norwegian told the Ugandan. It is doubtful reassurance on all sides that the inequality here is not quite as much as people say it is.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Feb 14 2007 (IPS)

Janet Malika owes her success to the little gadget that is her cell phone. Formerly a struggling food hawker in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, she has become a cafeteria owner since acquiring the device about five years ago, and using it to conduct business.

“Before, I would waste a lot of time trying to get ingredients from the market. By the time I got ready to start preparing food for sale, it would be so late – and I ended up losing a lot of customers,” she told IPS.

“With a cell phone all I have to do is call my suppliers, who will deliver the ingredients within no time. Because of the phone, I am always on time in preparing meals for customers. My business has expanded to the point that I have opened a cafeteria. All I know now is profit.”

And, she’s not the only one. A 2006 study conducted in Nairobi to explore the effect mobile phones had on small businesses owned by women indicates that most concerns benefited from use of the devices. The report was commissioned by the International Development Research Centre, which is funded by the Canadian government.

Most women interviewed said phone features such as calendars and clocks “enhanced better planning of time and meetings”, allowing them “to handle business and family issues at the same time, maintain contact with customers, keep track of business while away, and make orders and ensure deliveries on time.”

Technology has also come to the aid of Bernedette Mushilla. Since the Nairobi-based sex therapist started marketing her practice through a web site two years ago, her clients have increased from 500 to over 2,000.

“I get so many calls from people who are seeking advice on relationships and sex matters, as opposed to previously, when I popularised my services by word of mouth. The internet has truly made a difference in my business,” Mushilla said in an interview with IPS.

The experiences of Malika and Mushilla typify how information and communication technologies (ICTs) can transform the lives of women in Kenya and elsewhere on the continent.

At present, however, the benefits of ICTs are largely restricted to towns and cities, as most rural areas lack the infrastructure, equipment and skills needed for communities to take full advantage of these technologies.

Government figures indicate that only 20 percent of Kenya’s population of over 30 million has access to electricity; the majority of those who do without live in outlying regions.

In addition, a high illiteracy rate among women has prevented many from using ICTs to improve business efficiency and productivity. According to United Nations statistics, more than 40 percent of women in Africa have no access to basic education – with most who lack schooling based in rural areas.

Given that official estimates put over 70 percent of the Kenyan population in far-flung regions, this rural-urban digital divide is a source of some concern.

“We will not achieve meaningful development for as long as we have women in the rural areas still unable to use ICTs, which can greatly improve their well being,” says Constantine Abuya, executive director of the African Centre for Women, Information and Communications Technology, based in Nairobi.

Various initiatives to help Africa’s rural women join the information age are emerging.

A case in point is the new Regional Information Communication Technology Support Programme (RICTSP), organised by the Inter Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which will allow women entrepreneurs in rural parts to get grants for boosting their businesses, and advise them on ICTs.

“We are giving them grants because we know that it is difficult for these women to get financing. We know they have low skill levels in ICTs,” Bessie Nyirenda, head of the RICTSP, told IPS. “Because radio is widely used in these areas, advice on how to do business will be given through this medium.”

Last week (Feb. 7-8), a two-day workshop for business women’s associations from Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan was convened by IGAD: a regional body comprising Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. The event, held in Nairobi, mapped out ways of promoting ICT use by women in outlying regions.

Delegates from all four countries represented at the workshop noted that, in addition to radio, the mobile phone had become a popular tool of communication in rural areas because of the drastic shortage of fixed lines there.

The same problem occurs in Kenya, where only 14,285 of the country’s 293,364 fixed lines are rural connections, according to the Communications Commission of Kenya’s (CCK) annual report of 2005/2006.

This situation has seen impressive growth in subscriptions to the country’s two mobile operators. Safaricom and Celtel now have about 6.5 million subscribers, says the CCK report.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
GENEVA, Jan 3 2007 (IPS)

Developing countries led by India, China, Brazil are now taking the lead in setting global standards in the rapidly transforming telecommunications sector due to convergence of hitherto separate communications and entertainment services, says Hamadoun Toure, the new secretary general of the Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union.

“The standardisation in the telecom sector used to be dominated by a rich boys club because only the industrialised countries were setting standards,” he told IPS in an interview, suggesting that there is a major change now.

“The good news is that developing countries like India, China, Brazil are now in the forefront of setting standards at ITU, which augurs well for the world, ” Toure said.

African countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, and Mali among others are also participating closely in deciding telecom standards at a time when the industry is subjected to breathtaking changes, he said.

Toure, who is the first candidate from sub-Saharan Africa to lead the ITU at a time when “convergence” has become the order of the day, says he is not worried by the profusion of new technologies or the rapid shake-out in telecom companies. Telecom analysts are not sure whether ITU will be able to play its traditional standard-setting and regulatory role in a turbulent technology-driven environment.

Due to convergence of what are called Internet Protocol networks, companies that used to provide different services – telephone operators, Internet service providers and cable TV firms – are all able to bundle these services from one source.

In the wake of new mode of communications like telegraph and then telephone, ITU was set up in 1865. Fixed telephone lines continued to rule the roost for well over a century, with public telephone monopolies calling the shots in a large majority of countries.

The rapid disappearance of the public monopolies coupled with the emergence of a few private companies such as AT&T in the United States, Vodafone, France Telecom, BT and Hutchison Whampoa are creating an unusual situation at the ITU where governments had so far set standards.

ITU went through a difficult period following the changes, especially the crash of telecom companies in 2001. Its mandate for setting global standards, distributing radio-frequency bandwidth, and settling accounting rates between countries came under intense pressure. Switzerland where ITU is headquartered decided to reduce its contribution on the ground that the multilateral body does not have much role to play in the coming days.

The new secretary general says he is ready to prove that ITU can “help and strengthen the convergence”, maintaining that it is his task is to “ensure that there is a good marriage in these technologies and a good level playing field for all the members and all the players.”

He says in a world awash with technologies like voice over Internet protocol (VOIP), which are breaking all the barriers, there is greater need for standards. Having come from the private sector, he looks positively to the latest mergers and acquisitions in the global telecom services industry.

Last week, AT&T caused a major upheaval in the U.S. telecom services industry when it took over BellSouth Corp in the largest telecommunications takeover in U.S. history. Similarly, Vodafone is upping the scales for buying the Hutchison Essar, India’s fourth largest mobile phone operator.

“It is good for telecommunications because all our constituencies – governments, industry, and consumers – are doing well and surely, the consumer will definitely benefit from all these mergers and takeovers,” Toure argued.

But the telecom historians have already announced that fixed telephones that was the mainstay of the ITU all these years will disappear soon. “When you are talking about changes, I must emphasise that ITU is adapting to changes from telegrams to telephone and now convergence between digital and telecommunication technologies.”

Besides, “it took 100 years for telephony to spread to one billion people and now it took 25 years to spread to an additional billion of new subscribers,” said Toure, who came from one of Africa’s poorest countries, Mali.

Toure says the telecom sector in Africa which is currently experiencing a digital divide will grow rapidly over the next five to ten years because of new technologies.

Nigeria is experiencing a 400 percent growth in the mobile telephones, followed by South Africa and Gabon. The ICTs (Information and Communications Technologies) are helping to transform many activities in Africa.

Toure’s biggest tasks are bridging the telecoms and digital divide, especially on his own continent, management of the distribution of bandwidth, or what is called the frequency spectrum management to ensure there are no unseemly conflicts between countries in placing transmitters that can jam communications in far-flung places, and more importantly managing global cyber-security.

Toure reckons cyber-security is his principal goal, because the ITU was given that role by the Information Summit in 2005. “We have to avoid cyber-war which will be catastrophic and worse than a worldwide tsunami,” he warned, underscoring the need for an international framework and standards in the ICT-driven world.

Toure said he will set examples of how to arrive at appropriate global standards in the telecom sector, and strengthen national, regional, and international regulation.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
NEW YORK, Jan 12 2006 (IPS)

U.S. activists are heading to the Sixth World Social Forum (WSF) with a renewed sense of optimism and international solidarity, despite Washington’s animosity toward the hemisphere’s growing slate of leftist governments.

Up to 100,000 visitors are expected in Caracas, Venezuela from Jan. 24-29, while parallel forums will take place in Bamako, Mali from Jan. 19-23, and Karachi, Pakistan in March.

The WSF was founded in 2001 to counter the unabashedly neo-liberal agenda promoted at gatherings like the World Economic Forum, held annually in Davos, Switzerland. It has grown larger every year since, drawing thousands of trade unionists, anti-debt campaigners, environmental and fair trade activists, peasants’ groups and others representing economic and social justice movements around the world.

Although the WSF has a relatively low profile in the United States, groups that attended in the past are sending more people this time around, and others are planning their maiden voyage to the conference.

Global Exchange, an international human rights group headquartered in San Francisco, California, is sending 200 people – nearly four times the number it sent to the WSF gathering in Porto Alegre, Brazil last year.

“The main purpose of the trip is to educate people to look deeper into the realities of Venezuela, so they can come back and fight the media blitz and put pressure on the government,” said Zach Hurwitz, the “South America Reality Tours” coordinator for Global Exchange.

Venezuela’s leftist President Hugo Chavez has been painted by both Washington and the mainstream media here as a demagogue and a threat to regional stability, with the George W. Bush administration going so far as to support a failed coup against the government in 2002.

His populist “Bolivarian Revolution” has rejected the model of corporate-led globalisation, instead promoting grassroots political participation, poverty alleviation and economic self-sufficiency.

The Global Exchange delegations will meet with representatives from all walks of Venezuela’s political and economic life, including the Afro-Venezuelan Network, women’s and indigenous groups, agricultural cooperatives, grassroots media and student activists. They also plan to speak with officials involved in projects like the Cuban doctors’ programme and Mision Habitat, which addresses urban housing issues.

The groups are focusing on four themes: gender, cultural diversity and new political voices; people’s development and the Venezuelan social contract; youth leadership; and oil, natural resources and sustainability.

“A lot of people have asked what Venezuela is going to do when the oil runs out in the next 50 to 75 years, so we’re looking at what is being done to create a forward-thinking, green economy – although the first step is to cut down on consumption of oil in this country,” Hurwitz told IPS.

This time last year, the world was grieving for the victims of the catastrophic Indian Ocean tsunamis, and Bush had just won re-election, to the dismay of anti-war activists here and many people abroad who questioned the U.S.-led “war on terror”.

But now, the outlook has changed, Hurwitz and other U.S. activists say.

“There is a huge sense of optimism about the possibility for change in the United States,” he noted. “Many things have happened over the past year that worked in favour of this optimism, like the incredibly low support for the Iraq war, the exposure of corruption in Congress, and the torture cases and other scandals in the administration.”

“The Venezuelans want to be friends with people in the United States,” Hurwitz added, noting that Citgo, a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., the state-owned oil company, has donated or substantially discounted some eight million gallons of heating oil for poor communities and homeless shelters in several U.S. states.

“More and more people are catching on to the idea that the Bush administration is radically aggressive based on self-interest, while Venezuela is looking out for the welfare of people around the world,” he said.

Media activism, and particularly the growth of community radio, is the focus of the Prometheus Radio Project delegation, which is sending 15 people from across the United States to visit local television and radio stations, as well as the state communications ministry.

The members of the Prometheus collective, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, started out as “pirate” broadcasters. When their equipment was seized by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, they vowed to open 10 new stations for every one that was shut down.

The group has successfully lobbied for low-power, non-commercial broadcasting here, and has also shared its technical expertise with communities in Nepal, Colombia, Guatemala and Tanzania to set up their own local radio projects.

“In the U.S., there is a fairly large alternative media movement, including people that work inside the (Washington) Beltway on media reform, but it tends to be quite specialised, as opposed to a broad social movement,” said Pete Tridish of Prometheus.

“We’ve observed that movements to reform the media and change the information infrastructure of society (in other countries) tend to be much more tightly connected to large grassroots movements for social change, and we’re hoping to learn about the connections between those movements in a context that is different from the U.S,” he told IPS.

“We’re particularly interested in the case of Venezuela, where the corporate media was highly complicit in the attempted coup against the democratically-elected president, Hugo Chavez.”

Other groups involved with the Prometheus delegation include Third World Majority, Reform the Media, the New Mexico Media Literacy Project, Pacifica’s Free Speech Radio News, Casa Guatemala and the Consumers Union.

“I see the WSF as a very hopeful development,” Tridish concluded. “I don’t believe that American progressives by themselves are going to steer a new course. Countries (and activists) around the world have to band together.”

While most U.S. delegates appear to be headed for Venezuela, some have also been invited to Bamako, Mali, where 35,000 activists from the region and abroad are expected.

John Catalinotto, who attended previous WSF meetings, hopes to speak about issues ranging from opposition to the Iraq war, to the race and class fault lines exposed by Hurricane Katrina, the attack on workers’ pensions illustrated by the recent Transit Workers Union strike that paralysed New York City’s subway system, and the challenges faced by immigrants here.

“People from Africa, Asia and other regions may not know the details of the struggles that have taken place, or even that there is a real class struggle here,” said Catalinotto, who will be representing the New York-based International Action Centre, a lead organiser of anti-war actions in the United States.

“At the WSF, there are different forces, and some would like to keep it as a talkfest,” he added, “while others want to see it move in the direction of ‘let’s do something against neo-liberalism, against the war,’ etc.”

“I hope we will see more international days of action this year,” he said.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TUNIS, Nov 19 2005 (IPS)

This little green computer runs without electricity or batteries, and it costs 100 dollars. And it could do more than all thhe speeches made at the World Summit on the Information Society to help narrow that ‘digital divide’.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan unveiled a prototype of the laptop meant for poor children of the world at a high-profile media extravaganza. The green laptop holds the key to the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative introduced by Annan and the developer of the laptop, Prof. Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Negroponte and the Media Lab at MIT see this as a tool that will change the world.

The laptop does need to be developed some more. Fiddling with the prototype, Annan may inadvertently have shown up some of the concerns that critics have with the machine. Annan easily broke the wind-up crank which powers the computer.

But further development is proceeding. The laptops are to be financed mainly through domestic resources and donors, at no cost to the recipients themselves. They would be distributed through education ministries using established textbook channels, Annan said.

TerraViva/IPS spoke with Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of the Harvard-based Global Voices about the OLPC programme and the prototype laptop unveiled here. Global Voices is a project of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, is a non-profit global citizens’ media project. It is a place where people can go to read Internet logs or ‘blogs’ posted by people all over the world – China, Bangladesh, Haiti, Senegal, Tunisia to name a few – on a variety of topics.

OLPC is currently in discussions with five countries – Brazil, China, Thailand, Egypt and South Africa – to distribute up to 15 million test systems to children. In addition, the state of Massachusetts is working with MIT on a plan to distribute the laptops to its schoolchildren.

Q: People in developing countries usually have a hard time finding money to feed their families, how will they afford to maintain this 100-dollar laptop? A: Negroponte’s answer is that ‘people tend to take care of what they own.’ He gives the example that ‘people don’t wash rental cars’. There is much more to it than that. Kofi was fiddling with it and broke the hand crank yesterday. Their hope is for the children themselves to start repair clinics as they become more familiar with the machines.

Q: Will the manufacturers of the machines accept the computers back for repairs? A: Sending the computers back is a good idea. For that though, local collection points would be required. Many more questions need to be asked. Negroponte is a ‘techie’. He has done a great job getting the dialogue started.

Q: What about disposal of the machines which will have a five-year shelf life at best? A: All computer batteries have heavy metals, etc. Joris Komen, of School Net, a non-profit provider of Internet service, hardware and training to Namibia’s schools is very concerned about this. ‘How do we make sure that they don’t end up in landfills and become toxic waste?’ is one of the questions that needs to be answered before these computers start going out. We need more questions and research on the sustainability of this computer.

Q: Given that currently the global production of laptops is under 50 million, can the 100 dollar laptops be built and shipped in the quantities that Negroponte is promising – 100 million to 150 million every year by 2007?

A: The computers have to be manufactured in those kinds of numbers if the price point of 100 dollars is to be achieved. It costs as much to make one microchip as to make one million microchips. The cost lies in setting up the manufacturing infrastructure. The more they build, the cheaper they can make the computer. This computer will change the global laptop market because of the scale of its production.

Q: Where will the computers be built? A: They have to be built by huge manufacturing companies. They will probably be built in China. Another question that remains unanswered is whether local manufacturers in the target countries for the laptop will be allowed licences to set up companies to build them.

Q: Many experts I have spoken to at the WSIS have complained that dumping of low-grade technology in the developing world effectively widens the ‘digital divide’ by keeping it a step behind. Should the West produce a 100-dollar laptops for its own consumption first that can then filter down to the developing world so that we will all be on the same page? A: This is not a low-quality laptop. I could use a wind-up book reader myself. It’s not dumping.

Q: In many regions of the world – for instance, sub-Saharan Africa – people are dying of preventable diseases and starvation. Most of them children. Might something like drinking water be a priority in these regions? Or vaccinations? A: Of course. This is a common concern. But, no one is talking about either/or: HIV drugs or the computer; water or the computer; clothes or the computer. This is a basic education project. Negroponte is hoping to get the price point down to that of a child’s basic complement of school textbooks. The laptop is a critical ‘and’ not a critical ‘or’.

Excerpt:

By Marty Logan
TUNIS, Nov 19 2005 (IPS)

You cannot resist the Internet, so you might as well bathe in its tidal wave-like wash over the world’s cultures, says the director of the centuries old Alexandria Library in Egypt.

“The idea that a lot of people will lose their identities I think is wrong. This in fact is going to produce wonderful results. People in different cultures will continue to express themselves and will be enriched by exposure to different cultures,” Ismail Seragelden, director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, told a meeting on the Information Age on Friday.

“It’s an inevitable process, so why complain? It’s great. I think artists are going to continue to reinterpret their cultures. What we need to do is work together to ensure access to all people,” added Seragelden at a discussion titled Cultural Memory and Diversity.

More than 18,000 people from government, civil society and international bodies met in the capital Tunisia this week for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the second part of a United Nations initiative to discuss how to ensure that all the world’s people can have access to the Internet and other information and communications technologies (ICTs).

Many in the international community, from isolated communities of indigenous peoples with just a few hundred members, to some of the world’s largest non-English speaking countries, have warned that the stunning growth of the English-dominated ‘Net’ threatens their unique way of life.

About one billion people now use the Internet, almost 50 percent of them in English, although that proportion is falling steadily.

“The history of how cultures met one another shows that the most common outcome was killing…the next step was conquer and assimilate. This is ongoing today. We also have the (alternative) idea of a multicultural society but if you see what’s happening in France you can see that one culture doesn’t care much about what happens in the other,” said Peter Rantasa, executive director of the World Culture Forum Alliance.

It is also important to note that heritage is not memory, he added. The former is what remains after its creators have disappeared; the latter is linked to a living culture. But the problem today is that “every politician understands that cultural heritage is a good thing because if you put it in a brochure, then tourists will come.”

In October, the United Nations cultural body adopted an international treaty to protect cultural diversity after more than three years of sometimes testy debate, usually pitting the United States against the rest of the nations.

Article 1 of The Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions reaffirms the sovereign right of states to create cultural policies “to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions” and “to create the conditions for cultures to flourish and to freely interact in a mutually beneficial manner.”

The treaty was championed by countries such as Japan, India, Brazil and Mexico, which argued that the books, films and other cultural goods that they produce are not simply merchandise but unique and rich expressions of identity.

Washington’s main argument was that if states erect roadblocks to free trade in such cultural products, they are breaking the rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). U.S. officials have been pushing developing countries to sign bilateral trade agreements in which they give up their rights to preserve and support their own cultural industries, including film, television and music.

One Internet-based endeavour appears to be both preserving and generating knowledge. ‘Wikipedia’ already contains more information than any traditional encyclopedia, says Jimmy Wales, founder and director of the Wikimedia Foundation. “For a while people were saying ‘why do we need an encyclopedia any more when we have Google’?” he told Friday’s discussion forum.

Because the digital encyclopedia contains a copy of every draft of every article written, “what will really interest me is to see how our views of someone like Julius Caesar change over time,” said Wales.

Volunteers write Wikipedia’s articles in nearly 200 languages and have total control over their work, he added; it does not belong to a private company. “It empowers our volunteers to know the knowledge belongs to all mankind,” added the founder.

And because that knowledge travels to the encyclopedia’s site via computers scattered throughout the world, “if all our servers are lost in a fire that’s fine because we could gather all the information in a week or so.”

With their small isolated populations, aboriginal peoples might be most at risk of cultural decimation in the Information Age. But one of the priorities of the WSIS indigenous caucus is an aboriginal owned and operated portal that would host websites by and about native people from all of the world’s regions.

“We want to use the information society and we want to be flashy as well,” said the U.S. indigenous caucus co-chair Kenneth Deer at a news conference on Thursday. “I’m sure a lot of you watched the old movies with cowboys and Indians where the Indians were the bad guys – we have to change that (stereotype) and we can use ICTs to do that.”

Deer’s Mohawk community in Canada’s Quebec province has already made big steps in that direction, taking over local cable TV service from the government and developing a community station to generate its own programmes. Its long-serving community radio station now broadcasts on the Internet’s World Wide Web.

Gerfried Stocker, director of the Ars Electronica cultural institute in Austria, cautioned the audience to not be obsessed with trying to protect culture. “I think it’s kind of a losing game…by this fury of preservation we forget how to create. We don’t ask what are the circumstances we need to enable the new generation to produce diverse culture instead of just replicating the culture produced by the media industry.”

Today “diversity is the name of the game,” declared Derrick De Kerckhove, director of the McLuhan programme at the University of Toronto. “We are now appropriating the globe for our own personal culture. We put it in our pocket with our mobile phones.”

Excerpt:

By Patricia Grogg
TUNIS, Nov 18 2005 (IPS)

While the transnational corporations showed off the latest in information and communication technologies (ICTs) at the world summit that ended Friday in Tunis, reporters from alternative radio stations remained loyal to their old tape recorders and microphones.

“When we tried to develop, we were told that putting our radio station on-line would cost a million dollars and that we would need super-advanced technologies,” said María Suárez Toro, co-director of Feminist International Radio, a station that already reaches beyond the borders of Costa Rica thanks to their short-wave transmitters.

But it did not take them long to come up with the solution for getting on-line. “We were the engineers and technicians of our short-wave station, so we decided to use all of the old-fashioned technology from our radio station, with an umbilical cord to the computer,” she told IPS.

The equipment Suárez uses in her news coverage includes a mixer, a tape recorder, a microphone and a computer connected to the Internet. A recent study showed that her station’s audience has expanded to 145 countries in the last five years.

“The sound files that we place on the Internet are downloaded by women from community radio stations and played on their stations. Other professionals take note of our live broadcasts and we are a direct source of events and news,” she said.

The station broadcasts in Spanish and English, which according to Suárez has the advantage of connecting women’s groups in Latin America with women from Asia, Africa, Europe, the United States and Canada.

“We believe that the oral expression of women is where our biggest strength lies. We are radio lovers and decided to invent radio on the Internet,” added the women’s rights activist.

That was one of the issues that drew special attention from the civil society groups represented in the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held Wednesday through Friday in the Tunisian capital, with the participation of more than 9,000 representatives from 597 non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

An estimated 17,000 people in all took part in the conference, which was held with the aim of narrowing the digital gap between rich and poor countries, and within nations.

The meeting included a large number of activities organised by NGOs. However, some of the civil society events were banned by the host country.

Suárez said that while she was broadcasting live coverage of the seminar “Expression Under Repression”, organised by the Dutch NGO Hivos, Tunisian authorities warned that “propaganda” could not be distributed in the conference rooms.

“While that was going on, we were broadcasting live coverage of the seminar with our little old equipment, right from there, to the entire world.”

The seminar organised by Hivos, a Dutch-based NGO devoted to development themes, included presentations about the use of “blogs” (web logs) in Zimbabwe, Iran and China as an alternative means of providing people with access to information through the Internet.

“When we talk about alternative and community-based communication it means being able to talk about what is happening at the summit with a different focus from the large mainstream media, and also, to talk about what they are not telling us,” Inés Farina of the Pulsar news agency told IPS.

Pulsar defines itself as “the voice of the voiceless,” said Farina. It is an initiative of the Latin American and Caribbean branch of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC-ALC), and is aimed at democratising communications through direct contact between journalists and civil society sources.

The agency has offices in Uruguay, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, and shares agreements with national and regional networks as a means of accessing and disseminating first-hand information on what is happening in the countries of the region.

Its services are provided by e-mail free of charge. “The only thing we ask for is that they credit us,” explained Farina.

She said that Pulsar aimed to cover the summit in Tunis from a critical viewpoint, with a special focus on issues related to civil society and community radio.

Farina said that around 400 community radio stations in Latin America are members of AMARC-ALC.

Numerous alternative media organisations from Latin America attended the WSIS, primarily to learn about the possibilities offered by ICTs for the work they carry out.

“We are in the process of becoming a multimedia organisation. We already produce a written publication, and will begin to broadcast a radio programme in 2006,” said Rosalinda Hernández, co-editor of the Guatemalan feminist publication La Cuerda. Founded in 1998, it has a monthly print run of 20,000 copies.

Hernández reported that the next plans for La Cuerda involve the production of a video version, which will allow the publication to reach every corner of the country, where illiteracy rates are high.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TUNIS, Nov 18 2005 (IPS)

Despite failing to get its alternative citizens summit off the ground, and in the face of disappointment over some decisions at the World Summit on the Information Society, and repression by the Tunisian government, civil society groups joined officials and businessmen Friday in celebrating the outcome of the meeting.

“After four years of difficult and passionate discussions, we can say the summit has been an historical process. We have not been just silent observers but active actors. We have become a partner in the negotiation process,” said Renata Bloem from the Conference of NGOs (Congo) that works mostly around UN centres.

The civil society committee failed to issue its own final declaration in time for the summit’s closure due to a worldwide debate; a draft resolution circulated privately makes the ritual call to governments to “move from declarations and commitments into action.” The document will be finalised in two weeks, organisers said.

The draft declaration summarises the civil society vision on financing of digital infrastructures and Internet governance, and addresses also global governance, participation, and human rights issues, as well as gender equality, health, access to knowledge and public domain, media and cultural diversity.

For civil society it is now time to evaluate what was achieved and to look beyond these achievements. The declaration will include a section on “our Tunis Commitment”, the civil society’s reply to the official commitment.

“Now it seems everybody is happy because everybody has something to bring home. We do not know yet whether or not this is true. We will only know when we see the implementation (of the WSIS objectives),” Jeannette Hoffman from the Internet governance working group said.

“Do not believe this is over and that the little we have achieved is granted. There will be an immediate backlash after the summit, and governments will just return to other issues. We have to keep pressure on them,” said Bertrand de la Chapelle, convenor of the civil society follow-up working group.

The most urgent challenge is how civil society will get involved in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) set up by governments in a final negotiation round. “We think the IGF should have at least 200 members and be as inclusive as possible. But it is not clear how it will work,” Hoffman said.

In the four-year WSIS process, about 280 people participated in the civil society discussion on Internet governance conducted through open mailing lists. The proposal for an IGF came from civil society..

“This is perhaps the best side-effect of the summit, where everybody was involved in Internet governance. We want to keep the lists open and create a new working group to produce interventions for the forum,” Hoffman said.

“We are fairly optimistic on the forum being created but less optimistic on the willingness to include civil society. The financing is also unclear, because no budget has been allocated to set it up,” Hoffman said.

But much more must be done on the financial mechanisms to overcome the digital divide, perhaps the issue that created the most discontent within civil society groups. It was also the area where civil society was less active.

“Rich countries do not believe any more funds are needed. The Digital Solidarity Fund has been left to voluntary contribution, from local authorities and it is not supported by Western countries,” Chantal Peyer from the Swiss organisation Bread for All, said.

“They rely still on the private sector and on public-private partnership. We believe financing is a matter for public policy,” Peyer said. “New technologies should not compete with other development priorities.”

“The WSIS was not used to develop an innovative public policy approach. Instead it was the restatement of the existing paradigm,” Sean O’Siochru from the London-based group Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) said.

Civil society has first to make sure governments will keep the few promises made. Summit issues “are not going to be a priority for government in the next months. For civil society this is a challenge but also a space for interventions,” O’Siochru said.

The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) commission on science and technology for development has been entrusted with coordinating the summit follow-up. It is still not clear that civil society will be able to take part in this process.

“The follow-up to the summit has been handed over to a commission on science and technology. This is a way to narrow down the debate to a technological perspective, while the information society is mainly about society,” Parminder Jeet Singh from the Indian NGO IT for Change said.

“Governments have accepted ‘multi-stakeholderism’ (the participation of all actors in decision-making) in the texts but not in practices,” De la Chapelle said. “Governments should have adopted a commission for the information society with a full multi-stakeholder format to handle supervision of follow-up.”

He called for small teams to be formed to actively engage international organisations involved in the implementation of the WSIS objectives. “We have an incredibly strong opportunity to shape the implementation phase. We have to be there and monitor what the governments will do,” De la Chapelle said.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TUNIS, Nov 18 2005 (IPS)

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) concluded Friday night with claims of success by the United Nations, governments and the private sector, but civil society refused to wholeheartedly embrace its outcome.

“Success or failure is too strong to characterise the summit,” Anriette Esterhuysen, executive director of the civil society group Association for Progressive Communications told TerraViva-IPS. “Let’s say the summit has been valuable. The impact is yet to be seen.”

Civil society achieved a breakthrough, she said, by gaining recognition as a “stakeholder” in the Forum on Internet Governance along with governments, the private sector and international organisations. But in the face of unyielding opposition from the United States, it failed in efforts to wrest control of Internet management. A Tunis Commitment at the closure of the summit had participants pledging “to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented information society” so that “people everywhere can create access, utilise and share information and knowledge.” The Commitment also stressed that “freedom of expression and the free flow of information, ideas and knowledge, are essential for the information society and development.”

“Results are very positive and balanced,” Sarbuland Khan of the UN, coordinator of the task force on information communication and technology, told TerraViva-IPS. “There is now a clear understanding that such issues cannot be solved alone, but only through alliances.”

Civil society groups said in a joint statement that the proposed forum includes them but lacks detail and has a lifespan of only five years, subject to extension. It is more known for what it cannot do rather than what it can: it has no oversight or management role.

Also under attack by civil society is the lack of any new mechanism for financing. There is a fund for Internet development, but participation in it is voluntary and there is uncertainty about any donors apart from France.

Another civil society demand is the establishment of an independent commission “to review national and international ICT regulations and practices compliant with human rights standards.”

If civil society did not get its way at the summit, the private sector appears to have done so. Big business played a role in preventing moves to place Internet management under the control of a multilateral unit. Its goods and gadgets dominated exhibitions, and contacts were made that are sure to bring additional business in due time.

As the summit concluded, the prevailing feeling is that the private sector, shut out of summits and other major inter-governmental meetings until a few years ago, is on the march to increased influence in global affairs beyond just business. It had strong and coordinated representation through the International Chamber of Commerce and other well-funded organisations, while civil society organisations lacked any unified structure.

At the same time, the private sector is also showing a more caring attitude, as multinationals, once under suspicion by the development community, now go after a slew of partnerships with governments, the United Nations and NGOs in the developing world.

“There is a strong thirst for involvement in development,” says the UN’s Khan, who spent time with executives of Siemens, Microsoft and others during the three-day summit.

“Finally, there is full and accepted realisation that the private sector should participate in development,” says Gora Datta, president of the U.S. software company Cal2Cal. He adds that it is also good for business to be able to reach much of the world’s population in emerging markets.

Gadgetry outshone the participants. There was what could be called a ‘machine of the summit’, a simple 100 dollar laptop. It is powered by a wind-up crank and consumes very little energy. It was developed by Prof Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At the unveiling of the so-called Green Machine, Negroponte said millions could be sold in the developing world within a year. He told the summit that several thousands would be produced this year, and more than 100 million by the end of 2007. Brazil, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria are candidates to receive the first wave of laptops starting in February or March, and each will buy at least one million units.

Security was tight at the summit, with numerous checkpoints around the conference site on the shore of the capital. Although there were no major public demonstrations, protests were directed at the Tunisian government by civil society members, the media and even the United States government over freedom of expression and human rights issues.

As the summit was ending, Steve Buckley of the Internal Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), a coalition of 14 NGOs, issued an appeal to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for a formal investigation into the treatment of journalists by Tunisian authorities, including the reported stabbing of a French journalist, the denial of entry to Tunis of others and cases of harassment within the city.

The U.S. delegation, in a press note, expressed its “disappointment” over the lack of freedom of expression and assembly in Tunis.

The summit drew, by official estimates, over 18,000 people. Civil society members were the largest group with 5,864, followed by government with 5,782. The private sector was also strong with 3,981 members present and the media had 1,218 accredited representatives.

Of 44 heads of state or government present at the summit, most were from Africa – and only one from a developed nation, Switzerland. Swiss President Samuel Schmid was blunt with his open criticism of the Tunisian government over human rights issues, and his speech was censored by Tunisian television.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TUNIS, Nov 18 2005 (IPS)

Despite failing to get its alternative citizens summit off the ground, and in the face of disappointment over some decisions at the World Summit on the Information Society, and repression by the Tunisian government, civil society groups joined officials and businessmen Friday in celebrating the outcome of the meeting.

“After four years of difficult and passionate discussions, we can say the summit has been an historical process. We have not been just silent observers but active actors. We have become a partner in the negotiation process,” said Renata Bloem from the Conference of NGOs (Congo) that works mostly around UN centres.

The civil society committee failed to issue its own final declaration in time for the summit’s closure due to a worldwide debate; a draft resolution circulated privately makes the ritual call to governments to “move from declarations and commitments into action.” The document will be finalised in two weeks, organisers said.

The draft declaration summarises the civil society vision on financing of digital infrastructures and Internet governance, and addresses also global governance, participation, and human rights issues, as well as gender equality, health, access to knowledge and public domain, media and cultural diversity.

For civil society it is now time to evaluate what was achieved and to look beyond these achievements. The declaration will include a section on “our Tunis Commitment”, the civil society’s reply to the official commitment.

“Now it seems everybody is happy because everybody has something to bring home. We do not know yet whether or not this is true. We will only know when we see the implementation (of the WSIS objectives),” Jeannette Hoffman from the Internet governance working group said.

“Do not believe this is over and that the little we have achieved is granted. There will be an immediate backlash after the summit, and governments will just return to other issues. We have to keep pressure on them,” said Bertrand de la Chapelle, convenor of the civil society follow-up working group.

The most urgent challenge is how civil society will get involved in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) set up by governments in a final negotiation round. “We think the IGF should have at least 200 members and be as inclusive as possible. But it is not clear how it will work,” Hoffman said.

In the four-year WSIS process, about 280 people participated in the civil society discussion on Internet governance conducted through open mailing lists. The proposal for an IGF came from civil society.

“This is perhaps the best side-effect of the summit, where everybody was involved in Internet governance. We want to keep the lists open and create a new working group to produce interventions for the forum,” Hoffman said.

“We are fairly optimistic on the forum being created but less optimistic on the willingness to include civil society. The financing is also unclear, because no budget has been allocated to set it up,” Hoffman said.

But much more must be done on the financial mechanisms to overcome the digital divide, perhaps the issue that created the most discontent within civil society groups. It was also the area where civil society was less active.

“Rich countries do not believe any more funds are needed. The Digital Solidarity Fund has been left to voluntary contribution, from local authorities and it is not supported by Western countries,” Chantal Peyer from the Swiss organisation Bread for All, said.

“They rely still on the private sector and on public-private partnership. We believe financing is a matter for public policy,” Peyer said. “New technologies should not compete with other development priorities.”

“The WSIS was not used to develop an innovative public policy approach. Instead it was the restatement of the existing paradigm,” Sean O’Siochru from the London-based group Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) said.

Civil society has first to make sure governments will keep the few promises made. Summit issues “are not going to be a priority for government in the next months. For civil society this is a challenge but also a space for interventions,” O’Siochru said.

The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) commission on science and technology for development has been entrusted with coordinating the summit follow-up. It is still not clear that civil society will be able to take part in this process.

“The follow-up to the summit has been handed over to a commission on science and technology. This is a way to narrow down the debate to a technological perspective, while the information society is mainly about society,” Parminder Jeet Singh from the Indian NGO IT for Change said.

“Governments have accepted ‘multi-stakeholderism’ (the participation of all actors in decision-making) in the texts but not in practices,” De la Chapelle said. “Governments should have adopted a commission for the information society with a full multi- stakeholder format to handle supervision of follow-up.”

He called for small teams to be formed to actively engage international organisations involved in the implementation of the WSIS objectives. “We have an incredibly strong opportunity to shape the implementation phase. We have to be there and monitor what the governments will do,” De la Chapelle said.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TUNIS, Nov 18 2005 (IPS)

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) concluded Friday night with claims of success by the United Nations, governments and the private sector, but civil society refused to wholeheartedly embrace its outcome.

“Success or failure is too strong to characterise the summit,” Anriette Esterhuysen, executive director of the civil society group Association for Progressive Communications told TerraViva-IPS. “Let’s say the summit has been valuable. The impact is yet to be seen.”

Civil society achieved a breakthrough, she said, by gaining recognition as a “stakeholder” in the Forum on Internet Governance along with governments, the private sector and international organisations. But in the face of unyielding opposition from the United States, it failed in efforts to wrest control of Internet management.

A Tunis Commitment at the closure of the summit had participants pledging “to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented information society” so that “people everywhere can create access, utilise and share information and knowledge.” The Commitment also stressed that “freedom of expression and the free flow of information, ideas and knowledge, are essential for the information society and development.”

“Results are very positive and balanced,” Sarbuland Khan of the UN, coordinator of the task force on information communication and technology, told TerraViva-IPS. “There is now a clear understanding that such issues cannot be solved alone, but only through alliances.”

Civil society groups said in a joint statement that the proposed forum includes them but lacks detail and has a lifespan of only five years, subject to extension. It is more known for what it cannot do rather than what it can: it has no oversight or management role.

Also under attack by civil society is the lack of any new mechanism for financing. There is a fund for Internet development, but participation in it is voluntary and there is uncertainty about any donors apart from France.

Another civil society demand is the establishment of an independent commission “to review national and international ICT regulations and practices compliant with human rights standards.”

If civil society did not get its way at the summit, the private sector appears to have done so. Big business played a role in preventing moves to place Internet management under the control of a multilateral unit. Its goods and gadgets dominated exhibitions, and contacts were made that are sure to bring additional business in due time.

As the summit concluded, the prevailing feeling is that the private sector, shut out of summits and other major inter-governmental meetings until a few years ago, is on the march to increased influence in global affairs beyond just business. It had strong and coordinated representation through the International Chamber of Commerce and other well-funded organisations, while civil society organisations lacked any unified structure.

At the same time, the private sector is also showing a more caring attitude, as multinationals, once under suspicion by the development community, now go after a slew of partnerships with governments, the United Nations and NGOs in the developing world.

“There is a strong thirst for involvement in development,” says the UN’s Khan, who spent time with executives of Siemens, Microsoft and others during the three-day summit.

“Finally, there is full and accepted realisation that the private sector should participate in development,” says Gora Datta, president of the U.S. software company Cal2Cal. He adds that it is also good for business to be able to reach much of the world’s population in emerging markets.

Gadgetry outshone the participants. There was what could be called a ‘machine of the summit’, a simple 100 dollar laptop. It is powered by a wind-up crank and consumes very little energy. It was developed by Prof Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At the unveiling of the so-called Green Machine, Negroponte said millions could be sold in the developing world within a year. He told the summit that several thousands would be produced this year, and more than 100 million by the end of 2007. Brazil, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria are candidates to receive the first wave of laptops starting in February or March, and each will buy at least one million units.

Security was tight at the summit, with numerous checkpoints around the conference site on the shore of the capital. Although there were no major public demonstrations, protests were directed at the Tunisian government by civil society members, the media and even the United States government over freedom of expression and human rights issues.

As the summit was ending, Steve Buckley of the Internal Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), a coalition of 14 NGOs, issued an appeal to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for a formal investigation into the treatment of journalists by Tunisian authorities, including the reported stabbing of a French journalist, the denial of entry to Tunis of others and cases of harassment within the city.

The U.S. delegation, in a press note, expressed its “disappointment” over the lack of freedom of expression and assembly in Tunis.

The summit drew, by official estimates, over 18,000 people. Civil society members were the largest group with 5,864, followed by government with 5,782. The private sector was also strong with 3,981 members present and the media had 1,218 accredited representatives.

Of 44 heads of state or government present at the summit, most were from Africa – and only one from a developed nation, Switzerland. Swiss President Samuel Schmid was blunt with his open criticism of the Tunisian government over human rights issues, and his speech was censored by Tunisian television.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
ASUNCIÓN, Nov 18 2005 (IPS)

When Emilio Contrera, a small farmer in Paraguay who is nearly 80 years old, wants to phone his daughter in the capital, he must first overcome a number of hurdles.

He says it is getting more and more difficult for him to walk the two kilometers from his house to the telecentre run by Paraguay’s public telephone company, the Compañía Paraguaya de Comunicaciones (COPACO) in the town of Yegros, 280 km east of Asunción.

“There is almost never anyone attending the phone booth, and you have to wait for the employee to show up,” says Contrera. But he adds that he is “lucky” because one of the officials is his friend, and helps Contrera make the phone call whenever he sees the elderly farmer coming down the road.

In addition, the office is only open from 8:00 to 19:00. Outside of the office hours, more than 90 percent of the local residents remain incommunicado from the rest of the world, since they have neither fixed telephone lines nor access to mobile phones.

“There is no cell phone signal around here,” said the farmer.

As Contrera’s case illustrates, telephones are still a luxury item in this South American country.

The elderly farmer is one of the 5.64 million Paraguayans – 94 percent of the population – who have no fixed telephone line in their homes, and one of the 4.2 million – 70 percent of the population – who have no cell phone.

COPACO has a monopoly over basic telephony services, while four local companies, in partnership with transnational corporations, offer mobile phone services.

Telecommunications coverage is concentrated in the triangle comprised of Asunción and the eastern cities of Encarnación and Ciudad del Este.

Making information and communication technologies (ICTs) available to the poor and to remote communities was one of the central issues discussed at the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which took place Wednesday through Friday in the Tunisian capital.

In 1995, Paraguay’s telecommunications law established a “universal services fund” to expand ICTs to rural areas and low-income neighbourhoods.

The fund was created with the aim of subsidising the providers of public telecommunications services in areas where such subsidisation is justified, says article 97 of the telecoms law.

The National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL), a regulatory agency, is in charge of administering the fund, which is financed by a one percent tax on the net earnings of providers of telecoms services.

The subsidised efforts to expand services got underway in 1999, the manager of the universal services fund, Oscar Duarte, told IPS.

“Under the concept of subsidies for the companies implementing the projects, we supply the initial capital for the service they will provide, but they assume the risk that the activity will not be profitable,” he explained.

He pointed out, for instance, that newly created phone booths in rural areas might not bring profits to the subsidised firm.

Since 1999, CONATEL granted nearly 16 million dollars to 13 projects to install public phones in rural areas, provide 287 high schools with Internet connectivity, open community telecentres in the country’s 17 provinces, and create and expand the 911 emergency telephone service.

Two other projects have applied for subsidies of approximately one million dollars to expand the 911 service in Ciudad del Este and set up a remote video surveillance system in and around Asunción, Duarte added.

But the way the fund has been functioning has drawn suspicion. CONATEL was searched early this month by a prosecutor from the economic crimes unit to verify whether any of the companies that have received subsidies used them improperly.

A businessman in the telecoms industry who preferred not to give his name told IPS that there were some problems with the companies admitted to the subsidy programme by CONATEL, “which simply turned a blind eye.” He also maintained that a majority of the public tenders to grant subsidies “were rigged.”

“I don’t know if there was corruption,” said Daniel Gadea, the only computer technician in Paraguay currently certified by U.S. computer-maker Apple. “The only thing I can say is that the quality of our telecommunications and Internet services is pitiful,” he told IPS.

Although the law does not specify that Internet services are a state monopoly, CONATEL regulations prohibit private companies from connecting to the transoceanic fiber optic network through the Network Access Point (NAP) of the Americas in Miami, Florida.

“As long as CONATEL defends the interests of COPACO, no technology-related initiatives will prosper in this country,” complained the computer technician.

It was not until this year that private Internet service providers and COPACO reached an agreement for the state-run telephone company to provide wholesale broadband access to the companies, which will offer the service to their customers.

“This way, the extremely high prices paid (for local service) will never come down,” protested Gadea.

“The government isn’t doing a thing to develop any kind of technology,” complained the president of the Paraguayan Federation of Chambers of Information and Communications Technologies, Rodrigo Campos Cervera.

The businessman commented to IPS that the cost of access to the worldwide web would drop significantly if the Internet providers were allowed to obtain their own broadband fiber optic connection.

But to the contrary of what the private sector was hoping for, COPACO is getting ready to enter the retail market for Internet services, and plans to offer connection through Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) transmission technology, which allows high speed data transmission over normal telephone lines without the need to install a second line, for a fixed monthly fee.

Alfredo Moreira, the manager of COPACO’s broadband unit, told IPS that the system would be up and running by early next year.

In Gadea’s view, the new competition will prompt private companies to lower their rates.

But the Paraguayan Federation of Chambers of ICTs complains that it will amount to unfair competition.

COPACO will also join the mobile telephony business as a fifth operator in the market, and has begun to set up a system of services for rural areas, named Ruralcel.

Emilio Contrera, however, knows nothing about the telecoms market. “The only thing I want is to be able to talk on the telephone more often with my daughter, my granddaughter and my great-granddaughter. And for them to be able to call me sometimes too,” he says with resignation.

Excerpt:

By Marty Logan
TUNIS, Nov 18 2005 (IPS)

“People say, ‘what are you talking about: it’s just a computer, it’s just a telephone – how can there be gender issues over technology?’ There’s still no understanding of how things like computers get into institutions and are incorporated into existing male-dominated power structures,” says an Indian woman delegate here for a global meeting on making the so-called Information Age benefit all people.

What is crystal clear is that the ‘digital divide’ includes a wide gulf between how men and women participate in this new age. And that correcting the imbalance will not be as easy as installing more Internet lines or boosting the number of mobile phones.

‘Digital divide’ has become ubiquitous in describing gaps between how the world’s people own and use the Internet and other information and communications technologies (ICTs). Usually the term refers to the gap between rich and poor countries, but it can also mean fissures within countries, or between the sexes.

According to a set of principles issued after the first part of this global conference – the World Summit on the Information Society – in 2003, governments are working to make men and women equal players in the Info Age.

“We are committed to ensuring that the information society enables women’s empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society and in all decision-making processes. To this end, we should mainstream a gender equality perspective and use ICTs as a tool to that end,” they declared.

But the message was lost from the moment that only one woman appeared among a roster of men for the opening ceremony of WSIS part two here in the Tunisian capital, says activist Magaly Pazello. “The gender dimension has kind of been put on the backburner in the negotiations and documents of the summit. There is no explicit commitment that guarantees the rights of women,” Pazello from the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) told the main session of this gigantic gathering Thursday.

Women, she added on behalf of civil society’s gender caucus, “would like to participate at all levels of decision-making, including in the development of infrastructure, financing and the choice of technologies. We’d also like to participate in a debate on the ethics of technology itself and its application.”

Debates are needed because the issues are complex, emphasises a report released here Thursday. “Even in countries where access is no longer much of an issue and (the use of ICTs) is high, inequalities in actual use can hamper women’s development opportunities,” says ‘Women in the Information Society’ a chapter in a report ‘From the Digital Divide to Digital Opportunities’.

“We can say little about women’s equal and active participation in the information society just based on access. Access is a necessary but not sufficient condition to closing the gender digital divide,” adds the report, published by United Nations agencies and various partners, including Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

No doubt ICTs are important, “enabling women to overcome isolation and move towards increased opportunities”, but there is little statistical data to back up that qualitative evidence, adds the chapter.

Women are also slow to start using new technologies, it says. “This gender divide persists as we move to countries with more developed ‘info states’.” For example, in Taiwan in 2004, 93 women used the Internet for every 100 men but only 70 women accessed the Internet via mobile phones for every 100 men.

“While the gender gap has recently vanished in a few countries with high Internet penetration, such as Canada and the United States, this is not the case among other countries well known for their info states, such as Norway, Luxembourg and the UK,” says the document.

“At the same time we also see a number of countries with very low overall penetration that do not seem to experience a gender divide”, including Mongolia, the Philippines and Thailand, where more women than men use the Internet, it adds.

“Much remains to be done in order to understand better why gender gaps exist and why they matter,” the report says.

In a stuffy meeting room here so small that participants, including the translator, were forced to sit on the floor, a group of women concluded this week that ICTs have far to travel to live up to their potential.

For instance, the Internet has led to more sexual harassment and exploitation and “enables men to buy sex and exchange millions of images of women and children,” said Mavic Cabrera-Balleza from ISIS International Manila, a women’s communication group for the Asia-Pacific region.

Four years ago, 10 percent of sales made on the Internet were sex-related, she added.

Janice Brodman, director of the Centre for Innovative Technologies in the U.S.-based Education Development Centre says “ICTs have in fact continually eroded human rights for women and will continue to do so in the future if we don’t take steps now.”

Excerpt:

By Marty Logan
TUNIS, Nov 18 2005 (IPS)

The Swiss government has been at the centre of controversy here over host government Tunisia’s treatment of journalists and human rights activists prior to the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

Swiss President Samuel Schmid was blunt at Wednesday’s opening ceremony. “It is not acceptable…for the United Nations Organisation to continue to include among its members those states which imprison citizens for the sole reason that they have criticised their government or their authorities on the Internet or in the press,” he said.

“As far as I’m concerned, it goes without saying that here in Tunis – inside these walls as well as outside – everyone can express themselves freely. It is one of the conditions ‘sine qua non’ for the success of this international conference,” added Schmid, who did not receive an official welcome when he landed in Tunisia’s capital.

That diplomatic slight might have resulted from remarks by Swiss communications minister Moritz Leuenberger to a newspaper last week that human rights should be on the WSIS agenda.

The Tunisian ambassador in Bern reacted by sending a letter “regretting that the propagation of unfounded accusations and tendentious information had found an echo with a Swiss government minister.”

IPS spoke with Leuenberger at the WSIS late on Thursday.

Q: Why has your government been so outspoken about Tunisia’s human rights record?

A: It’s important to note that we haven’t just made declarations against the situation in Tunisia but against all countries that have violated human rights…this attitude of speaking up is not new for us: we have always done it…if you take part in a summit like this one, you must seize the occasion to change the situation.

Q: Would it not be possible to try to engage Tunisia, to not exclude them but to help shape their behaviour vis-à-vis human rights?

A: We haven’t condemned them, not at all. We noted the importance of freedom of expression. The hardening of our position came after Tunisia’s reaction (to Leuenberger’s interview)…Human rights are not black and white. There is certainly no country that has a perfectly clean record, not at all. We are also perfectly ready to be criticised and we are also ready to discuss.

Q: When you critique Tunisia, do you feel like you’re speaking on behalf of anyone else, civil society for example?

A: I don’t know if other bodies see us as a champion of human rights. It certainly wasn’t our goal to please any organisations. Our goal was to express our own convictions.

Q: Do you feel at all abandoned by other nations or international bodies?

A: Not at all, the contrary in fact. The applause yesterday when our president spoke (at the opening ceremony) was enormous.

Q: Is there any hope of a rapprochement with the Tunisian government?

A: There hasn’t been a rupture, not at all. I was welcomed here. And they are always welcome in Switzerland. Relations are good but it is necessary to discuss certain things.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TUNIS, Nov 17 2005 (IPS)

Heads of state issue eloquent policy statements at the gold-domed compound of the 176- nation summit. Vocal civil society groups and the best of academia are engaged in debates. They have the words, but the real action lies at a glittering pavilion where the latest gadgets and systems are exhibited by the likes of Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and Nokia.

“Business is the driving force behind the creation of an information society,” says Guy Sebban, secretary-general of the International Chamber of Commerce, and chairman of a network of business organisations. The groups formed part of a successful campaign that kept control of the Internet for a U.S.-registered company, dooming moves by civil society and developing nations to entrust management to a multilateral unit.

Nothing is officially on sale, but “there is a lot of marketing going on,” Murali Shanmvgavelan of Panos, a civil society group on media and communications told IPS. Another complaint by some members of civil society is that multinationals are pressing for privatisation that will attract foreign investment, but to the detriment of local business growth.

Amid concern whether the summit is also a ‘trade fair’, most private sector stands are staffed by ‘community affairs’ or ‘public sector’ managers. They speak mainly of the role of the private sector as a stakeholder, and its growing involvement in projects to help the developing world in the area of communications.

“I am selling success stories,” says Alain Clo of Sun Microsystems. He mainly deals with government representatives on e-government to help administrations improve public services such as declaration of births and tax payments. He says partnerships involve special consideration for the income of governments, and may also draw assistance from the International Telecommunication Union and the World Bank.

Microsoft has an elaborate stand under the slogan ‘Digital Inclusion’. “We don’t sell (at the summit),” says Juan Bossicard, Microsoft coordinator for community affairs for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “We make contact that may eventually lead to business.”

Bossicard says Microsoft is involved in extensive talks with non-governmental organisations on partnerships to bridge the ‘digital divide’ – the difference between the developed and the developing world in accessing information and communication technology (ICT). Its programmes aimed directly at the developing world include, he said, an operating system with an embedded training component and a local language programme.

Nokia is not selling either, although its latest is on display – clicking pictures of visitors and turning them into a badge. The local Nokia dealer, present at the stand, could arrange purchase, however.

There is a big display of mobile telephones and communication systems. The number of users reached 2 billion earlier this year with expectations that it will be 3 billion within five years, most of the new growth coming in the developing world.

Olivier Saint, managing director for Africa for Hewlett-Packard says business and development are two sides of the same coin. “Investors are not doing business only for charity,” he told IPS. “Business must be sustainable. And funds could be cycled to local communities.”

He expects strong growth in Africa, where ICT is expanding at 25 percent a year.

“Business has been involved in the work of the summit because it makes good business sense to be involved,” says the Global Information Infrastructure Commission, a confederation of chief executives and other managers from leading businesses. It says both the private sector and the society at large are in a “win-win” situation.

Some private sector representatives are now keen to become full participants in summit proceedings, including active involvement in drafting reports.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TUNIS, Nov 17 2005 (IPS)

With a solidarity visit to a group of Tunisian hunger strikers, non-governmental organisations continued their efforts Thursday to highlight Tunisia’s human rights record.

Representatives of the civil society organising committee at WSIS, the European Union, members of the European Parliament, and Iranian lawyer and Nobel peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi were among the group that visited the seven strikers, who are demanding the release of prisoners of conscience.

Some 200 people participated in the visit, which was closely watched by Tunisian security forces surrounding the building.

Leaders of the Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign expressed concern at a press conference later over the fate of Tunisian human rights campaigners who had used the staging of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) here to highlight their country’s human rights record.

CRIS campaigners are worried about the fate of these activists once the WSIS is over.

Sean O’Siochru of CRIS says the human rights situation in Tunisia “is not the worst” in the world, but stressed that since WSIS is being held here, authorities were expected to go the extra mile to ensure freedom of expression.

The Tunisian government does not recognise opposition human rights groups as legitimate. They have therefore not been given proper NGO status by the United Nations, and are banned from international meetings.

But that has not stopped them from throwing in their lot with foreign non-governmental organisations, and this week the Tunisian Human Rights League is playing host to a downsized Citizens’ Summit on the Information Society (CSIS).

A mini-CSIS was launched at the small and cramped downtown offices of the Tunisian Human Rights League Wednesday.

In a long and emotional session, scores of representatives from non-governmental organisations and some 150 foreign supporters attempted to cram themselves into the small room in a defiant bid to get their voices heard.

“The CSIS now exists in newspapers and televisions around the world, which are reporting on your struggle,” Steve Buckley told the gathering at the Tunisian Human Rights League. Buckley is from the Internal Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), a coalition of 14 organisations.

The launch should have been held Tuesday, but organisers found reservations for larger rooms in hotels across the city summarily cancelled. They blame government pressure.

“We declare open the Citizens’ Summit on the Information Society, to give those who do not have it in this country, the chance to speak,” Sidiki Kaba from the International Federation of Human Rights said.

The launch was virtually ignored by the thousands of foreign delegates, journalists and businesspeople who fill the Kram conference centre for the main summit, and also by the Tunisian security forces.

There is a heavy police presence at the centre. Plainclothes agents guard everything from the press centre at the conference site to the lifts and hotel staircases. These agents have been blamed for the beating up of local human rights activists, which pushed CSIS organisers into staging a protest Tuesday.

Hivos, a non-governmental group based in the Netherlands working on development projects held the first leg of a seminar on ‘Expression under Repression’ Thursday. “After an hour or so, a lot of guys in blue showed up at the seminar, asking questions in an intimidating manner,” Margrite van Doodewaard, of Hivos told IPS.

A high security official turned up to say that since the seminar was being held on Tunisian territory, the authorities had the right to cut the meeting short at any time. “Only the arrival of the Dutch ambassador and a number of Dutch and British officials saved the meeting,” van Doodewaard said.

The government of President Zine ben Abidine Ben Ali does not acknowledge the existence of prisoners of conscience.

Tunisia’s human rights record has been in the spotlight since the first phase of the WSIS held in Geneva in 2003, when non-governmental organisations objected to the United Nations’ decision to hold the second leg of the summit here.

Despite repeated assurances from Tunisian authorities about respecting freedom of expression and participation, the summit is taking place in a tense environment.

Ben Ali, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1987, presents himself as the champion of democratic change and economic development. He rules on the strength of tight political control mixed with widespread social programmes.

Amnesty International says the government exerts tight control over the media, including the Internet. Civil society leadership at the WSIS has already condemned the blocking of its website to non-conference access in Tunisia.

State media are reporting widely from the summit, but it appears that a sharp eye is being kept on the contents of that reporting. When Swiss President Samuel Schmid condemned countries that “harass or imprison their citizens because they criticise them”, the local television broadcast immediately switched to other views of the summit.

Most public offices, schools and universities have been closed to allow civil servants and students to follow the proceedings of the summit on live television.

“This summit is a missed opportunity for Tunisia to present a better image of the country as an open society where freedom of information is upheld,” Riccardo Noury from Amnesty told alternative radio agency Amisnet.

“Amnesty is pessimistic about the real will of foreign governments to put pressure on Tunisian authorities. We fear the heaviest consequences, when the WSIS is over, for those who tried to use the occasion of the summit to denounce the repression,” Noury said.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
SANTIAGO, Nov 16 2005 (IPS)

A school in the Chilean capital has decided to prohibit students from writing their assignments on computers. “The kids just download material from the Internet and hand it in without making any changes. They don’t even read it. Now they will have to write out their assignments by hand, which means they will have to take the time to read them,” teacher Josefina Arriagada told IPS.

The case of Jaime Eyzaguirre School, attended by middle-class and working-class children in the Santiago municipality of Recoleta, illustrates one of the many challenges facing the introduction of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) into the educational sector, particularly in view of the boom in Internet use since the 1990s.

“ICTs do not simply represent just another means or tool, but are shaking up the very foundations of learning processes and the place occupied by knowledge in contemporary society,” said Chilean educator Emilio Gautier, the coordinator of a research project based on case studies in eight Latin American countries.

The incorporation of ICTs in the educational sphere is one of the main themes to be addressed at the second and final phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which began Wednesday in Tunis.

The study coordinated by Gautier was organised in 2004 and published this year by the Regional Bureau for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). It addresses experiences in teacher training and the use of ICTs in education in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay and Peru.

“Teachers who are not familiar with the use of information and communication technologies are at a clear disadvantage in relation to their students. Technology is advancing at a far faster pace in daily life than in the schools, even in remote and impoverished areas where basic services are lacking,” commented OREALC director Ana Luiza Machado.

Unfortunately, she added, changes in the educational system have not kept up with the pace of innovations in ICTs.

Lucy Lagos, 45, a fourth-grade teacher at Santa Teresa Elementary School – a state-subsidised private school in the northern Santiago district of Quilicura – told IPS that her students use the Internet, “but outside of school, for example, to do the research assignments I give them as homework.”

At the school itself, Lagos explained, there is a laboratory with 20 computers for the students and another three computers for the teachers, but none of them are connected to the Internet.

This situation will soon change, however, when the school is incorporated into the Enlaces (Links) programme, a Ministry of Education initiative aimed at providing all of the country’s primary and secondary schools with access to ICTs.

Enlaces was launched in 1992, and now involves the participation of some 100,000 teachers throughout the country. The programme is one of the experiences addressed by the OREALC study in Chile, alongside university programmes for distance education and the training of primary school teachers in the use of these new technologies.

In Bolivia, the Ministry of Education has undertaken a programme for the ICT-supported management and administration of educational facilities, as well as an interactive radio-based learning project addressing the issue of health care.

Three initiatives were studied in Colombia: a university master’s degree programme in ICTs, the incorporation of ICTs in the teaching of mathematics, and a “virtual school” in the department (province) of Caldas, operated with the support of local coffee producers.

Maestr@s.com (from the Spanish word for teachers) is a project undertaken by the Ministry of Education in Ecuador, through which the provincial government of Pichincha (where the capital, Quito, is located) is promoting the incorporation of computers and the Internet in the school system, while providing specialised teacher training with the Edufuturo programme.

The OREALC study also takes a look at the experiences of the Diploma Programme in Distance Education in Mexico and the 21st-Century Educator Programme in Panama, which is funded by a private foundation.

In Paraguay, the Doctor Raúl Peña Higher Institute of Education is carrying out a pilot project for training teachers in the use of ICTs, with instruction provided in both Spanish and Guaraní, an indigenous language. Another bilingual programme, designed for schools in rural and indigenous communities, is called Ñañemoarandúke (Let’s Learn Together) and is aimed at teachers without university degrees.

The School Web project undertaken by the non-governmental organisation Paideia is yet another Paraguayan experience presented in the study.

As for Peru, the researchers looked at the Special Project for Distance Education at the Catholic University and the Huascarán Project, a Ministry of Education initiative that is also geared to distance education.

Gautier, the director of distance education at the private ARCIS (Arts and Social Sciences) University of Chile, stressed in his introductory comments on the research study that practically all of the Latin American experiences linking ICTs and education are carried out through partnerships that break down “the barriers between the public and the private.”

“In a number of them we see public agencies cooperating with private enterprises. We also see trade unions or social organisations working together with professional associations. In summary, there is a coordination of efforts among different actors,” he noted.

One of the most noteworthy examples, he added, was the maestr@s.com programme in Ecuador, which involves the Ministry of Education, the teachers union, the schools and private companies that provide the necessary equipment.

The study demonstrates that significant efforts are being made to adapt teacher training to the new educational needs of the information society, and that this requires a special emphasis on promoting equality of opportunities, in a region where access to the Internet both reflects and gives rise to social and economic inequities.

One major challenge is innovation, a concept intrinsically linked to ICTs, which in the field of education implies updating the design and execution of projects, promoting the production of teaching materials in different formats, and above all, fostering innovative teaching techniques.

Unlike Arriagada, the teacher who blames the Internet for the loss of the reading habit, Ana María Quezada, a 50-year-old public primary school teacher in the west Santiago municipality of Maipú, uses CD-ROM computer programmes in her classes.

“My students work with the Abracadabra programme to learn to speak (well) and write, and they also work with math programmes. The assignments that they used to write out by hand, they now do on the computer,” Quezada, who has been a teacher for 28 years, told IPS.

For the classes held in the school’s computer lab, there is a computer for every two students. “Right now there are a lot of girls and boys who know how to use computers despite the fact that many of them don’t have computers at home. I see this as a positive impact,” she said.

In the meantime, Lagos is clearly disappointed in the results of the Enlaces programme so far, since her school is still waiting for the teacher training and Internet connection that the initiative is supposed to provide.

“The only impact I have seen up until now is that they have installed these wonderful, lovely computer labs. The kids use educational games software, but they are merely games. There is no direct link between what they are doing on the computers and the curriculum for mathematics, sciences or language arts,” she remarked.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TUNIS, Nov 16 2005 (IPS)

It was not what they had set out to accomplish, but civil society groups gathered here to discuss Internet governance and development are vowing to make the best of the compromise deal that was struck.

The alliance of civil society and developing countries suffered a setback Tuesday in their quest to wrest control of Internet governance from the United States. Eleventh-hour negotiations produced a compromise document that maintains the status quo: Internet governance remains with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which answers to the U.S. government.

But putting a brave face on what in any other arena would be considered a defeat, some at least of civil society is trumpeting its new-found ‘voice’ in the critical issue of Internet governance. This voice will be heard through the Internet Governance Forum, a “multilateral, multi-stakeholder, democratic and transparent” grouping being established by the 173-nation World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

The forum will be free to discuss all Internet issues but will have “no oversight functions” and, above all, “would not replace existing arrangements, mechanisms, institutions or organisations” involved in the Internet. In other words, the forum will have no authority whatsoever and may likely function as little more than a gathering at the water-cooler mid-way through the work morning.

Still, many developing country officials and members of civil society see this ‘consolation prize’ as a platform to push their views on Internet governance and development of the web. They envisage a forum that will be able to influence the governance and development of the Internet.

Civil society and developing countries “did not fail”, Pakistani official Masood Khan credited with the compromise solution told IPS. He said the forum could achieve a lot. “For one thing, it will be lively.”

Some communication experts share that view. “The U.S. is not the only winner, civil society also won enormously,” Adam Peake of the Centre for Global Communications and co- coordinator of the Internet Governing Caucus in the United States, a non-governmental organisation, told a news briefing.

“Developing nations are now participants,” he said. “We never thought this would happen.”

If there is disappointment it is because developing countries wanted too much, he said. Peake believes that in the preparatory discussions to the WSIS, developing nations should have pushed for more participation rather than trying to loosen ICANN’s control of the information highway.

The United Nations, which had been earmarked for the task of Internet coordination by those seeking to change the current rules, made it clear Wednesday that it had no interest in assuming any such position.

“The United Nations does not want to ‘take over’, police or otherwise control the Internet,” Yoshio Utsumi, secretary-general of both the WSIS and the International Telecommunication Union told the opening plenary of the summit.

Instead, he praised the stewardship of the United States, noting that it had “exercised its oversight responsibility fairly and honourably.”

“I coordinate, I don’t control,” ICANN chief executive officer Paul Twomey, who is currently on a public relations mission at the three-day summit here to clear up misconceptions about his organisation’s work and position told a select media gathering. “It’s not a private company.”

ICANN is located in California because that state is the birthplace of the Internet, but only five of its 21 board members are Americans, Twomey said. More than half the staff are non-Americans, he said, and he himself is Australian.

ICANN was dragged into the North-South impasse by politicians and officials who are born, bred and engaged in traditional “top-down control” of institutions. The strength of the Internet is its bottom-up approach, he added.

Twomey expressed enthusiasm for the proposed forum, noting that it would allow increased participation by governments, businesses and representatives of civil society.

The first meeting of the forum will likely be held in Greece next year.

Excerpt:

By Marty Logan
TUNIS, Nov 16 2005 (IPS)

The indigenous Navajo people of the southwestern United States are now using the Internet to reconnect to their traditional culture, and rebuild confidence.

“We used to have a hard time building infrastructure to support economic and community development,” Ernest Franklin Jr from the Navajo nation as they are called told IPS. That was partly because information about the Navajo nation’s resources would not be passed on to new leaders of the huge Navajo territory, he said.

What they needed to change that trend, tribal leaders decided, was a communications system to link more than 200,000 people in 110 communities scattered over 27,000 square miles. The Navajo are among the indigenous people of America known also as American Indians.

“We knew that if we were to establish a fibre optic cable it would never get done because of all the red tape of working with the government,” Franklin said. “But after renting space on a satellite, we were able to hook up all the communities in three months. Then we created 110 websites – that’s how people learned how to develop their communities.”

The Navajo used the websites to first provide information about planning and community development, which in turn led locals to draw up inventories of resources like land, water, roads and power lines, and finally to draft local governance laws that would empower individual communities to take the lead in rebuilding their lives.

Today, 20 Navajo communities have adopted land use plans, and 30 more are in progress, said Franklin.

“Now we have communities that are more sustainable, and the people are very proud because they are building them themselves…the U.S. government always used to come in and say ‘here’s housing’ or ‘here’s corn – you don’t need to grow your own’ – and that created slums and dependence and made people lose respect for themselves and their communities. We want to get back to being self-sustaining,” said Franklin.

To ensure that the information age is not just a passing fad, the Navajo have equipped their 110 community centres with computers and broadband Internet access. High school students on hand to help users are known as Web Warriors.

On Thursday the Navajo Nation will go global, signing a deal with the WSIS organiser, the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU), that will enable it to spread what is now known as the Navajo model to other communities where the roughly 350 million indigenous people live, starting with Brazil.

Indigenous people are often described as the “poorest of the poor”, and the description holds true for their access to the Internet and other resources developed by the information society.

Before the project started five years ago, only 22 percent of the Navajo nation’s population had access to telephones, 15 percent to computers and 10 percent to the Internet – and that in one of the world’s richest countries. The project is now getting people connected fast.

Others are looking to progress out of similar, or worse situations. Part two of the WSIS being held in the Tunisian capital this week is supposed to set realistic plans that will guide the world community to narrow the information gap between rich and poor, commonly called the ‘digital divide’.

After WSIS I in Geneva in 2003, a group of indigenous people identified obstacles and challenges to their peoples’ equitable participation in the information age. These included poverty, which reduces access to the Internet; fear that the new technologies would force them to conform to one model of living; lack of money to pay the high costs of training; and a shortfall of computer software in indigenous languages.

A project being endorsed by the indigenous caucus in the United States could answer some of those fears. An aboriginal portal would be set up “where anyone who wanted to deal with anything indigenous or learn about anything indigenous could go”, indigenous caucus co-chair Kenneth Deer told IPS Wednesday.

A portal is an Internet site that typically includes a list of websites on a related topic, along with a search engine. Two such portals exist on indigenous people’s issues, but both are operated by governments, Canada and Australia, said Deer, a member of the Mohawk nation from Canada.

The proposed international portal would be indigenous owned and operated, hosted at a central location, but with support from each of the world’s regions. It could also offer content in local languages (of which roughly 200 exist in the United States alone, though most of them are dying).

Money is the biggest challenge to making it work, said Deer. “Before this, the problem was one of lack of expertise…what we need now is secure funding for at least three to five years.”

Proof of indigenous expertise are the Navajo engineers helping to run the ITU’s television service at the WSIS. “A lot of indigenous people are scared of technology because they think it’s going to run their lives,” said Franklin.

But he pointed out that the Navajo have long adopted technologies such as rug-making and silver-smithing, and are now world renowned practitioners of those arts. “We didn’t invent the Internet but we brought it into our communities and are using it to make them stronger.”

Excerpt:

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 16 2005 (IPS)

“It’s like advertising one product and selling another,” Brazilian city councillor Djalma Pastorello summed up in favour of his proposal to change the name of his city, Foz do Iguaçu, so as not to confuse people searching for it on the Internet.

The Social Democratic councillor is convinced that as “Foz do Iguassu” – replacing the “ç” with a double s – his town would attract many more tourists, and overcome a problem that militates against spreading the word about its magnificent local beauty spots. The falls on the river that gives the city its name, for example, include 275 waterfalls extending into Brazilian and Argentine territory.

Since website names do not accept letters with a cedilla – a hook under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify pronunciation – the town’s online address is http://www.fozdoiguacu.pr.gov.br.

In a search for “Iguassu”, a name used by several private English-language websites – English being the dominant language on the Internet – 30 percent of the results mistakenly flag Puerto Iguazú, the neighbouring Argentine town, he pointed out.

Because of this, Pastorello has submitted a draft law to change the official name of the city, replacing the “ç” with “ss”. The city council approved the law on Oct. 19 by eight votes to four; two councillors were absent. However, the measure has provoked a strong negative reaction from local institutions and residents.

Mayor Paulo Mac Donald Ghisi then decided to hold a “popular consultation”, a kind of informal referendum with voting in schools, on the sidewalks, and at other public places. Eighty-nine percent of the 3,000 people who had voted up to Nov. 8 wanted to retain the “ç.”

Pastorello told IPS that this is a manoeuvre that the mayor is using to justify his likely veto of the draft law, although the city council could overrule the veto.

“We want to schedule the modification (of the name) for Jun. 10, the city’s anniversary,” he added.

According to Pastorello, his proposal is basically about “rescuing the historic name used when the city was founded in 1914.” Iguassu was changed to Iguaçu in the 1940s, in fulfilment of an agreement between the Brazilian and Portuguese Academies of Letters, which established Portuguese spelling using ç and j for words originating from indigenous languages, which had previously been written with double s and g.

Iguaçú, or Iguazú as it is spelled in Spanish, is of Tupi-Guarani origin. This is the main indigenous language in Brazil and Paraguay, and is also spoken in Argentina and Bolivia. The meaning of Iguaçu in the original language is “great water.”

But the linguistic agreement should not have altered proper names such as place names, said Pastorello, who also noted that the state of Sergipe in northeastern Brazil, and some cities like Pirassununga (“where the fish make a noise,” in Tupi-Guarani), kept their old spelling.

“I am against the change on cultural grounds, as a matter of national identity,” linguist Edna Camille, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo, declared to IPS.

“It is important to keep in touch with one’s origins when technological changes cause us to lose so much, like the music recorded on old albums which cannot be listened to any more, because record players have disappeared and the record companies have no commercial incentive to re-record them in digital format,” she argued.

“And what would happen to the historical record, the literature, the books printed with the word Iguaçu?” she asked.

Pastorello explained that there would be no problem since the law is not retroactive, which means that nothing in the past would be altered. Only new documents, vehicle number plates and texts would adopt the new spelling, which would be phased in gradually. What would happen is that there would be two place names, separated in time by a date.

But those opposed to the change, like Luiz Eduardo Cheida, the environment secretary for the state of Parana, where Foz do Iguaçu is located, see yet another possible confusion that would also have a negative effect on tourism. That is because other geographical features, like the river and the waterfalls, would continue to be called Iguaçu, since the city council has no power to change those names.

All this debate is unnecessary, because the Internet itself already provides the solution, according to Carlos Afonso, an activist. The system already recognises the cedilla, and domain names with ç are accepted in Brazil, explained Afonso, an information technology expert who forms part of the Brazilian Internet management committee, where he represents civil society,

Thus, the mayor’s office has the right to register both Foz do Iguaçu and Foz do Iguazú as its Internet domain names, with the suffix .gov.br. Access would be possible using either domain name, as well as by entering Iguacu without the cedilla, as at present, Afonso told IPS.

Nevertheless, the cedilla remains an obstacle on the Internet. Many French websites are also identified by incomplete names: even the French Academy (http://www.academie-francaise.fr) is registered without its proper cedilla or accent.

Of the 191 countries that belong to the United Nations, 146 do not use the cedilla in their national languages, Pastorello observed.

Foz do Iguaçu, a town of approximately 300,000 located on the Triple Frontier with Argentina and Paraguay, is sixth in rank among Brazilian cities for the number of tourists it attracts: close to one million per year. It is vital to increase the influx of tourists in order to overcome the social crisis that the town is experiencing, with more than 20,000 people unemployed, the city councillor said.

The local economy is dependent on tourism, having experienced the cyclical rise and fall of maté (a natural herbal stimulant) plantations, timber, construction of the Itaipú hydropower plant, and trade in the neighbouring Paraguayan town of Ciudad del Este, where thousands of Brazilians buy goods cheaply for re-sale in their faraway home towns, Pastorello explained.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TUNIS, Nov 16 2005 (IPS)

Two African leaders launched a public appeal Wednesday for support to a global fund for community-based communication projects.

President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria launched the appeal for increased funding for the Global Digital Solidarity Fund (GDSF). Few, however, attended the meeting they addressed.

Obasanjo nevertheless made an earnest appeal for more. The fund “relies heavily on contributions by stakeholders,” he said. “Contributions, no matter how small, will help.”

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan backed the appeal for supporting the digital fund Wednesday. “These assets, these bridges to a better life, can be made universally affordable and accessible,” he said. “We must summon the will to do it.” The hurdle, he said, is “more political than financial.”

The fund has so far gathered 5.5 million euros (6.6 million dollars) from its 22 members that include just nine countries. The others are international organisations, cities and provinces.

Developed countries had refused to back the GDSF at the first stage of the WSIS held in Geneva in September 2003. At the world millennium Summit held in New York in September 2005 leaders only “encouraged voluntary contributions to its financing.”

The fund has had some success in Africa. The Association for African Solidarity based in Burkina Faso has used money from the fund to introduce broadband connectivity at HIV/ AIDS clinics. Patients now have up to date medical information, and also access to specialists in other countries.

The African Virtual University (AVU) was established in 1997 with funding from the World Bank. It now has more than 3,000 students in 18 countries.

The Sushiksha project in India funded by the Institute for International Social Development (IISD) based in Britain has involved more than 50,000 slum dwellers in a literacy programme where ICT tools help build individual capacity for development.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation has launched a scheme to help rural communities with access to information to improve farming and marketing methods, and to mitigate the effect of natural disasters.

“Investment in technology is necessary for development,” Ranjit Silva of Worldvision, an international Christian relief and development organisation told IPS. “There are innumerable examples of how ICTs have benefited the poor. We need to be discussing and sharing more of those best practices and success stories.”

Many fear that wrangling over Internet governance has overshadowed the need for concrete steps to bridge the digital divide – the difference between the developed and the developing world in access to information and communication technologies (ICT).

“Governance is taking centre stage,” Silva said. Instead, the summit could be tackling achievable development goals, he said.

“It is essential that this second phase of WSIS give sufficient consideration to how and why technologies can improve livelihoods,” said Anton Mangstl, director of the library and documentation systems division of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

“Often, the weaknesses are not in the infrastructure and tools, but in the process of their adoption and use. So attention needs to be focused on education, information sharing and communication,” he said.

“Rural people and institutions need the opportunity to play a vital role in information sharing,” Mangstl said. “These communities have a wealth of local agricultural knowledge to contribute.”

Excerpt:

By Franz Chávez
LA PAZ, Nov 16 2005 (IPS)

The proliferation of cybercafés in Bolivia’s largest cities, offering Internet access at relatively modest rates, contrasts sharply with the slow advance of this technology in rural areas, which depends on sporadic initiatives headed up by the private sector or civil society.

There are barely 62,000 Internet connections today in Bolivia, a country with a population of 8.2 million people – as well as an illiteracy rate of 25.7 percent in the countryside and 6.44 percent in the cities – according to the most recent census, conducted in 2001.

Indigenous people account for 62 percent of the population, and that proportion rises to almost 70 percent in the centre of the country and in the mountainous western regions. In rural areas, indigenous languages are spoken by 72 percent of inhabitants.

The Telecommunications Superintendency reports that there are 40 telephone service providers that offer access to the Internet, of which the largest is the national telephone company Entel, which was privatised in 1996.

Future growth of connectivity will be slow, because it must necessarily follow the pace of social development in general. It will depend on such factors as the population’s ability to afford Internet service, not to mention the availability of basic telephone and electricity services, which are the main obstacles to the introduction of the new technology in remote areas.

These prerequisites will be difficult to meet in a country where 1.7 million people in rural areas – which are home to half of Bolivia’s population – live in extreme poverty, with a monthly income of less than 16 dollars, according to figures from the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

In the few remote areas where Internet service is available, rates can run as high as two dollars and fifty cents an hour, as compared to a mere 25 cents per hour in La Paz and other cities. As a result, these services tend to be used exclusively by tourists or occasional visitors in outlying regions.

This has led to the emergence of initiatives undertaken by the private sector, in association with bilateral cooperation programmes and non-governmental organisations, to create educational centres that provide Internet access in the impoverished city of El Alto, next to La Paz, and nearby rural communities.

With the support of the European Union, 12 teaching centres for new information and communications technologies have already been established in El Alto, the site of the October 2003 popular revolt that led to the toppling of then president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and cost the lives of 67 people.

Each of these centres is equipped with lecture rooms and physics laboratories, as well as computers connected to the Internet. Together with another 18 centres that operate on the city’s outskirts with the support of Entel, these facilities benefit around 150,000 students, Entel institutional communications manager Juan León told IPS.

Entel, the telecommunications company with the largest number of users for all the services it provides, has developed a social policy aimed at guiding secondary school students in the use of digital technology, and distributes educational booklets to help them gain the greatest advantage possible from this service.

In the meantime, thanks to an agreement with the government of Spain, a new initiative has been launched in the town of Calacoto, some 100 km from La Paz, where a learning lab has been set up with computers connected to the Internet and powered by solar panels.

Despite the fact that electrical power has yet to reach Calacoto, during the daytime schoolchildren aged eight and over now have access to digital technology, and are guided by a specialised tutor on how to operate computers and search for information and images for their school work through the Internet.

Reducing the “digital gap” between the rich and poor with regard to access to information and communications technologies is one of the themes to be addressed this Wednesday through Friday in Tunis during the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

Paving the way for the transfer of resources and technology from the industrialised world to the developing nations is among the proposed goals of the summit.

For the areas of Bolivia where Internet access is possible, Entel and the Royal University in La Paz have created a “virtual high school” programme that allows people to complete their secondary education through computer-based distance study.

Another initiative currently underway, with funding from the Andean Development Corporation (the financial arm of the Andean Community of Nations), the Eco Pueblo Foundation and Aquino University of Bolivia, is a computer centre in the town of Calamarca, 80 km from La Paz, where the local Aymara indigenous children and adolescents are provided with access to information technology.

One immediate challenge for expanding the use of these new technological tools is the training of specialised teachers and instructors. This task has been taken on by the department of educational sciences at the public University of San Andrés.

The head of the department, Orlando Huanca Rodríguez, told IPS that a preliminary household survey revealed that 85 percent of students did not have direct access to a personal computer at home, because of economic limitations.

Huanca Rodríguez came to the newly created university department with a solid background as the administrator of educational computer centres in El Alto.

The university currently offers undergraduate and graduate programmes in virtual education, and is organising a congress on the use of new information and communications technologies in the teaching field.

Excerpt:

By Marty Logan
TUNIS, Nov 16 2005 (IPS)

Now that the world’s powers have agreed to stop squabbling over control of the Internet (for now), will the more than 10,000 people here for this week’s United Nations forum focus on creating an information society for all people?

That is the goal of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), part two of which is taking place in the capital of this North African nation until Friday. The first round of the WSIS was held in Geneva in 2003.

One example of the so-called ‘digital divide’ between the world’s rich and poor: roughly the same number of people use the Internet in the world’s eight economic giants as in the other nations combined – 429 million users in the former versus 444 million in the latter, says the United Nations.

Late Tuesday representatives of the world’s governments agreed to leave control of the technology that runs the Internet – the most potent symbol of the ‘information age’ – in the hands of the United States and instead to hold talks on devolving that role to an international forum. But no binding powers were established for the new body.

U.S. Ambassador David Gross says he is “thrilled” over the last-minute deal after three years of negotiations. “It reaffirmed the role of technology to the world and preserved the unique role of the U.S.”, he told a news conference as the summit’s opening ceremony proceeded Wednesday morning.

Assistant U.S. Secretary of Commerce M.D. Gallaher called the deal a vote of confidence in “market principles” and the “free flow of information” that he said are hallmarks of the U.S. information society. By “engraining the use of technology for economic development,” the new approach will help narrow the digital divide, he told journalists.

The next three days at this mammoth conference site will see countless seminars and workshops hosted by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and international bodies like the United Nations, along with demonstrations and sales pitches by private sector participants hawking the latest tech gadgets from gleaming temporary booths.

All of this activity is meant to set the world on the path to start closing the digital divide by 2015, the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that aim to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty.

While the shadow cast over the WSIS by Internet governance has faded, a cloud still looms over the event. The host government of Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali has blocked civil society organisations from participating in the conference and from meeting at various outside venues. Journalists and freedom of expression activists jailed in recent years for their writings remain in detention.

On Nov. 10, representatives of some of these groups organising a citizens summit in a local hotel to run parallel with the WSIS were informed that the venue was no longer available because of a sudden need for repairs.

Summit organisers agreed to meet at the Goethe Institute, a German cultural centre in downtown Tunis Tuesday morning, but were prevented from entering by several dozen plainclothes police.

According to a journalist working with the ad-hoc Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG), journalists were also blocked from approaching the institute, and the police seized a camera from a Belgian TV cameraman. “They returned it 15 minutes later but without the tape,” the journalist told IPS.

Those prevented from entering the centre include Souhayr Belhassen, vice-president of the Tunisian League for the Defence of Human Rights, Mahmoud Dhaouadi, a member of the Union of Tunisian Journalists, (an unauthorised organisation), and representatives of Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other international freedom of expression groups.

“Eventually, some of these delegates were able to meet when a high-level German diplomat attending WSIS and a Swiss diplomat personally hosted them at a nearby café. However, they had to leave when the café owner informed them that police surrounding the building said he would have to close it if they remained on the premises,” said HRW in a news release.

Ironically, Ben Ali told the summit’s opening Wednesday morning that Tunisia is intent on “protecting human rights (and) protecting political pluralism…in harmony with the fundamental principles of the information society.”

Iranian human rights lawyer and winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize Shirin Ebadi raised a finger of condemnation at the opening ceremony, which could have been directed at the host government. “Unfortunately in some countries human rights defenders, writers and translators are imprisoned, their only crime being having expressed their freedom of expression and opinion,” she said.

“I would suggest that we set up a committee under the aegis of the United Nations…in order to monitor the problem of site filtering (Internet censorship) and to prevent states from sacrificing the interests of their people on the altar of their own political convenience,” she added.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TUNIS, Nov 16 2005 (IPS)

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) began here Wednesday with little room for civil society groups to express themselves.

Most civil society activities planned for Tuesday were cancelled “as a response to the abnormal circumstances in which the Tunis summit is taking place,” Rikke Jorgenses from the Human Rights caucus told IPS.

A correspondent for the French newspaper Libération has been assaulted in connection with an article on human rights violations in Tunisia, the Tunisia Monitoring Group of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) said.

Earlier on Monday, “human rights advocates and journalists were being harassed and even physically harmed on the streets of Tunis” even as the final preparatory conference was taking place under tight security, civil society representatives said in a press statement.

The Citizens’ Summit on the Information Society (CSIS), a civil society side event to the conference has still been unable to find a place for its events.

“We booked several spaces which were repeatedly cancelled for reasons we believe are linked to political pressures from the Tunisian government,” Jorgenses said. “The CSIS is not intended to be on Tunisia as such, but on the summit issues.”

The CSIS is being staged as a side event because some Tunisian NGOs are not recognised by their state, and therefore do not fit the UN criteria for accreditation to the official WSIS conference.

“Any event that may take place outside is not considered a WSIS event, and this is where our responsibility stops. What happened yesterday is not linked to the summit and therefore is outside our scope,” International Telecommunication Union spokeswoman Francine Lambert told IPS in reference to Monday’s incidents.

“But the ITU, like the UN, believes in freedom of expression and upholds Article 19 of the Human Rights Declaration. Any action that would deprive or limit that freedom of expression is regrettable,” she added.

ITU official figures report 9,329 civil society representatives from 597 NGOs accredited to the summit, making civil society the most represented group of the three stakeholders; the others are governments and businesses.

Events cancelled Tuesday included a debate on freedom of expression organized by IFEX and the Community Media Forum. The groups opted instead to protest against the “abuses against journalists and freedom of expression,” IFEX said.

“It is not our intention to boycott the summit, but to use all channels to focus the international spotlight on the issue of human rights in Tunisia. We need to keep this in mind after the WSIS closes down,” Jorgenses said.

Access to the CSIS website is blocked to ordinary Tunisians; however, it remains accessible from the summit location.

“The Tunisian government has cited counter-terrorism as justification, but we also found many political websites blocked,” said Elijah Zarwan of Human Rights Watch. The organisation attempted to access 1,947 sites in September 2005; it found that 184 of them had been blocked.

Blocked sites included those run by Reporters Without Borders and the Tunisian League for the Defence of Human Rights. More recently, Italian news websites Amisnet and Lettera 22, which launched a campaign for the release of several web surfers jailed for their Internet activity, have also been blocked.

As the curtain is raised on the WSIS, it remains unclear whether or not the CSIS will take place at all. CSIS organizers say they will petition the United Nations to give “careful consideration to hosting events of this nature in countries where the necessary preconditions for people meeting and working together peacefully do not exist.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
TUNIS, Nov 16 2005 (IPS)

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) kicks off Wednesday with a compromise document approved unanimously after several months of fruitless negotiations.

The document was hailed late Tuesday with a half-hearted standing ovation. The discontent arises because the Internet status quo has been maintained, allowing the US- based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit private entity working under an agreement with the U.S. government, to continue as the main governing body of the global computer network.

“Very happy with the result,” Ambassador David Gross, U.S. coordinator of International Communications and Information Policy, told IPS.

South Africa’s Thembe Phiri, who had pushed for multinational governance of the Internet, said “a spirit of compromise prevailed”, but added that the South had not given up its quest for a stronger voice in the future of the Internet.

The outcome is likely to further upset civil society groups who have found themselves frustrated by intimidating security measures that have isolated foreign delegates, journalists and non-governmental organisations from local groups.

Developing countries, the European Union and civil society groups had sought a compromise on opening up ICANN to more international control. The body is widely seen as being under U.S. tutelage.

In the compromise document, any follow-up discussions on Internet governance – one of the most fought-over issues since the summit’s first leg in Geneva two years ago – is left to independent fora, whose decisions will not be binding. The first such forum is to be held in Greece next year, the U.S. official said.

Proposed as ‘the solution’, the World Summit on the Information Society is accentuating the problem: the North-South political impasse in tackling the North-South Digital Divide.

All agree that the Internet has enormous potential for development, including in health, commerce and governance among a host of critical issues. But, as was in evidence in arduous preparations for the Summit, the North-South divide prevailed over future management of the tool that civil society calls “a global public space that should be open and accessible to all on a non-discriminatory basis.”

“The Internet…must be seen as a global public infrastructure,” says The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), an international network of civil society organisations. “In this regard we recognise the Internet to be a global public good and access to it is in the public interest, and must be provided as a public provision.”

Yet, on the eve of the 173-nation summit, it became apparent in a morass of last-minute give-and-take among harassed delegates that the South’s viewpoint would not hold sway.

Despite a determined push by South Africa, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil and others from the developing world, the developed countries, the United States and Australia in the main, held firm against any action that would have transferred powers from the U.S.-based ICANN. The corporation manages the domain name system (DNS) enabling millions of computer users around the world to communicate with each other.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has characterised the Tunis summit as “unique” because it will consider “how best to use a new global asset” rather than focusing on global threats, as most world summits do.

In fact, there is much more to the summit than Internet governance, although that topic has overshadowed others.

Scores of companies have come to show off the latest in information and communications technology. More than 300 parallel events and roundtable debates are being held, and partnerships between private business and local communities in making Internet access cheaper and more widely available in Asia, Africa and South America are being showcased. One project has solar energy supplying the power for computers in places where electricity generation is expensive.

Yoshio Utsumi, head of the International Telecommunication Union and secretary-general of the summit, is pushing for a one billion dollar project called ‘Connect the World’ to enable 800,000 villages to access the Internet.

Excerpt:

By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Nov 14 2005 (IPS)

Cuba’s computer technology policy gives priority to the social uses of information technology and telecommunications, while excluding private access to tools like the internet.

“As we are able to afford them, new areas will open up,” the Cuban minister of Information Technology and Communications, Ignacio González Planas, assured IPS on Friday at an Internet forum organised by the foreign ministry.

González Planas did not, however, clarify whether those “new areas” would include the possibility of access by Cuban citizens to the Internet from personal accounts on their home computers.

That option does not appear to be a part of current plans, which focus on developing intensive social use of available connection resources.

According to official information, there were 335,000 computers in Cuba at the end of June this year, or 2.98 computers per 100 inhabitants. But only 13 out of every 1,000 Cubans had access to the Internet in 2004.

Primary and secondary schools in Cuba, 93 of which have only one pupil, started the present school year with a total of 46,290 computers available to their students.

In this country, where the entire population has access to free education, all the universities are connected to the Internet, as are the scientific centres and the media (a state monopoly), among other institutions.

But buying or importing a computer is subject to strict regulations, and the same is true for private access to the worldwide web.

“My father brought me computer components from abroad, and we assembled it here. Then I got an e-mail account,” related María del Carmen, a 26-year-old economist who declined to give her surname.

This young woman, who preferred not to go into details about the origin of her e-mail account, stated that e-mail connections are more numerous than those for surfing the web, but they are nevertheless subject to restrictions in the private sector.

“In the office we have Internet, and I use it to look up whatever I need for the graduate course I’m studying,” she said. Buying a password on the “black market” to surf the web at home would cost her about 40 dollars, which would entitle her to three hours’ access a day – but that is beyond her means, she explained.

González Planas stated that economic conditions in Cuba prevent mass access to the Internet, and therefore the government has elected to make such resources available for social use, through collective centres, e-mail and web-surfing rooms, schools, universities and computer youth clubs.

“This is definitely more effective and more citizens can have access than if, for example, we installed connections in a few homes, which only a small élite could afford and would use up a large part of our band-width,” said González Planas.

However, the e-mail and web-surfing rooms are few and far between, and are mainly located in the tourist hotels. Furthermore, they only accept convertible pesos (local currency equivalent to the U.S. dollar), and they do not always admit Cuban citizens.

At present, Cuba’s connection to the web has insufficient band-width to satisfy the country’s demand, and the only link to the Internet is via satellite.

According to experts, the problem could be solved by connecting a fibre optic cable between Cuba and the U.S. state of Florida, but the terms of the U.S. embargo against Cuba prevent this.

“If for economic reasons citizens cannot have access to the Internet in their homes, other options should be encouraged, such as distributing the existing sites more widely, and offering the service at moderate rates,” dissident Manuel Cuesta told IPS.

In his opinion, the economic aspect is being used to “mask” ideological reasons. “It’s a way of extending the limits on freedom of expression, which is a greater evil, to the area of technology,” he maintained.

Cuesta is a spokesperson for Progressive Rainbow, a coalition of moderate dissident groups linked to the electronic magazine Consensus, which has just issued its fourth edition. “We pool our resources to obtain access to the Internet. Ours is the only opposition electronic magazine from within Cuba,” he remarked.

The Cuban government considers all dissident groups to be “mercenaries in the service of the empire” (the United States). Some of these groups have web pages located on servers outside the country.

Cuba will be represented at the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, to be held in Tunis Nov. 16-18, by a 20-strong delegation headed by the minister of Information Technology and Communications.

One of the matters to be discussed at the conference is governance of the Internet – that is, how the worldwide web’s technical and political facets should be administered, and how domain names and numbers should be assigned.

Governments of developing countries and civil society organisations are demanding participation in the way the Internet is governed. The web was originally created and developed in the United States, and the U.S. government continues to exercise dominance in its administration.

Havana will take the opportunity at this meeting to demand that the United States cease “illegal” radio and television transmissions aimed at Cuba. Expert sources say these transmissions add up to 2,425 hours per week and are broadcast on 30 frequencies.

Excerpt:

By Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 11 2005 (IPS)

International efforts to break down the digital barriers facing the world’s poor will backfire if governments fail to work out their differences on the issue of internet governance, diplomatic observers here say.

Many heads of state and technical experts from around the world are due to attend the United Nations Summit for the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis next week, where, among other things, they will try to negotiate the legal and technical future of the internet.

But with the United States unwilling to embrace any changes in the network it helped create in the 1960s, and other nations seeking to alter the current system, indications are that negotiators could pack up without a concrete agreement.

The most contentious among the issues to be discussed at the summit is Washington’s role in overseeing the internet’s address structure known as “the domain name system” (DNS), which enables millions of computer users around the world to communicate with each other.

Currently, the system is managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), a California-based nonprofit private organisation that works under contract to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Despite certain differences on the issue, both the developing countries’ bloc led by China, India, Brazil and others, and the European Union are stressing that the internet should be governed internationally with multiple stakeholders involved in the decision-making process.

While many developing countries want internet governance to be controlled by an international body such as the U.N., the Europeans have proposed what they call a “cooperation model” to deal with Icann. The model points to a “forum” that would allow governments, interested organisations, and industry to discuss internet issues.

But Washington continues to oppose such suggestions, arguing that internet security and stability are best maintained through the current systems of technical controls overseen by Icann.

“As important as internet governance discussions are, I don’t think anybody believes that as a result of them there will be one more computer or one more cell phone in rural parts of Africa, South America, Asia or any where else,” said David Gross, who has led the U.S. delegation at the previous U.N. meetings on information technology.

The plan of action adopted at the conclusion of the first U.N. summit on the information society held in Geneva in 2003 laid out clear targets for increasing information and communication technologies (ICT) access and internet connections for rural areas, hospitals, libraries and universities in the developing world.

The plan also set targets for online access for local governments, for the availability of content in all languages and for developing primary and secondary school curricula to meet the challenges of the information society.

Developing countries argue that meeting such goals requires changes in internet governance, but the U.S. says the current system is already producing positive results.

“I think, as I look around the world, that a lot of progress has been made in those areas,” Gross says. “But of course there is a lot of work still to be done.”

While the vast majority of people without access to the internet live in developing countries, there are also millions of people within the developed world who are unable to use the web for economic reasons.

At recent U.N. meetings on information-related issues, diplomats from developing countries have consistently contended that internet governance must be more transparent and inclusive in order to foster economic and social development.

“Internet governance should not be the prerogative of one group of countries or stockholders,” Maria Luiza Viotti, a Brazilian diplomat, told a recent forum at U.N. headquarters in New York. “Governments have a stake, and the concerns of developing countries should be taken into account.”

But U.S. officials countered this position on the ground that governments’ involvement in internet governance in certain countries would cause further erosion of the freedom of expression and independent political opinion.

Michael Gallagher, U.S. President George W. Bush’s internet adviser, believes that countries seeking changes in internet governance are seizing on the only “central” part of the system in an effort to exert control.

“They are looking for a handle, thinking that the DNS is the meaning of life,” he says. “But the meaning of life lies within their own borders and the policies that they create here.”

The European Union and Canada share many of the U.S. concerns over governments’ control. But at the same time they also appear to be equally wary of Washington’s dominance over internet governance.

Those closely watching the negotiating process say it is too early to suggest that the summit will prove to be a fiasco, yet there is a possibility that it may conclude without any meaningful agreement signed.

“It would be foolhardy and unrealistic to assume that the U.S. would not continue to play a major role in the future governance of the internet,” writes Irmran Chaudhry, an information technology expert at the of George Mason University in Virginia.

“It seems implausible the U.S. would cede any ground to a U.N.-sponsored regulatory body,” he goes on to say. “In that sense, it is possible that the current debate may be an exercise in futility, because no matter what ultimate proposals are presented to the Secretary-General Kofi Annan, they will be subject to de facto U.S. veto.”

Others fear that such a scenario could lead China, Russia, Brazil and other nations to launch their own versions of the internet.

“We have to have a platform where leaders of the world can exercise their thoughts about the internet,” Viviane Reding, the European Information Technology Commissioner, told the Guardian newspaper.

“If they have the impression that the internet is dominated by one nation and it does not belong to all the nations, then the result could be that the internet falls apart.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
PORT OF SPAIN, Nov 8 2005 (IPS)

Caribbean journalists say they will closely monitor the position of the region’s governments at the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), scheduled to begin in Tunisia on Nov. 16.

Internet governance has emerged as a major theme of the WSIS gathering, although its original mandate is to ensure that poor countries receive the full benefits of information and communication technologies.

The WSIS is expected to draw 10,000 participants from U.N. agencies, governments, the private sector and civil society to discuss strategies to bridge the digital divide.

However, the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM), which met in Barbados last weekend, is concerned that regional governments do not use the forum as a means of developing strategies to muzzle the internet and the media.

“We know what Caribbean governments mean when they talk internet governance. They mean censorship, plain and simple,” said Wesley Gibbings, the outgoing president of the ACM. “We have to ensure we do not become unwitting allies in that effort by paying closer attention to what happens in Tunisia in two weeks’ time.”

“Let’s make sure we know exactly what the Caribbean plans to say in Tunis and whether we believe it is consistent with our belief that a free and open internet is good and not bad for us,” he said.

The ACM also issued a report titled “The Looming Storm”, which describes self-censorship and pressure from government officials as two of the most serious problems facing journalists in the region.

“It is instructive that institutions otherwise charged with development of Caribbean mass media, inclusive of the regional universities and media houses themselves, have not accepted the challenge to maintain the strict vigil necessary to ensure the spirit of a free press is always present,” said Gibbings, who coordinated the project.

The newly elected ACM president, Dale Enoch, warned that constitutional guarantees are not always honoured and that threats to press freedom exist “in just about every country in the region”.

“Some of those threats are subtle while others are blatant and dangerous. We need to recognise them and deal with them,” he said.

In the report, the Antigua and Barbuda Media Congress says that despite pledges by the Baldwin Spencer government to be transparent and open with the media, “government officials have on several occasions alluded to or made direct reference to a need to regulate the media”.

“The term ‘hate’ radio is often used to refer to media houses that may not be in the government favour. This ‘need to regulate’ has been voiced by the prime minister as recently as Aug. 18. Similar ideas have been expressed by the information minister in many a public forum,” the group said.

It added that despite some advances in press freedom, public officials are still able to “use their influence to push a political agenda either through the omission of certain stories or through the tainting of facts”.

The ACM report says this situation prevails in almost all of the Caribbean states.

President of the Suriname Association of Journalists Rachael van der Kooye notes that while press freedom issues are not as urgent as in the 1980s – when journalists were killed, and media houses destroyed and closed by the military regime – “the government is not always transparent and it takes a lot of digging to get public information”.

“Among our concerns is the belief that the government plans to introduce judicial provisions for ethical codes contrasted with the need for the protection of press freedom and the right to information and freedom of expression,” she said. “Another concern is media legislation. We still have ‘muzzle’ laws, which are occasionally used by politicians.”

In Grenada, the government’s indirect control of the broadcast media is linked to the manner in which licences are awarded, said the report.

“There is no independent board of directors that decides who gets a license and whose license is renewed, rather it is the minister who determines it. This influence of the minister impacts on the station’s coverage of events, more so, events that put the government in a negative light.”

The Media Workers Association of Grenada said that self-censorship has become almost the norm, since there is the “fear of offending the political directorate in the coverage of news”.

“Newscasts generally have become government public relations reporting as some journalists have found themselves having to take sides to secure their jobs,” the group reported.

The regional report examines not only the role of governments and the private sector bodies in their quest to control the media, but also provides a critical examination of the functions of the regional media.

“There is the ambivalence of respect for the practice of journalism against the view that in many instances commercial and political agendas exist. Self-censorship becomes a foil against the practice of good journalism and citizens are denied a view of reality necessarily to move themselves and their societies forward,” the report said.

“There are journalists in these pages who believe the deviant behaviour of young people owe much to media content, pointing to the need by our societies to explore far more open-minded approaches to the questions of alienation, discord and consequential violence,” Gibbings said.

“It is my guess, though, that the horrible decline of West Indian civilisation is much more due to the collapse of the institutions of public and private life that never grew in tandem with the challenges of modern existence. The crises abound everywhere. The storm looms,” he warned.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
MONTEVIDEO, Nov 2 2005 (IPS)

The most important advance made by the World Summit on the Information Society is having conceived a model of Internet governance in which governments, civil society and the private sector all participate on an equal footing, according to Uruguayan expert Raúl Echeberría.

This multi-stakeholder format could now be extended to other international spheres, such as human rights and the environment, said Echeberría, executive director of the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC), in an interview with IPS. Nevertheless, negotiations to fully establish this model are currently at a stalemate. The United States is striving to maintain the status quo, in which it wields considerable power, while the countries of the developing South are pushing for more active participation by other governments in the administration and control of the so-called worldwide web.

In Latin America, the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) trade bloc and its associate members have not coordinated common positions for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), whose second phase will take place this December in Tunisia, noted Echeberría. Mercosur is made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, but its associate members encompass most of the rest of South America.

Brazil and other developing countries are proposing that civil society be given an advisory, rather than a decisive role in Internet governance, commented Echeberría, one of the 40 experts in the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) set up by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

But “sooner rather than later,” the current subordination of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to the United States must come to an end, he maintained.

IPS: Is there any coordination or common position among the Mercosur countries, Chile and Bolivia with regard to Internet governance?

RAÚL ECHEBERRÍA: There has been no formal coordination as far as I know. Argentina, Chile and Uruguay have expressed similar positions, shared by a number of other Latin American countries, like Ecuador and Peru, but to say that they are totally identical would be too absolutist. Brazil has taken a different position.

IPS: And what is that?

RE: Brazil forms part of the “like-minded group” of countries along with China, India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Iran, among others, who are backed by several Latin American nations, like Cuba and Venezuela. Their idea, in general, is to promote an intergovernmental body, which they call the Global Internet Council, with broad powers to oversee governance of the Internet. Civil society organisations and the private sector would participate in the Council as advisors or observers, without voting rights.

IPS: Civil society would be left out of Internet governance in this case?

RE: It would participate, but unfortunately, this participation would be limited, despite the fact that the most important result of this whole discussion process over the years has been the emergence of a new model of governance that could be applied to a variety of areas. Namely, the “multi-stakeholder” model, in which all of the actors involved in a specific issue participate on an equal footing.

In this case it applies to Internet governance, but it could also work for human rights or the environment. It’s a veritable turning point in the evolution of governance systems.

IPS: Brazil’s position clashes with the Declaration of Principles adopted at the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, which called for “multilateral, transparent and democratic” international management of the Internet, with “the full involvement of governments, the private sector, civil society and international organisations.”

RE: The text adopted in December 2003 isn’t sufficiently clear. And since there is also talk about the creation of a new forum for dialogue among all stakeholders on an equal footing on all Internet governance-related issues, an idea that will largely meet with consensus, it could be argued that civil society will be fully involved. It all depends on how you look at it.

IPS: How would you characterise the position of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay?

RE: These countries, and others, are frightened by the complexity of the Global Council. There hasn’t been enough time to establish the mechanisms for participation by the governments, the kinds of decisions it would adopt, and how it would adopt them.

Some of the fear is related to the cost of new bodies, because international bureaucracy is very costly, and countries would have to devote significant resources in order to participate effectively. Only the most powerful nations are in a position to successfully participate in all international bodies and areas of negotiation.

Some decisions seem impossible to adopt with the participation of all governments. An executive committee could be established, and that is also a source of concern: disputes would start to erupt over filling these positions. There are some who will always want to be in limited groups where the decisions are made, and this could lead to a repeat of scenarios like the Security Council.

The position of Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico and Uruguay is that governments should have more participation, but without the creation of new bodies. These countries already view the creation of the forum as a very important change, which would minimise the need for new bodies.

IPS: Under this point of view, ICANN would continue to exist.

RE: There would have to be a way of guaranteeing greater participation by governments.

IPS: What kind of reform would you prefer?

RE: There is a good deal of agreement that the subordination of ICANN to the U.S. government has to come to an end sooner rather than later, that there should be greater international involvement. The Government Advisory Committee, which currently plays an advisory roll, should have more influence on ICANN decision-making.

But no matter how much we all agree that governments should have a stronger role in ICANN, it is going to be very difficult for them to come to an agreement on the degree of influence they would like. Some governments have a more liberal view and want less participation, while others want more.

IPS: Do you think the United States is prepared to give up control? Although, in reality, Washington has never exercised direct pressure on ICANN.

RE: That’s true. This control has never been abused. I don’t think they want to hold on to it forever. The United States has allowed some evolution of the system, like the creation of the forum and the legitimate concerns of governments over issues of sovereignty related to country codes.

Although it comes across as very determined to maintain the status quo, the United States is willing to budge somewhat. It is not going to have any choice but to accept an evolutionary process with international support, as long as it attends to its concerns over security and stability. I think the prospects are good.

IPS: How can the United States’ concerns be attended to?

RE: The multi-stakeholder model itself, which entails a high degree of social control, works in favour of stability and security. I do not think it would be a good idea to place absolute control in the hands of governments, which could then hypothetically be exercised by a subgroup of the world’s governments.

IPS: What future do you see for civil society participation in Internet governance?

RE: The struggle waged by civil society and the private sector for greater participation and influence in decision-making and international policies will continue in the long term. In this process in particular there have already been advances made, enormous and very positive ones.

It’s likely that the resolutions reached won’t be fully satisfactory for everyone. There will still be work to be done. But the multi-stakeholder model of governance is a one-way road. Once civil society and the private sector have had a good degree of participation in this process, I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t demand it in other areas.

The final discussions on Internet governance will be taking place in Tunis in the days prior to the Summit, and some limitations have been announced for the participation of civil society and the private sector for reasons of space or geography.

IPS: What are the chances of an agreement being reached?

RE: The worst-case scenario is that there won’t be an agreement. There are diverging positions regarding the kind of control that governance institutions will have. The attempt to reconcile bottom-up and top-down down models is going to generate conflicts.

Everything will depend on whether the participants are more concerned with strengthening their own positions or reaching agreements. And the only way of reaching agreements in a summit where there should be no objections raised by individual countries is by working on the basis of common positions, not the middle ground.

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By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Oct 25 2005 (IPS)

A generator rumbles behind the two-roomed building, which looks like one of the maize mills that dot Kenya’s rural landscape. But, you’re not likely to find a harvest of any sort in here – rather, food for thought.

This is an internet café in a sleepy, rural part of Emuhaya constituency, about 500 kilometres from the capital, Nairobi. Information and technology experts estimate that only two percent of Kenyans with access to the internet live in rural areas. For those who have managed to log on, however, life has never been the same since.

“For me, this is the best thing ever to happen,” says 65-year-old Beliha Ndanyi with a broad smile, as she waits for her e-mails to download on one of the two computers in the cyber café.

“Just the other day when my two cattle were stolen, I e-mailed my two sons in America, and in a matter of days they had sent me money through the Western Union Money Transfer to buy other cattle.”

Nearby, two youths are deeply engrossed in surfing the web.

“It is just amazing,” says Joseph Odinga, a student at Maseno Polytechnic, a local government training institute. “You keep in touch with friends in colleges and know as much as other youths in the capital city.”

In Kiambu district, about 50 kilometres from Nairobi, it’s much the same story.

Fanice Njoki, 58 – a small-scale farmer – uses an internet café to communicate with her son who lives in the United States, and a daughter who resides in the United Kingdom.

“Before, I could wait for months before I could communicate with my kids and tell them about my problems. But since this thing (the computer) was brought here, I can share with them on a daily basis if I want,” says Njoki.

The increase in internet cafés around the country comes in the wake of a government policy lifting duties on imported computers. Since the initiative was announced about two years ago, prices for computers and related equipment have fallen dramatically; a machine that used to cost in the region of 1,300 dollars now sells for 650 dollars.

Enterprising individuals have set up internet cafés in the capital and beyond, although exact figures on the number of cyber spots established in rural areas are difficult to come by.

The charge for downloading mail can range between twenty and forty cents, less than half what it would cost to send a letter abroad – but still pricey by Kenyan standards, given that about 56 percent of the population survives on less than a dollar a day. Ndanyi and Njoki are able to afford internet charges because of the remittances they receive from their children living abroad.

Cost isn’t the only barrier that these new found cyber enthusiasts have had to overcome, however.

Low literacy levels mean that Ndanyi and Njoki have to dictate their messages to family members or internet café assistants. Ndanyi is helped by her 21-year-old granddaughter, Jane Ayoki, who is waiting to start college.

Then there’s the matter of distance. The café used by Ndanyi – one of two in Emuhaya – serves a community of about 20,000 people, some of whom have to walk over 10 kilometres to log on.

Still, both women say they have become so attached to the internet that any interruption to the service is hugely upsetting. “I just feel anger boiling in me,” notes Ndanyi.

According to Peter Owuor, the café owner, people use his facility to get information on current affairs, as well as commercial and agricultural issues. Business is so good that he’s thinking of buying another computer.

Unfortunately, he adds, some young clients have also taken to browsing pornography sites, which he has yet to succeed in blocking.

This is not the main challenge Owuor faces, however. “The biggest problem is electricity,” he says. “I have to spend so much on oil.”

Just one in 30 people in the area has access to electricity. Owuor, who uses a generator to power his two computers, says internet services in rural regions would spread more rapidly were it not for lack of power and a shortage of telephone lines.

At present it costs about 60 dollars to install a phone line, and more than 200 dollars to buy a generator that can power a computer in the absence of electricity: prices that few Kenyans could afford.

Nonetheless, as internet users overcome these barriers, other debates about the World Wide Web are also starting to emerge, notably over the languages used on internet sites.

“The whole argument is that if our communities have to reap the benefits of the information society, then their languages have to be on the website,” says Owuor.

During the African Regional Preparatory Conference for the second leg of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) that took place earlier this year in Accra, Ghana, African linguistics and technology experts proposed the creation of a fund that would help place and maintain African languages on the internet.

“The only way to make Africa part of the information society is to ensure African languages are acceptable in cyberspace,” said Salam Diakite, Director of Research and Documentation at the Bamako-based African Academy of Languages, while addressing the WSIS gathering. (The second phase of the WSIS will take place next month in Tunisia.)

Certain information experts question whether sites in these languages would be economically viable.

If the example of Njoki and Ndanyi is anything to go by, however, Africans are ready to embrace the net. If it speaks their language, so much the better.

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