25th February 2003

Mr. Adama Samassekou
The President, WSIS Preparatory Committee
Geneva

Dear Sir,

We, the undersigned, are writing to you as a group of non-governmental
organizations and activists from different regions committed to
participating in the preparatory process for the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS) which will take place in Geneva, Switzerland in
December 2003.

We see the WSIS as a conference that is being convened at a unique juncture
in human development. It comes in the wake of a series of international
development conferences held over the past decade that have brought
together government around the world in a process of consensus building
focused on the principles, values, decision-making and governance
frameworks that should underpin different aspects of human society. We are
cogniscant of the context in which the WSIS is taking place. It is one
characterised by a heightened push for systems of global governance, global
accountability, and a fundamental commitment of all governments to address
social injustice, inequality in the face of growing disparities between the
rich and poor, and heightened desolation and fear among many populations
resulting from long-drawn violence and civil strife.

As NGO activists with a strong commitment to social justice, gender
equality and human rights, who have lobbied actively for government
commitments on these matters in conferences in the past decades, we welcome
now the opportunity to participate in the process of the WSIS.

As a UN conference that has linked its objectives to meeting the Millenium
Development Goals, we believe that the WSIS should be ".working towards a
world in which sustaining development and eradication of poverty would have
the highest priority". But in recent months, we have grown increasingly
concerned with the directions taken by the preparatory process for WSIS and
in particular with what has been presented to us as the "Proposal of an
Orientation Document for PrepCom-2," also referred to as a Non-Paper. We
write to share with you our concerns regarding the content and form of this
Non-Paper, urging you to take strong leadership to restore a focus on human
development objectives within the WSIS process. We believe that there is
an urgent need to prioritise the needs of the most marginalised amongst us,
and to analyse fully the realities of countries in the South, thus paving
the way for a Summit that will have outcomes that are meaningful for the
least privileged.

Here are some of our concerns with regard to the orientation, content and
form of the Non-Paper:

1. While we fully recognise the quantum leap expansion that has taken place
in the information and communications sector as a result of corporate
capital investments from both private and public institutions, we are
deeply concerned by the document's heavy reliance on market-based solutions
for almost all developmental issues related to ICTs. There appears to be a
strong centre-staging of market-based approaches and an assumption that
growth, efficiency and profit-maximising should the guiding principles of
development. Examples of this, though it exists in many different forms
throughout the document can be seen in Action Line, No. 5 on Enabling
Environment and No. 6 on Building Partnership and Mobilising Resources for
the Information Society, which refer to including ICTs inside Overseas
Development Assistance (ODA) packages, and the Poverty Reduction Strategy
Papers (PRSP) agreements of the World Bank. We have good reason to fear
that promoting an information society in ways that are linked to currently
inequitable aid packages to the South will lead to entrenched indebtedness,
rather than lead to sustainable human development. It would not be
far-fetched to imagine a diversion of aid from much needed social
development allotments that will ultimately impact the world's poorest and
most marginalised, including poor women of the South.

2. The WSIS is held under the auspices of the United Nations and given the
mandate of this international body, which is the site of consensus building
amongst governments. We applaud the attempts of the WSIS Secretariat to
define the roles and relationships of the various stakeholders in this
process, and where possible to strengthen partnerships amongst them.
However, the 'division of labour and specialized responsibilities' that are
outlined for the various stakeholders seems to us to be expressed in
over-simplistic terms for instance, Point 3 of the Annex of "Examples of
Possible Concrete and Comprehensive Actions' describes governments' role as
being to " create stimulating regulatory environment and fiscal
incentives", the role of business sector as being to "bring in technology
and make available simple applications," while the role of non-governmental
organisations be to "undertake awareness campaigns and work at the
community level." Such a division of labour simplifies the many very
complex relationships that exist between the different stakeholders. These
relationships must be recognized and acknowledged if there are to be any
common platforms upon which those concerned can act together in using ICTs
for human development. For instance, it is crucial to acknowledge that the
various stakeholders in this process do not have the same advantages in the
global context and therefore will not have receive the same benefits, or
pursue the same interests in relation to the outcomes of the WSIS.

3. There is no mention of gender equality in any part of the document,
while all references to women are always couched in the frame of "women and
youth." We are not inclined to focus on the number of times when women are
mentioned but rather on when and how they are mentioned. We are seriously
concerned about the conceptual inadequacy of the framework that
mechanistically links together 'women and youth as if to suggest that the
situation of these two constituencies are fundamentally similar and should
be approached in the same way. A strong, fully informed gender
perspective, on the other hand, would encompass the diversity and
specificity of concerns of different categories of women both in the North
and in the South. To this end, we urge that gender equality should be
specifically identified both as a Key Principle in the document, and as a
cross-cutting issue in relation to each of the Action Lines proposed within
it.

4. The document is very heavily focused on digital technology, making
little mention of the more traditional ICTs. We urge you to recognise the
need for a variety of information and communication media to meet the needs
of those who either cannot attain digital versatility for a long time to
come, or for whom digitally enabled communications is not a desired
form. We need to recognise that given the diversity of cultures and
societies that exist globally and that embody a vast range of
communications styles, needs and purposes, prescribing or pursuing only one
solution, i.e. the digital solution, is anti-thetical to the expansion of
human opportunities and to the notion of democracy overall. The Annex of
the Non-Paper has a listing of benchmark indicators, all of which refer to
digitally enabled technologies. There is no mention of enhancing other
communication media such as community-based radio broadcasting, print and
other media.

5. In Action Lines, Point 2 of the Non-Paper, there is a reference to
"working with the media to popularise the use of ICTs". We feel that
separating out media from ICTs is conceptually flawed, even if this is a
common practice when speaking about old and new forms of ICTs. We need to
recognise all information and communication tools that are used for the
purposes of information sharing, news delivery, public broadcasting,
knowledge transfer, entertainment and so forth.

6. We are seriously concerned about the way in which information security
is described in Action Line 7 of the document. While we recognise the new
challenges that emerge around security concerns with the advent of new
information and communications technologies, we believe that any attempt to
legislate around these concerns, such as "the elaboration of an
international convention on information and communication network security"
must not be at the expense of existing human rights and civil liberties
frameworks. In any deliberations of information security, the legal
principles of necessity, specificity, and proportionality must be upheld at
all costs.

7. Given that the WSIS is being held within the framework of the United
Nations where governments have ratified a range of treaties, declarations
and action plans, grounded in the firm principle of the universality, non
divisibility of human rights we are concerned with how fundamental freedoms
are being described/implied in the Non-Paper. While we recognise that this
is a conference whose main agenda is information and communications, we
need to ensure that at the level of principles that there will be an
upholding of ALL fundamental human rights. This would ensure that the
development of ICTs would be in line with other social development goals
that have been stated in previous UN conferences.

In light of the concerns raised in this letter, we strongly urge the ITU
WSIS Secretariat to ensure that the social dimensions of development are
emphasised. While we recognise that sustainable and equitable economic
development is a crucial element in the overall effort to bridge social
divides, we believe that many of the more entrenched socio-political
injustices cannot be redressed through economic or market-based
solutions. In many cases, social inequality and marginalisation have
historical and geo-political roots that need a high level of political will
to reexamine basic assumptions upon which our societies are founded.

We believe that using traditional and new ICTs as enabling tools towards
ensuring that all members of society benefit from economic growth based on
a holistic approach to all aspects of development: growth, equality between
women and men, social justice, conservation and protection of the
environment, sustainability, solidarity, participation, peace and respect
for human rights.

We thank once again for your leadership in beginning the process of our
discussions with the introduction of the Non-Paper. We look to the ITU
WSIS Secretariat to provide leadership and guidance to State parties in
ensuring that all negotiations and agreements made at the WSIS are based on
a reaffirmation to furthering commitments made at previous United Nations
conferences and summits.

We would be available, if you are interested, to meet with you and discuss
these issues further.

Yours sincerely

Association of Progressive Communication - Women's Networking Support
Programme
African Women's Development and Communication Network (FemNET)
Isis International - Manila
International Women's Tribune Centre (IWTC)
Margaret Gallagher, Media and Gender
William J. McIver, Jr., University at Albany, State University of New York,
USA
World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, Africa (AMARC Africa)
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_____________________________
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) is the oldest
non-profit, mass membership organization
working on social impacts of computer technology.

To learn more, go to http://www.cpsr.org [2]