A wide-ranging group of civil society organisations from around the globe has sent a letter to World Bank president Robert Zoellick urging him to open up the proposed Energy Strategy to another round of consultations. 'The Energy Sector Strategy has the potential to serve as a blueprint for low carbon, low impact clean energy scale up, while addressing the need of energy poor populations, which is an area of significant expertise and interest for a number of civil society organizations. Given that the
Energy Sector Strategy document will be significantly changed from the Approach Paper that previously underwent consultation, we believe it would be a mistake to not post the full Energy Sector Strategy document for consultation.'

ARTICLE 19 is very concerned by apparent efforts by the G8, led by French President Nicholas Sarkozy, to impose tighter controls of the Internet. ARTICLE 19 once again calls on all states, including G8 member states, not to violate their freedom of expression obligations by imposing unjustifiable restrictions on the Internet. They should instead follow the recommendations in the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom expression’s new report, which emphasise the applicability of international human right standards to the Internet.