Update on the WSIS prepcom meeting in Tunisia

[Andy Carvin <ACarvin@EDC.ORG>]

Hi everyone,

I've just returned from a week in Tunisia, attending the first planning
meeting, or Prepcom, of the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society
(WSIS), which the United Nations will organize in Tunis a year from this
November. It was a very hectic, occasionally dramatic meeting; while the
meeting itself was mostly about coming to a consensus on how future
prepcom meetings will be used to plan the actual WSIS summit, we had a bit
of a crisis when the Tunisian government tried to block one of our
delegates, a representative from the Tunisian Human Rights League, from
speaking to government representatives from over 120 countries about human
rights, free expression, and the Internet. A few days previous to that,
she had been interviewed for a NY Times story on Internet repression in
Tunisia:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/25/international/africa/25tuni.html

 The crisis ramped up a notch when Tunisian delegates swarmed the civil
society meeting room as we tried to resolve the situation, blocking us
from reaching a solution to the situation. Meanwhile, I blogged the entire
crisis, including posting several videos to the Internet, documenting how
the meetings were effectively being hijacked. At the last minute, just
when we were preparing to lodge a formal protest, the president of the
Prepcom announced the human rights activist would indeed be allowed to
speak, which she did a few minutes later in the plenary hall, which was
now packed standing-room-only with delegates and the media.

Additionally, I convened a group of civil society activists, private
sector representatives and government delegates to discuss the possibility
of creating a working group on telecenters and the information society,
which would also address issues such as the importance of libraries and
community networks as strategic tools in bridging the digital divide. In
the coming weeks we'll be creating a discussion list to begin identifying
strategies, goals and partners for our work. I'll email the list with
details once it's organized.

I've written extensively on both of these things, particularly the human
rights standoff, on my blog, which can be accessed here:

http://www.edwebproject.org/andy/blog/


Lastly, here's the URL of an article that sums up the official business
that took place at the meeting:

http://tinyurl.com/2r2db

Please feel free to contact me off-list if you have any questions.

thanks,
ac


-------------------------------------------------
Andy Carvin
Program Director
EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin @ edc . org
http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org
-------------------------------------------------

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