Civil society representatives presented an 'alternative' declaration to the official Declaration expected to be approved by the world's governments tomorrow at the final day of the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva.

Source: Choike

Although during the opening ceremony statements were made in which concepts widely vindicated by civil society were included such as giving priority to human rights in all their expressions, it was clear from the official standpoint that at the centre of the Summit are issues related to information and communication technologies linked to the development of Internet.

Source: Choike

Once more in the WSIS process, civil society has had to face frustrations on finding the difficulties in carrying out their work in the exhibition hall where the summit meeting took place.

Source: Choike

The new versions of the Declaration of Principles and Action Plan proposed by the government were circulated on 9 December, and should be adopted by the plenary on 12 December. The various civil society caucuses are analyzing them to express their opinions regarding their content.

Speaking at Geneva Summit, Mark Malloch Brown -the head of the United Nations Development Programme- called the free flow of information essential to development and said press freedom "is not an optional extra" but a universal human right.

On Friday 12 governments formally and unanimously adopted the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action in their final plenary, after hearing a final set of interventions from multi-stakeholder parallel events, and receiving the Civil Society Declaration.

Source: Human Rights Caucus

The civil society Human Rights Caucus of the World Summit on the Information Society is relieved that a major setback in the international consensus on human rights has been avoided in the final declaration of Principles.

According to this article, in some respects civil society has been the main beneficiary of this event.It is the first time that CSOs have come together in such diversity and is such numbers from all over, to work together on information and communication issues.

Source: APCNews

The first victim of war is the truth, so goes the old proverb. At a conference yesterday in the World Forum on Communication Rights, a parallel forum to the official World Summit on the Information Society, speakers from the United States, Colombia, and a Kenyan technologist working in Rwanda took up the theme of how war situations deny communities the right to communicate and how citizens can and are responding to break the silence.

Mr. Bertrand Ramcharan addressed the World Summit on the Information Society held in Geneva. Read the full text of his statement.

President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, accompanied by the president of Botswana and the prime minister of Swaziland, declared December 12, 2004 as the first annual World Digital Solidarity Day.

The Forum is a four-day event at the end of which a declaration of indigenous peoples on the information society and a programme of action should be drafted.

Programme: Who owns information and knowledge? Who controls the production process? Who rules the circulation of knowledge, and in whose interests? Who is able to use it, and for what ends? Thursday 11th December 2003.

Adopted by the WSIS civil society plenary on 8 December 2003. Pdf format.

An international group of independent researchers attending the Word Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has revealed important technical and legal flaws, relating to data protection and privacy, in the security system used to control access to the UN Summit. The system not only fails to guarantee the promised high levels of security but also introduces the very real possibility of constant surveillance of the representatives of the civil society.

Community media demand real “access for all”. The “access for all” slogan rings hollow for community and alternative media groups at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Together with other civil society organisations, gathering in Geneva, they will reject the official Declaration and Action Plan to be negotiated at the United Nations sponsored summit.

APC Women's Networking Support Program (APCWNSP) celebrates it's 10th Anniversary this year, and will host a panel/discussion at the Summit to commemorate.

IPS news agency, with the support of HIVOS, is offering coverage of the WSIS from a multi-cultural, multi-lingual team of reporters in Geneva, with a news focus on the South and on civil society perspectives.

Press coverage on the last part of the WSIS process and its reactions in the media.

The Daily Summit is supported by the British Council Information Services. Provides information on the WSIS in English and Arab.

Articles from mainstream media, blogs and publicly archived mailing lists.

All summit events and messages, in several languages

Source: IPS

Share the benefits of information technology with the poorest countries and shape its use to fight illiteracy and poverty: this is the gist of appeals to rich countries and business organisations at the first global summit on information.

When typing in a web address (like www.ipsnews.net) or sending an e-mail, most people probably don't give much thought to how Internet domain names are assigned.

Source: IPS

The WSIS is proving a rara avis of international conferences in the sense that before it began all of the major controversies that emerged during the two years of preparations had largely been resolved.

Source: SUNS

Kanaga Raja

A lack of timely and comparable data on access to information and communications technologies (ICTs) is a major barrier to understanding the depth and causes of the digital divide or a gap in ICT access within and between richer and poorer countries, according to a report by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).