The right to communicate is not just a legal-juridical issue. All over the world, rights that are already legally recognized are daily being thwarted and violated, whether in the name of economic development, the fight against terrorism or political stability. Present threats to this right vary from outright censorship to monopolistic concentration in the communications field; from the imposition of a single cultural model to international pressures to deregulate the industry and privatize the airwaves.
Civil Society organizations working in different fields of action are joining forces in their struggle to achieve a genuine democratization of information. These organizations work on a range of different issues, such as freedom of expression and information exchange, diversity of content, ownership and control, user rights, intellectual property, privacy and security, Internet governance, and rights awareness, but they all have in common the understanding that it is people’s interests and needs, over and above market forces and technologies, that should be driving the societal changes being shaped in the so-called "information society". Their common experience and all other evidence show that this will be an uphill struggle, that a much broader movement of social forces is needed to make headway in bringing about significant changes in current trends.
Priorities in the work towards an effective right to communicate include strengthening the public domain in the communications field so that information and knowledge are available for human development; ensuring affordable access and effective use of electronic networks in a development context; securing and extending the global commons for both broadcast and telecommunication; and supporting community and people-centred media.
