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. The Community Media Caucus has already made public a declaration in which it rejects the proposed documents because they do not take into account inputs by civil society regarding the importance of community media in the construction of a truly democratic information society. On the contrary, the official documents promote the vision of communication based on market values. The declaration by the Community Media Caucus maintains that “in spite of the official rhetoric of ‘universal access’ the community media are not to be found in the WSIS official texts. For this reason, the community media working groups, together with other social organizations represented at the WSIS, do not support the official declaration and action plan.”

As the result of a lengthy process of debates in which various civil society organizations involved in WSIS took part, a document was obtained expressing the vision of these organizations regarding the information society, independently from the documents proposed by the governments. This declaration was adopted at a plenary meeting of civil society on Monday and will be officially presented on 11 December at a Press Conference. The civil society organizations signing the declaration will endeavour to have it considered as an official result of the summit meeting, together with the documents prepared by the governments.

More information:
>>Official documents

>>Up-dated information from civil society