World Summit on the Information Society

3 August 2003

Civil Society Priorities Document: (3 August 2003)
Revised version released for consultation in preparation for PrepCom-3.

WSIS - Civil Society Working Group on Content and Themes

Civil society organisations involved in the World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS) process consider it to offer a unique
framework at the international level, where visions can be shared
among a variety of stakeholders and cultures and where basic
agreements on future policies could emerge.

Given the breadth and complexity of the issues involved, an integral
vision of information and communication societies is essential. A
partial approach is likely to result in policies that could further
deepen both digital and social divides or that could exacerbate other
negative impacts that are emerging.

Despite the wide range of thoughtful responses to the WSIS draft
documents civil society organisations remain concerned that several
key areas are inadequately addressed or have not achieved consensus.

This document is based on that presented on behalf of the Civil
Society Working Group on Content and Themes to the Intersessional
Meeting in Paris on 15 July 2003. It incorporates further amendments
on human rights and disability. The document sets out those issues
that constitute priorities for civil society.

This document is released, without further endorsement, as a
consultative paper. Comments, to be received by 22 August 2003, will
assist the drafting of a new civil society statement for Prepcom 3.

Human rights

An information and communication society that has people and human
needs at its centre should be based on human rights and human dignity.
As stated by more than 170 governments at the World Conference on
Human Rights in 1993 in Vienna, human rights are universal,
indivisible, interrelated and interdependent, and their protection is
the first responsibility of governments. Since the advent of
information and communication technologies offers both opportunities
and threats for those rights, governments should reaffirm and fulfill
their commitment in this new context where many human rights enshrined
in international law encounter specific challenges.

The WSIS should recognize the centrality of all human rights ­ civil,
political, economic, social and cultural ­ to democracy, the rule of
law, and sustainable development. Therefore, human rights should
figure prominently throughout both the Declaration of Principles and
the Plan of Action, and WSIS should concentrate its efforts on
devising concrete strategies to see that the rights recognized in
international law are effectively implemented.

The WSIS should promote the development of an enabling environment
where national and international ICT policy and legislation are
implemented with due respect for human rights principles. Similarly,
the WSIS should refer to improvement of human rights standards, such
as human and social development, democracy, participation in the
communication process and access to information, as focus points for
setting goals and measures for progress.

We urge government delegates to retain reference to the international
bill of human rights as a whole and in particular to rights that make
possible new platforms for real community-based and people-centered
communications. These should be called communication rights and are of
immediate and direct concern to the development of inclusive
information and knowledge societies.

Sustainable democratic development

An equitable Information Society must be based on sustainable economic
and social development and democratic principles. Information and
Communication Technologies (ICTs) have great potential for developing
more democratic, transparent and participative processes of
governance, from the local to the international level, which should be
more explicitly supported in the Action Plan. But technologies also
have the potential of enabling the perpetuation and expansion of
existing, undemocratic power relations and inequalities within and
between peoples and nations. Democratic and sustainable development
of the information society can therefore not be left solely to market
forces; in order to balance commercial objectives with legitimate
social interests, recognition should be given to the need for
appropriate regulation and development of public services, and the
principle of equitable access to services and affordable cost should
be reaffirmed.

Communities must also be empowered to develop their own productive
forces within the information society, in particular to participate in
its development and sustenance through fully democratic processes that
allow them to share control of the decision making around economic,
cultural, environmental, and other issues regarding ICT-based
projects.

The action plan should address proposals to support community-based
communications using both traditional and new media and communication
technologies and to develop and nurture the discipline of community
informatics, which responds to the particular characteristics and
needs of communities, in relation to design, development, deployment,
and operation of ICTs, as well as local content production.

ICTs should be used as an instrument for the creation of genuine and
sustainable sources of work, thus providing new labor opportunities,
above all for those who have been excluded from the formal employment
system, as well as those affected by labor discrimination, such as the
disabled and vulnerable groups (including those infected with HIV, the
elderly, former drug addicts, former prisoners, ex-servicemen).

ICTs can contribute to sustainability, but their use is also creating
new environmental hazards. In view of mainstreaming ICTs into
sustainable development, the action plan should include concrete
proposals and policies to: develop renewable energy resources,
particularly for remote communities; improve resource efficiency;
dematerialize and reduce waste; increase the useful life of hardware;
improve recycling conditions, ensure safe disposal of discarded ICT
hardware and parts and encourage the development of alternatives to
toxic ICT components.

Global knowledge commons

The Declaration should include, as a principle and theme, the
maintenance and growth of the commonwealth of human knowledge as a
means of reducing global inequality and of providing the conditions
for intellectual creativity, sustainable development and respect for
human rights. The privatisation of knowledge and information through
copyright, patents and trademarks is ceasing to be an effective means
of rewarding creative endeavour or encouraging innovation. Instead it
is contributing to the growth of inequality and the exploitation of
the poorest peoples and communities.

The Action Plan must defend and extend the global knowledge commons,
through public policy and investment in open source and open content,
including both applications and human capacity development, as well as
through access to public communication platforms for sharing of
knowledge and information. The Action Plan should commit to a
fundamental review of the impact on poverty and human rights of
current arrangements for recognition and governance of privately held
knowledge and information, including the work of WIPO and the
functioning of the TRIPS agreement.

The Action Plan must recognize the pivotal role of people living in
extreme poverty in the dialogue between all parties, contributing
their experience and knowledge. It should give particular attention
to measures to maintain knowledge diversity and to protect the
knowledge pool of indigenous peoples, especially botanical and
agricultural knowledge, against "information mining" and other unfair
exploitation.

Literacy, Education, and Research

Literacy, education and research are fundamental components of
information and knowledge societies. Knowledge creation and
acquisition should be nurtured as a participatory and collective
process and not considered a one-way flow. But only an informed and
educated citizenry with access to the means and outputs of pluralistic
research can fully participate in and effectively contribute to
knowledge societies.

Urgent attention should be paid to the potential positive and negative
impacts of ICTs on the issues of illiteracy in national and
international languages of the great majority of the world's people.
Literacy, education, and research efforts in the Information Society
must include a focus on the needs of people who have physical
impairments and the elderly.

The action plan should devote attention to the tools, facilities and
resources that enable lifelong learning. Capacity building designed
to empower individuals and communities in the Information Society must
include, in addition to just basic literacy and ICT skills,
information literacy (i.e. the ability to find, appraise, use and
create information) and should stimulate the desire for learning.
Publicly funded and independent writing and research, in all parts of
the world, are essential for building a pluralistic and diverse body
of knowledge. Gender sensitive educational programmes and appropriate
learning environments including e-learning must be developed to
increase women's access to education and employment.

Computer and information science professionals must be encouraged to
perform the continuous task of educating the public about both the
social risks and benefits of existing and emerging technologies within
the information society.

Governments should invest in nation-wide "backbones" providing access
to scientific, cultural and educational information covering all
categories of inhabitants, with support through continuous programs
for research and development of educational resources and services.

Cultural and linguistic diversity

The Declaration should adopt as a statement of principle the need to
respect cultural and linguistic diversity. Communications media and
information technologies have a particularly important role to play in
sustaining and developing the world's cultures and languages. The
implementation of this principle requires support for a plurality of
means of information and communication including community-driven
communications initiatives.

The Action Plan should promote legislative, regulatory, technological
and financial measures to support communications media and information
pluralism; and should allow for specific safeguards against the
concentration of media ownership in either corporate or government
hands. It should reinforce rights of access to the media and the
means of information and expression for all peoples, including
indigenous peoples and other discriminated groups as well as other
linguistic and cultural minorities. The Action Plan should support the
development of public service broadcast media including community
media.

The Action Plan should support new information and communication
technologies, which can reinforce cultural and linguistic diversity
through, for example, translation, voice recognition and other means
of transcending cultural and linguistic barriers.

Gender

Evidence of governments' commitment to gender equality and women's
empowerment remain largely absent from the WSIS Agenda.

The Declaration must adopt as a statement of principle a fundamental
commitment to gender equality, non-discrimination and women's
empowerment, and recognize these as non-negotiable and essential
prerequisites to an equitable and people-centred development within
the Information Society.

To advance gender equality and women's empowerment in the Information
society, the Action Plan must demonstrate commitment to redress the
effects of the intersection of unequal power relations in the social,
economic and political spheres, which manifests in differential
access, choice, opportunity, participation, status and control over
resources between women and men as well as communities in terms of
class, ethnicity, religion, race, geographical location and
development status.

The Action Plan should endorse the call of gender and ICT advocates
for the development of governance and policy frameworks, the setting
of quantitative and qualitative targets, programmes, activities,
applications and tools, and a system of monitoring and evaluation
which would redress shortcomings of current gender mainstreaming
approaches.

"Information security"

Existing policies on information security often impinge unnecessarily
upon the rights of individuals, and may be technologically and
economically problematic. The Declaration should contain, as a
statement of principle, that the informed involvement of all
stakeholders is an essential component to the development of any
policy at the local, national, and international levels.

The action plan must address efforts to create a culture of security
and confidence in technological, economic, and legal issues that help
to ensure a technologically reliable infrastructure. This includes
calling for education and open discourse, inventories of recommended
best practices (such as OECD privacy guidelines and the European
Parliament Committee proposal for a Council Framework Decision on
attacks against information systems) and impact assessments of
potential policies.

The lack of civil liberties consideration in many existing national
and international frameworks and conventions makes these solutions
inappropriate including current trends in increased surveillance,
monitoring, data-retention, mining and profiling. The action plan
should include a call for developing means through which local and
international stakeholders can ensure equitable and just protection of
rights as international legal solutions are devised.

We oppose calls by some governments to support the Council of Europe's
Cybercrime Convention or models based on the convention. Civil society
organisations have been working for a number of years to educate and
inform the convention's development to little avail and are now
opposing its ratification because of its overly broad mandate, its
insensitivity to local issues and its disregard for civil liberties.

The WSIS should also recognize that one of the greatest threats to
"information security" lies in the militarization of information
space, including the development and deployment of "infowar"
technologies and techniques; the deployment of military software or
hardware against civilian communications systems; the domination of
satellite orbits for military purposes; and the purposeful destruction
of civilian communication systems during conflicts in violation of
international law. The WSIS should encourage the foundations for a
future Convention against Information Warfare to address these
concerns.

Access and infrastructure

Global universal access to communication and information should be a
target of the WSIS action plan. The expansion of the information
infrastructure should be based on recognition of a universal right to
communicate and principles of equality and partnership and guided by
regulation at both national and international levels. The integration
of access, infrastructure and training of the citizenry and the
generation of local content, in a framework of social networks and
clear public or private policies, is a key basis for the development
of egalitarian and inclusive information societies. The evolution of
policy should be coordinated internationally but enable a diversity of
appropriate solutions based on national and regional input and
international sharing of information and resources. This should be
people-centered and process-orientated, rather than technologically
determined and expert dominated.

International bandwidth costs and allocation of spectrum and geo-
stationary positions should be equitable and the current burdens of
cost unfairly weighted to under-developed contexts must be eliminated.

National access and infrastructure plans must address the divide
between socio-economic groups and between urban and rural areas.
People with disabilities and others who require special consideration
in terms of accessibility such as the elderly should have access to
appropriate equipment and services. Governments should be encouraged
to ensure democratic management of radio frequencies, including access
for community media.

Free/open source software that enables access and the development of
capacity should be an essential component of all communications roll
out plans. Governments should be encouraged to adopt free/open source
software as far as possible, since their use of proprietary software
is both economically unsustainable and compromising in terms of
transparency and security.

WSIS should agree to draw up an International Convention on a policy
of subsidized tariffs and prices for digital inclusion public policies
and projects, and of the fair renegotiation of bilateral network
interconnections and multilateral peering agreements, towards better
balanced and lower cost international route, Internet bandwidth and
hub repartition.

Specific needs and requirements of all stakeholders, especially those
with disabilities, must be considered in ICT design and development.
Accessibility and inclusiveness of ICTs is best done at the earliest
stage of design, development and production, so that the information
society is to become the society for all, at the minimum cost.

Whenever such approach may not be readily achievable under any
circumstances, all attempts must be made to ensure that information
content, methods of communication and ICTs will be accessible to
persons with diverse types of disabilities and/or needs.

Global ICT Governance

In an information and communication society, good governance must be
based on the values of participation, inclusiveness, transparency and
accountability. This particularly implies the democratic management
of international bodies dealing with ICTs. Given the borderless
characteristics of ICTs, decision-making bodies should respect the
principles of democracy and openness as well as sovereignty.

In particular, the management of the core resources of the Internet,
that are the Internet protocols, standards and identifiers such as
domain names and IP addresses, must serve the public interest at the
global, national and local levels. Furthermore, any decision made on
protocols and standards should be compatible with international human
rights standards articulated in the International Bill of Rights (i.e.
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights; and the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), and specially the rights to
freedom of expression, to privacy, and the principle of non-
discrimination. Such decisions should also allow for a better-balanced
flow of information.

Attention to other regional and international processes

Finally, we wish to draw the attention of the different stakeholders
active in the WSIS process to a major risk. Essential decisions are
already being taken, in other regional and international political
arenas that may not be consistent with the vision and values
elaborated at this Summit.

Work in progress of supra-national organisations su