Re: Fostering National Information Society Fora
Cc: Bertrand de LA CHAPELLE <[email protected]>, Anriette Esterhuysen
<[email protected]>, Jane JOHNSEN <[email protected]>, Karen BANKS
<[email protected]>, Ralf BENDRATH <[email protected]>, Renate
BLOEM <[email protected]>, Rik Panganiban <[email protected]>, Viola
Krebs <[email protected]>, Izumi AIZU <[email protected]>,
[email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected]
Bertrand,
The concept of national multistakeholder dialogs for WSIS was pushed by
Latin American civil society in its regional meeting declaration (Bavaro).
I know that some countries like Ecuador, Bolivia and Dominican Rep.,
for example, has pushed ahead the concept but I am not sure what is
the situation at the regional level. I agree that some level of
coordination is required both inside the region and between the regions.
For now I will circulate your mail in relevant discussion list and see
if it triggers some will to move ahead. We will then report.
Cordialmente,
At 09/12/2004 08:07 a.m., Bertrand de LA CHAPELLE wrote:
>Dear all,
>
>In December 2004, the WSIS Action Plan explicitly called for “the
>initiation at the national level of a structured dialogue involving all
>relevant stakeholders (paragraph C1 b).
>
>So far, no specific and coordinated action has been undertaken within the
>official process to implement this key resolution of the Summit and many
>governments are obviously reluctant to do so. Less than a year before the
>second phase in Tunis, it may be time to initiate, from the bottom up, a
>world-wide campaign to make this pledge a reality.
>
>The first phase of WSIS with its numerous meetings allowed major
>international civil society personal and institutional networks to meet
>and connect at the global level. You are among them and played a key role
>in the animation of civil society during the first phase and since then.
>
>You gather or are in contact with organizations or key individuals working
>at the national and local levels which do not necessarily know about each
>other but are already key convenors in their respective countries. They
>are the natural catalysts to facilitate connection between local actors
>and create a critical mass to remind governments of their Geneva commitments.
>
>I believe it would be useful to initiate early next year a grassroots
>effort to connect these different actors at the national level to explore
>the idea of National Information Society Fora and coordinate action in the
>perspective of the upcoming second phase. I know APC is already working in
>that direction.
>
>Concretely, the idea would be for you to invite in January the national
>contact points from each of your networks to meet at the national level.
>The purpose of these exploratory meetings would be to discuss how,
>according to local conditions, they could facilitate the formation of a
>National Information Society Forum and invite the participation of the
>other relevant local actors they are in relation with.
>
>How to leverage and expand existing online tools, and in particular the
>national portals set up with the help of APC, would also be a key topic
>for discussion.
>
>In this context, I am more than willing to facilitate such an effort by :
>- gathering the different lists of national contacts from your
>respective networks and sorting them on a country by country basis to
>facilitate your work,
>- by displaying the list of national contact points in a prominent
>way on the wsis-online platform and promoting the initiative in the most
>appropriate way
>
>This initiative could be presented in a more public form during the second
>preparatory conference in February to :
>- help develop it in countries where there is a lack of convenors
>within your networks
>- invite local stakeholders to contact their respective national
>animators to take part in the consultations
>
>The second PrepCom would also be the opportunity to review how other
>categories of stakeholders, including governments, local representations
>of international organizations and the private sector could be invited to
>join such Information Society Fora.
>
>Suggested next steps
>
>I eagerly await your comments on such an idea, amendments and suggestions.
>In particular I may be forgetting about key other networks that you would
>see as natural partners for such an endeavor. Or the time frame and
>methodology may be wrong. In addition, the articulation with the newly
>formed civil society working group on methodologies has to be
>discussed. Do you think this idea could be one of the topics it could
>discuss ?
>
>In any case and if you find this idea worth pursuing, I am ready to
>aggregate and sort lists of national contact points (or use existing ones
>on your respective web sites) for you to use at the beginning of January.
>
>I hope this effort at a pragmatic approach will be of interest to you all
>and am looking forward to discussing it further.
>
>Best
>Bertrand
Este archivo fue generado por hypermail 2.1.3 : Tue Jan 4 10:02:49 2005 AST