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African civil society participation at Tunisia PrepCom1 critically low
By Emrakeb Assefa - Highway Africa News Agency
June 23, 2004

YASMINE HAMMAMET, TUNISIA - Civil Society Organizations (CSO) attending the First Preparatory Committee (PrepCom1) meeting of the Tunis Phase of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) expressed today a deep concern over the low level of African participation in the meeting.

"Representation of African civil society organizations is very poor, and the number is so minimal as to be non-existent," Baguma Tinkasimier Richard, General Secretary of United Nations Association of Uganda, said, noting that attending such meetings would be too expensive for most African NGOs. He was one among the four sub-Saharan African NGOs currently participating in the Civil Society caucus meeting, a pre-event to the PrepCom1 which will open tomorrow here in Hammamet, Tunisia.

Charles Geiger, deputy executive director of the WSIS Executive Secretariat also voiced a similar concern and blamed a lack of funding for the low African attendance in the PrepCom one.

Geiger said, "We were concerned over the low level of participation from Africa in the previous WSIS in Switzerland. But we are more worried now because it has reached a critical point." He believes the level of African participation in the Tunisia phase would be even lower because Switzerland, the host country of the first phase of WSIS, no longer provided financial support to NGOs.

Meanwhile, Moncef Achour, seconded by the Tunisian government to serve as Civil Society liaison with WSIS Executive Secretariat, admitted that African participation was indeed limited, but his government is doing its level best to overcome the financial problem. He promised that by PrepCom Two, which is scheduled to take place in February, more finance would be made available to the African NGOs to a grater representation.

The difficulty for African participants in the Tunisia Phase has been further exacerbated by the practical problem of travelling. Several African delegates arriving in Tunisia complained of the time consuming and exhausting travel they had to endure in order to reach Tunisia.

"I have to travel over three continents before reaching Tunisia," Baguma Tinkasimier Richard complained, stating that on leaving Uganda he had to make a 30-hour trip via Nairobi, Dubai and Paris. "Yet, Tunisia is on the same continent as my country Uganda."

The PrepCom 1 is the first of a series of PrepCom meetings to be held ahead of the Second Phase of WSIS scheduled to be take place in mid November in Tunis. WSIS is the first UN Summit to be held in two phases to address the issue of Information Society. The First Phase, which was held from 10-12 December 2003 in Geneva, Switzerland, closed with governments endorsing declaration of principles and plan of action, documents aiming to address the issue of bridging the digital divide between developing and developed world.

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