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Outline of the WSIS process
Tafadzwa A. Mumba, National Information Officer, United Nations Information Centre
October 21, 2004

This paper was presented at the National ICT Conference, Harare Holiday Inn

The Director for Gender in the Ministry of Youth Development, Gender and Employment Creation, Ms Juru, the Chairperson of the Board of EKOWIZA, Dr Mbambo, UNIFEM Representative, Ms Manzini, government representatives, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great pleasure for me to be here to discuss what is a very important topic nationally and internationally, that of Information Communication technologies. My specific task however, is to give you an outline of the WSIS Process.

The World Summit on the Information Society was organized by the United Nations, with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) as the lead agency.

The Summit is being held in two phases, providing a unique opportunity for the international community to address questions about the Information Society in a comprehensive manner, and to ensure that the benefits of new technologies, especially Information and Communication Technologies, are available to all.

The first phase of WSIS took place in Geneva hosted by the Government of Switzerland from 10 to 12 December 2003. The second phase will take place in Tunis hosted by the Government of Tunisia, from 16 to 18 November 2005.

Geneva
Two preparatory Conferences were held in preparations for the Geneva phase. The first meeting of the Preparatory Committee for WSIS (PrepCom-1) took place in Geneva from 1-5 July 2002. The second Preparatory Committee meeting took place in Geneva from 17-28 February 2003.

Regional Summits were held throughout the world. The African regional summit was held 25-30 May 2002 in Bamako (Mali)

Outcomes
The Geneva Summit was attended by 174 countries, among them at least 34 Heads of States or Government. The Summit addressed the broad range of themes concerning the Information Society and adopted a Declaration of Principles for Building the Global Information Society and a Plan of Action. 

The Declaration provides the road map to an inclusive process and describes the common vision, challenges and key principles for an information society for all. It was agreed at the Summit that the building of an Information Society should be premised on the principles of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Declaration declares signatory states’ desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life, premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It reaffirms, as outlined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; that this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Furthermore, the Declaration includes commitments on the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) for women’s empowerment, and the need to pay attention to the needs of vulnerable and marginalized groups as regards ICTs.

The Declaration recognizes the role of the various stakeholders and players, including Governments, the private sector, civil society and the United Nations. It urges Governments to create policies that result in a favourable climate for stability, predictability and fair competition at all levels.

The common vision and guiding principles of the Declaration are translated into a Plan of Action, whose objectives are to build an inclusive Information Society; to put the potential of knowledge and ICTs at the service of development; to promote the use of information and knowledge for the achievement of internationally agreed development goals, including those contained in the United Nations Millennium Declaration; and to address new challenges of the Information Society at the national, regional and international levels.

The Plan of Action defines the role of Governments and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development, and encourages countries to establish at least one functioning Public/Private Partnership or Multi-Sector Partnership by the year 2005. The Plan also deals with the issue of infrastructure, the need to broaden access to orbital resources, the provision of global high-speed satellite services for remote and sparsely populated areas, as well as global frequency harmonization and global systems standardization.

Governments and other stakeholders are encouraged to establish sustainable multi-purpose community public access points, providing affordable access for their citizens to the various communications resources, notably the Internet. Domestic policies should be developed to ensure that ICTs are fully integrated in education and training at all levels, in support of the concept of lifelong learning. The gender barriers to ICT education and training should be removed and equal training opportunities for women and girls in ICT-related fields promoted.

To maximize the social, economic and environmental benefits of the Information Society, Governments need to create a trustworthy, transparent and non-discriminatory legal, regulatory and political environment. The United Nations Secretary-General was asked to set up a Working Group on Internet Governance and make proposals for actions by the year 2005.

The Working Group should develop a working definition of Internet governance and identify the public policy issues relevant to Internet governance. It should also develop a common understanding of the respective roles and responsibilities of Governments, intergovernmental and international organisations and other fora, as well as the private sector and civil society both in developing and developed countries.

The Action Plan further deals with issues like E-government, E-business, E-learning, E-health, E-employment, E-environment, E-agriculture and E-science.

TUNIS Phase
WSIS Tunis is due to be held in 2005. Two prep-Coms are planned for this Phase.

PrepCom 1 was held in June 2004 and had the task of defining:

• The issues of the information society that should form the focus of the Tunis Summit
• The shape the outcome of the Tunis Summit should take
• The way to reach the goals set in the Geneva Action Plan

Based on this it was agreed that the focus of the preparatory process to the Tunis phase should be two-pronged: it should provide solutions on how to implement and follow-up the Geneva decisions (Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action) by stakeholders at national, regional and international levels with particular attention to the challenges facing Least Developed Countries and it should complete the unfinished business in Geneva on internet Governance and Banking.

The second prep-com will take place in Geneva from 17-25 February 2005. In order to pave the way for the negotiations in PrepCom2, the President of the PrepCom along with delegations, regional groups and the WSIS Executive Secretariat will prepare a document to serve as a basis for the discussions, taking into account the outcome of thematic, regional and other WSIS-related meetings.

The Second conference will be held in Tunisia in 2005.

Anticipated Outcomes
At this Conference, it is possible that some sort of political statement will be produced, probably in the form of a Tunis Commitment or a Tunis Commitment.

The Geneva Plan of Action could be modified, or even completely scrapped as some commentators believe it is far too vague to be a real plan of action. It is believed that a new Tunis Plan of Action is needed to come up with more details.

The WSIS is unique in the context of UN Summits in that it is taking place in two phases. It is also unique in that there are no plans for follow-up summits in the mould of Rio plus 10 or Beijing plus five. As the situation stands, there are no plans for a WSIS plus five or ten yet many goals have been set in the Plan of Action to coincide with the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.

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