Highway Africa News Agency (Grahamstown)

December 10, 2003
Posted to the web December 10, 2003

Emrakeb Assefa
Geneva

In a move unprecedented in the United Nations' history, representatives of civil society and the private sector addressed leaders at the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva today. Stakeholders from government, business and civil society met on equal footing in a show of solidarity aimed at creating an information society for all.

For first time ever, over 60 heads of state and government listened to what two of the major stakeholders in their societies had to say about information access and bridging the digital divide. The new development reflects the recent transformation in the UN system that now welcomes civil society and private sector contributions to a Summit. Previously, such top level meetings were the exclusive domain of governments.

Kicki Nordström, the president of the World Blind Union, representing five million civil society organisations, told the leaders not to forget that they too are part of civil society. "When everything comes around, we are all part of the civil society, and when you, the government officials, go back home, you all become part of the society," she said.

She urged leaders to have an "open attitude" so that closer participation can "close the gap between the rich and the poor" with ICTs beginning to be used as a tool to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and economic development. "Unfortunately now, ICTs and their development are in the hands of either God Almighty or stupid people," Nordström noted.

Representing the private sector, Mohammad Omran, Chairman of Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications Company, and executive member of the Chambers of Commerce of International Businesses, stated that businesses are involved in the WSIS process and could not be sidelined. "Private companies have placed the world online, and business will not be at the margin but the heart of the WSIS," he stressed.

Speaking of the need to see more collaboration between governments and businesses, Omran said, "It is only when businesses and governments work together as partners that investment on massive scale in the ICT sector is possible."

He urged the governments to give protection to intellectual property rights because, he said, "without protecting ideas, there is no flow of information and its access to all".

The main interest of the private sector in WSIS is the Internet management and how it is going to be treated. "We are here to see whether there will be support given to an increased reliance on business or it is going government driven," he said.

Omran urged governments not to challenge the continuity of the leadership of the private sector in Internet management, arguing, "The existing system is not broken, so there is no need to fix it. If you do, you will only break it." He said the rapid growth of internet would be halted.

Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN agency responsible for organising the Summit, said on the digital divide, "I was tired of hearing the lament that New York has more telephone lines than the whole of Africa." He said the Summit is aimed as a means to stop the "lament" and said that there has already been some important progress made in this direction.

He echoed Kofi Anann's statement that the Summit is unique, because where most global conferences focus on global threats, this one is considering how best to use a new global asset. Utsumi highlighted the positive development achieved during the past four years in accessing ICTs.

He said in 1999, there were around 1.5 billion telephone lines world-wide; today, there are nearly 2.5 billion. "In the last four years we have added one billion lines to the 1.5 billion we had connected in all the years before. This is a remarkable achievement, especially as more than a 75% were installed in the developing world."

link: http://allafrica.com/stories/200312100327.html