UN Chronicle
By John R. Jr. Gagain
June-August, 2003

It seems the combination of Kofi Annan as Secretary-General of the United Nations and the various UN conferences during the 1990s has been a good thing for the participation of civil society in the activities of the UN system. That said, however, it did take the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) for a more formal breakthrough--the establishment of the Civil Society Bureau as an integral part of the WSIS.

The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, saw the participation of over 20,000 individuals from various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other elements of civil society. At the Summit, officially known as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the need to create a place for the civil society and business sectors to interact with the United Nations became clear, especially given the effects that such borderless issues as the environment and development have on all of us.

UNCED drafted an agenda for the twenty-first century: Agenda 21. The outcome included the classification of nine "major groups"--women, children and youth, indigenous people, NGOs, local authorities, trade unions, business and industry, the scientific and technological community, and farmers. They now participate regularly in the UN Commission on Sustainable Development through a mechanism commonly referred to as the "multi-stakeholder dialogue"; this includes representatives of Governments, civil society and the private sector with a stake or interest in the issues or problems confronting society. However, certain longtime civil society enthusiasts have described the multi-stakeholder dialogue as "frosting without the cake".

The World Summit on Sustainable Development [WSSD] in Johannesburg in August 2002 could be considered a case in point. Tens of thousands of civil society participants and NGOs convened for the ten-year review of the Earth Summit. The WSSD placed a limit on the amount of interaction possible between NGOs and Governments, with daily tickets needed to get into the Sandton Convention Center that housed the negotiations. It was not until the last day--the final hours of the Summit--that the multi-stakeholder dialogue was able to take place between government delegations and the hopeful youth, business, trade unions and NGOs who had travelled across the world to contribute to changing this planet on which we all live. The general sentiments of civil society representatives could be summed up as: "So the Governments would like us to come in and invigorate them in order to bring a positive outlook and hope to all of their failed commitments and lack of political will."

The WSSD was by no means a failure. In fact, many significant outcomes and collaborative partnerships came about as a result of the Summit. It just never made the breakthrough the world so desperately needed with respect to integrating civil society.

If the Johannesburg Summit could not do it, there is at least hope that the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society can. The WSIS will take place in two phases: the first from 10 to 12 December 2003 in Geneva, and the second from 16 to 18 November 2005 in Tunis.

According to UN figures, over 1.5 million villages worldwide remain unconnected to the information society, and one third of the world's population has never even made a telephone call, in this age of interdependence and globalization. This year's Summit plans to address this problem, more commonly referred to as the "digital divide", by bridging citizens from all corners of the world and giving them a seat at the negotiating table. And the WSIS Preparatory Committee, which met from 17 to 28 February 2003 in Geneva, took the step for which civil society had so desperately yearned. Over 2,000 leaders, including NGOs and other civil society actors, approved the proposal to create the Civil Society Bureau--a commission of their elected colleagues who will serve to facilitate civil society participation while also channelling their ideas, proposals and work to the Governments, which also have their own bureau.

The breakthrough is due, in part, to the fact that the Civil Society Bureau was created early in the game. Far too often, civil society proposals do not get addressed until a summit convenes, and that is often too late to make a real difference in the final declaration or plan of action that is adopted. The creation of the Bureau demonstrates, perhaps for the first time in human history, that civil society has made the effort and had the fortitude to organize itself on a large scale, reserve its place at the negotiating table and channel the ideas of the many NGOs and civil society networks that have burgeoned since the early 1990s.

The recent world forums of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the G-8 and the World Economic Forum, held in cities like Seattle, Genoa and Davos, have at times become sites of violent protests. Today, the Geneva and Tunis process of the WSIS shows civil society in a different light. No longer could, or should, civil society organizations be stereotyped as the "lost voices that were forced to roar"; it is now time to "hear them speak, as they pull up a chair". The Governmental Bureau, which is created at every such summit and is selected on a regional basis, at last has its civil society counterpart.

Source: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1309/is_2_40/ai_105657566