Western
leaders snub World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis
By
Marion Lefebvre,
M2JPI 05/06
The
World summit on the information society (WSIS), high UN mass to struggle against the North-South
digital fracture, took place in Tunis from this 16 to 18 november. The stakes
of the meeting - total access to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Internet governance-
didn’t suffice to unite the international community, which has harshly
criticized the organization of an Information Summit in a country where the
press is severely muzzled, even though
Kofi Annan recently declared that “the information society is inconceivable
without freedom”.
Flagrant disparities
The main
objective of the Summit : to connect every villages in the world to
Intenet in 2015. According to UN rates, almost 20% of the world’s population
access 80% of the world’s computers, 80% of Internet users represent 20% of the
world’s population and 30% of the world’s villages don’t have any access to the
tools of Information and Communication Technology (ICTs). The 942 million
inhabitants of “The developed countries” have five times more phone services,
nine times more access to Internet, and thirteen times more computers than 85%
of the inhabitants of “The developing countries”.
The question of
Internet governance was also at the crux of the discussions. Even so, before
the international meeting, the United-States managed to obtain the continuation
of current status of the “Internet corporation for assigned names and numbers”(Icann)- the Californian company in
charge of ascribing “domain names” such as .com, .org, .fr - even though the majority
of participating countries would have preferred to impose an international
structure over Icann, which is closely overseen by the US administration.
Between hope and
disappointment
Despite the
difference of opinion, some concrete decisions were in the offing. Besides the
adoption, during the Forum, of the principle of the creation of the Numerical
Solidarity Fund, which has already been operational for a few months, the
international community proposed the launching of a computer costing a hundred
dollars for children. The International Union of Telecommunicacion (IUT) tabled
the motion to connect 800,000 African communities to the Internet by 2015. The
Tunis Commitment asserted its “resolution in the quest
to ensure that everyone can benefit from the opportunities that ICTs can offer,
by recalling that governments, as well as private sector, civil society and the
United Nations and other international organisations, should work together to :
improve access to information and communication infrastructure and technologies
as well as to information and knowledge; build capacity; increase confidence
and security in the use of ICTs. […] The ICT revolution can have a tremendous
positive impact as an instrument of sustainable development.”
The participants also
planned the creation of a World Forum to bring together governements, states,
organizations and components of Civil Society to discuss the regulation of the
Internet.
M. Montassar Ouaili, the Tunisian Minister of
Communication Technology, emphasized that “ the Summit, which lived up to
the whole expectations of participating countries, ended on a positive
assessement and, will constitute, in fact, a historical event and a major term
for the whole of humanity, on the way to the reduction of the digital fracture
and the edification of an information
society in symbiosis with the Millenium objectives”. Under the same
impetus, the president of the International League of Journalists for Africa
(ILJA), M. Mbougueng, noted that the Tunis Summit “lived up to the
expectations of all Africans regarding the reduction of the digital divide.”
However, out of the fifty Heads of State expected at
the Tunis Summit, only around twenty came. Perhaps they had been embarrassed by
the choice of Tunis as the world capital of information, no western leader
actually attended the biggest international meeting ever organised by the UN.
On the occasion of the World summit on the
information society, Reporters without borders established a list of the
fifteen “Internet enemies” and ten or so countries whose politics concerning
Internet is declared worrying. These fifteen “enemies” are the most repressive
countries for freedom of speech on line: they censure independent News sites
and the publications of the opposition, keep watch over the Net in order to
silence dissident voices, harass, intimidate and sometimes jail internet users
who stray from the official line. Besides Saudi Arabia, the Republic of
Belarus, Burma,China, North Corea, Cuba, Iran, Libya, the Maldives, Nepal,
Uzbekistan, Syria, Turkmenistan and Vietnam, Tunisia, the seat of the Summit,
figures as one of “Internet’s enemies”. Human Rights Watch highlight that the
Tunis regime is continuing to jail people who express their opinions on
Internet and block access to websites critical towards the governement. In its
attempt to control the information flows, Tunisia is in flagrant contradiction
with its own declaration of principles at the Summit and with international
commitments for freedom of speech and expression.