Bahá’í World/Volume 32/World Summit on the Information Society
World Summit on the Information Society[edit]
Representatives of the Bahá’í International Community contributed to the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, Switzerland, 10–12 December 2003.
From mobile phones to online universities, the “information age” is one in which the dominant questions become those of access: where is the information, and who can get to it? But the broader question of who will get to decide those answers when it comes to information and communication technologies (ICTs) is still unsettled. The needs of both governments and individuals must be weighed, and the potential benefits are often offset by problems such as an imbalance in resource distribution and the impromptu governance of Internet standards.
To address these and other challenges, and to explore opportunities presented by the rapid growth of ICTs, the United Nations organized the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The summit was hailed by many participants and observers as a change of direction for the United Nations, owing to the gathering’s broad focus on emerging technologies, which cut across many issues in the global arena.
Scheduled as a two-phase event, the first part of the summit took place in Geneva, Switzerland, 10–12 December 2003; the second phase is planned for 2005 in Tunisia.
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At the opening in Geneva, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke about the scale of change that the conference encompassed. “We are going through a historic transformation in the way we live, learn, work, communicate, and do business,” he said. “We must do so not passively, but as makers of our own destiny. Technology has produced the information age. Now it is up to all of us to build an information society.”
Fifty-four government leaders and 83 ministers from some 176 countries came together for the summit, in addition to thousands of members of civil society, whose participation represented a dramatic shift in operation from previous conferences.
Members of NGOs and other civic organizations have always played a part at UN conferences, but for the first time participants focused their energies on lobbying and interaction at the summit venue itself instead of being relegated to a separate NGO forum. More than 11,000 civil society representatives collaborated in negotiating sessions at preparatory committee meetings and were given a chance to address items under discussion on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis. Governments were willing to allow civil society representatives into their negotiating sessions because of a de facto compromise that defined civil society as collaborators instead of critics in the summit’s process.
The structure of the conference also forced civil society to distill its comments and present an operational consensus. “For governments, instead of 3,000 interlocutors, they had one,” said Louise Lassonde, coordinator of the Civil Society Division of the WSIS Secretariat. “And so the governments were more willing to say to civil society that we recognize you as a partner, that we recognize that you have good advice, and so we accept that you can sit in the governmental meeting.”
Central Issues[edit]
Interactions between civil society and governments were important in expanding the initial focus of the summit from concentrating on technical issues to including ways that the technologies might be used for social and economic advancement.
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One of the summit’s major issues was the way in which the Internet is governed and whether the United Nations should be more active in legislation and regulation. There is currently no real governance over the Internet. Management is carried out by a loose network of nonprofit corporations and boards that set technical standards, though compliance constitutes little more than politeness for most of these.
The interests of nations differed greatly in their desires for greater Internet governance. The Minister of Information for China called for action to “prevent the use of information technologies and resources for pornographic, violent, and terrorist purposes as well as for criminal activities endangering national security so as to ensure the healthy development of information and networks.”
Meanwhile, other countries stressed freedom of expression. Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva said in an official statement, “We want the global information society to be based on universal respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Among those, freedom of opinion and freedom of expression are clearly fundamental and underlie the creation, communication, and use of information and knowledge.”
Another highly discussed topic was the so-called “digital divide” that separates the haves and have-nots when it comes to resources and infrastructure dealing with ICTs. Many at the summit called for the establishment of a “digital solidarity fund,” whereby developed countries would pay into a special fund to finance infrastructure improvements in poor nations.
Some Western nations, however, said there was no need for a special fund for ICTs, concerned that it would draw resources away from other necessary programs and would not adequately deal with underlying issues, such as poverty.
In the end, conclusions on many of these key issues were deferred until the second phase of the conference in 2005.
Bahá’í International Community Delegation[edit]
The Bahá’í International Community assembled a delegation of Internet and communications specialists for the summit headed by Canadian Bahiyyih Chaffers, who was appointed in August 2003 as
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The Bahá’í delegation to the conference (from left to right): Michael Quinn, Bahiyyih Chaffers, Laina Raveendran Greene, and Karanja Gakio.
a permanent representative of the Bahá’í International Community to the United Nations.
Ms. Chaffers chaired the Ethics and Values Caucus, an ad hoc civil society group that sought to ensure that moral and ethical values were included in the summit’s deliberations. The caucus issued a statement to the summit that called on participants to recognize the “ethical dimension of the Information Society . . . at the individual, community, national, and international levels, that protects the dignity of every human life. This ethical dimension is where the oneness of humanity is recognized and respected and where each human being born into the world is acknowledged as a trust of the whole.”
The “oneness” that is an essential teaching of the Bahá’í Faith was evident in the members of the BIC delegation, who not only represented years of experience with ICTs but were also a culturally diverse group: Karanja Gakio, cofounder of Africa Online, from Botswana; Laina Raveendran Greene, a top-ranked entrepreneur and Internet consultant from Singapore; and Michael Quinn, a CISCO
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Systems vice-president from the United States, who is of Native American origin.
“Our delegation was composed of people who are both highly regarded experts in information and communication technologies—and active members of a religious community that promotes world citizenship,” said Ms. Chaffers.
“Bahá’ís believe that the emergence of a global information society is an aspect of the inevitable coming together of humanity in the construction of a new, just, and peaceful global civilization,” Ms. Chaffers said. “It is important that the growing information society be as inclusive as possible, so that every human being has an opportunity to participate in shaping global society.”
Bahá’í representatives worked with other civil society organizations on the summit’s issues and presented the results of various Bahá’í-inspired projects in the Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) global village that was associated with the wsis. Mr. Gakio participated in a roundtable discussion of Internet security in developing countries that was held at the ICT4D forum.
The European Bahá’í Business Forum (EBBF), a Bahá’í-inspired organization, sponsored a workshop at the summit titled “Toward a Knowledge-based, Sustainable World Information Society: The Role of Good Governance and Business.” It featured a panel composed of Dr. Augusto Lopez-Claros, economist and Director of the World Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum; Dr. Arthur Lyon Dahl, President of the International Environment Forum and a former senior advisor to the United Nations Environment Programme; and Dr. Ramin Khadem, Chief Financial Officer of Inmarsat, London.
Declaration and Plan of Action[edit]
Governments adopted a major new declaration of principles and an accompanying plan of action as a result of the first phase of the summit. Though both documents were viewed by some as limited, the increased influence of civil society was apparent in the outcome: as much as 60 percent of the language and/or ideas in the final documents originated with civil society.
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The conference’s conclusions echoed those of the former global UN conferences of the 1990s, such as the “universality, indivisibility, interdependence, and interrelation of all human rights” and the “achievement of sustainable development.”
Among other things, the action plan adopted by governments at the summit seeks to encourage governments, in partnership with the private sector and civil society, to connect villages, health centers, and educational institutions with ICTs. “The effective participation of governments and all stakeholders,” it says, “is vital in developing the Information Society, requiring cooperation and partnerships among all of them.”
The declaration also sought to establish a new vision for a global “information society” that is “people-centered, inclusive, and development-oriented” and laid out a vision that positioned “education, knowledge, information, and communication” at “the core of human progress, endeavor, and well-being.” It continued: “Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have an immense impact on virtually all aspects of our lives. . . . The capacity of these technologies to reduce many traditional obstacles . . . makes it possible to use the potential of these technologies for the benefit of millions of people in all corners of the world.”
Used properly, the declaration said, these new technologies “can be a powerful instrument, increasing productivity, generating economic growth, job creation and employability, and improving the quality of life of all.”