Gustavo Capdevila

Civil society representatives from community media, labour, youth, educational and indigenous organisations that are taking part in the preparatory process said they are disillusioned by the draft declaration for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) drawn up by government representatives.

A final declaration and plan of action will be the documents adopted by the WSIS, to take place in Geneva, Dec. 10-12.

 But the latest draft, disseminated here during the weekend, is  a "disappointment" for civil society, says Renate Bloem, president of the Conference of Non-Governmental Organisations (CONGO) that hold consultative status with the United Nations.

This displeasure must be expressed "in very hard  terms", says Bloem, one of the coordinators of civil society activities during the final WSIS preparatory committee meeting, which ends here Friday.

The NGOs say that the text discriminates against them, even  though for the first time in U.N. history these groups had been convened to collaborate in the formulation of a shared vision of  the "information society".

"A lot of key issues for civil society... have totally disappeared" from the latest version of the declaration, said Wolfgang Kleinwaechter, an information and communications technology (ICT) expert from Denmark's Aarhus University. These omissions include concepts like community radio, human  rights, participation of individual Internet users in policy making, Kleinwaechter told IPS.

In their effort to shorten the document, the governments have  excluded all of the issues that are a priority for civil society, says Angela M. Kuga Thas, a Malaysian activist with the

Association for Progressive Communications (APC).

The elimination of certain paragraphs especially affects the "grassroots community, the poor, the marginalized, the disadvantaged," said Kuga Thas, adding that the final declaration is "watered down". The draft document that has come under fire from NGOs also excluded concepts proposed by governments, including the European Union, which wanted the first paragraph of the declaration to state that the information society is based on "human rights and dignity" of men and women. Instead, the initial paragraph of the draft is dedicated to highlighting the individual's capacity to create, have access to, utilise and share information and knowledge through new technologies.

One of the dangers of this preliminary document is that it ignores much of the consensus achieved at international  protect workers' rights, commented Beatriz Busaniche, of the University of Buenos Aires centre for "telework" and

"teletraining". The labour world is one of the sectors most affected by the new

technologies, with the emergence of new "flexible" regulations, elecommuting and transborder work, she said, noting that legal instruments on these activities are not in place.

The December summit is the first of two phases. The second WSIS is to take place in Tunis in 2020. The aim of the first is to bridge the digital gap separating the rich from the poor, and also to foment the efforts of some

governments to jump-start the ICT industries, which have suffered a sharp decline in recent years. Busaniche said the summit's plan of action must include human rights as a factor in all efforts.

Otherwise, she said, the plan will be nothing more than a source for big business for the ICT companies for the next two decades. Kleinwaechter, meanwhile, said that the "Civil Society Caucus produced concrete language for each of the paragraphs, with its key ideas." For instance, with regard to radio spectrum management, the NGOs sought wording that takes into account the "special needs of local communities and non-commercial users",

instead of commercial interests, but the final draft omitted this, he said.

Another example, said Kleinwaechter, is the paragraph on Internet governance. "Civil society proposed that individual Internet users should be included in the process of  policy development." But the draft now only mentions the private sector and governments, he said.

The ACP's Kuga Thas said the final draft eliminated all reference to people with disabilities and their needs in regard to the use of new technologies. She added that the declaration text only recognises indigenous peoples in certain countries, but that "indigenous peoples are everywhere, in all countries, developed and developing -- and they are marginalized completely."

The civil society representatives said they will take their  objections to government representatives, and warn of the serious consequences if the WSIS in December were to fail.