Civil Society Continues Sending Inputs to WSIS Documents

6/9/03

These articles originally appeared on we!, our weekly newsletter.

Civil society organisations are continuing their efforts in sending inputs for the official draft WSIS Declaration and Plan of Action.

The deadline for the submission of inputs is on 31 May 2003 in time for the Intersessional Period.

This event will happen in Paris, France on 15-18 July 2003, the objective of which is to refine the working documents for the Draft Declaration of Principles and Draft Action Plan. The Intersessional Period was organised so that this "unfinished work" during PrepCom-2 could be fine-tuned in time for PrepCom-3 in September, and WSIS phase one in December.

The Civil Society Subcommittee on Content and Themes (CS-SCT) put together two additional documents for this purpose, namely the Civil Society Response to the Draft Declaration, and the Civil Society compilation of points for the Action Plan. These documents are available online at http://www.genderit.org/wsis/documents.htm.

The CS-SCT announced that it is still open to receive comments from various civil society groupings up to 15 May, and that this deadline could still be stretched to the 19th or 20th. The inputs will be collated by 25 May in time for submission to the CS Secretariat.

Anyone who is interested to join a small group that will be working on drafting some inputs for the CS-SCT process, please write to
Susanna George of Isis International-Manila
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Karen Banks of the Association for Progressive Communication-Women's Networking Support Programme
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

In order to get a flow of the issues and concerns that civil society organisations have been working on since the start of the WSIS process, advocates can study existing civil society documents which can be accessed through the following links:

Official Draft Declaration for WSIS
http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-s/md/03/wsispc2/td/030217/S03-WSISPC2-030217-TD-GEN-0002!!MSW-E.doc

Civil Society Response to Draft Declaration for WSIS
http://www.genderit.org/wsis/CS-draft-declaration-26-02-2003.doc

Official Draft Plan of Action for WSIS
http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-s/md/03/wsispc2/td/030217/S03-WSISPC2-030217-TD-GEN-0003!!MSW-E.doc

Civil Society Priorities in relation to the Draft Plan of Action for WSIS
http://www.genderit.org/wsis/WSIS-CS-ActionPlan.doc

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