special coverage: information society & WSIS

28.10.2003 The Kuala Lumpur Declaration on ICT Policies and e-Strategies in Asia and the Pacific has laid emphasis on specific policies on poverty reduction and the Millennium Development Goals, governance, gender, infrastructure and access, human capacity, content and applications, enterprises and entrepreneurs, and regional co-operation. The declaration was endorsed by high-level Asian delegates at the recently concluded Asian Forum on ICT Policies and e-Strategies, as Asia-Pacific input to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

27.10.2003 Two hundred organisations and businesses from 80 countries will participate in the ICT for Development Platform to be held concurrently with the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva. Digital Opportunity Channel will also be present at the event, which will show how ICTs – from simple transistor radios to high-tech computer systems – can be used innovatively to reduce poverty and promote development.

23.10.2003 OneWorld South Asia has launched a campaign – WSIS: Voices from South Asia – to raise awareness in the region about the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS). In an interview, Subbiah Arunachalam, Distinguished Fellow at the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, speaks about the WSIS and how it can give a push to development.

20.10.2003 The Bellagio Symposium on Media, Freedom and Poverty, which came together recently, has expressed concern that in the World Summit on the Information Society some of the measures being considered run counter to freedom of expression and that there is inadequate mapping of development objectives against the proposed actions.

20.10.2003 Meeting in Paris in preparation of the World Summit on the Information Society in December 2003, ministers from all over the world have agreed that universal access to information and press freedom must guide the ICT use to maximize its effectiveness for individual, community and national development.

17.10.2003 Communication rights activists in Bolivia have denounced the forced closure of Radio Pio XII, one of the affiliates of the Association for Wireless Education in Bolivia. The closure was a direct result of the radio station’s role in providing information on the crisis that is developing in the country. Latin American and Caribbean communicators have also expressed their solidarity with the Bolivian people.

13.10.2003 An Internet discussion group created by a militant outfit of the Khasi tribe in India’s Meghalaya state invited government censorship, which in turn triggered a ban on thousands of Yahoo! Groups. But the Internet is really too vast for governments to stifle voices of dissent like it can in the real world.

08.10.2003 Which online news service recently played an instrumental role in the election of a President? The South Korean on-line news service 'Ohmynews' is probably the only example to date of a Net-based initiative that has made a decisive difference in a presidential election.

07.10.2003 The Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign has welcomed the inclusion of Paragraph 4 – which refers to communication as a basic human need – in the draft declaration of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). It called on all governments, however, to ensure that communication as a central and crucial human activity remains in the final declaration that will be presented at the summit in December 2003.

06.10.2003 Civil society organisations (CSOs) are frustrated that a large number of their proposals have been ignored by state officials crafting the declaration for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in December 2003. CSOs are now deliberating on an alternative declaration of their own for delegates’ consideration at the summit.