special coverage: information society & WSIS

30.05.2003 Various groups in China have made an appeal to the US and France to pressurize President Hu Jintao to release the 42 cyber dissidents languishing in prisons across the country. The Chinese premiere is set to attend the G-8 summit beginning June 1 in France.

29.05.2003 A leading Middle East telecom firm has called upon public and private sectors to curtail the information divide in the region. Highlighting the urban bias in ICT adoption, it has stressed on the urgent need for a better telecom infrastructure in rural areas.

29.05.2003 An international conference, currently being held in the Indian city of Pune, is focusing on the use of ICT for dissemination of information among women. The conference, entitled "Empowering Women Through Information and Knowledge: From Oral Traditions to ICT", is being attended by information professionals, activists and scholars.

21.05.2003 Southern African policymakers are pitting their desire to expand information and communications technology (ICT) in their countries against the stark reality of affordability. IT specialists in the public and private sectors and civil society recently assembled in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, to find ways to apply new computer technology to governance.

20.05.2003 The information society that "we build must be open and pluralistic - one in which all people, in all countries, have access to information and knowledge", UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said in a message marking World Telecommunication Day.

20.05.2003 The Committee on Development Information (CODI) met at Addis Ababa recently to discuss the growth of Information Society in Africa. Besides other issues, experts highlighted the need for transparency and community participation for achieving the goals of the African Information Society Initiative.

13.05.2003 Digital Opportunity Channel this week launches an online discussion forum on "Information Society: Voices from the South" in partnership with the South Asian voluntary network Bytes for All. This email- and Web-based discussion list aims to help stakeholders from the South exchange ideas and debate issues about the emerging information society and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process, and to provide them with a platform to take their voices to policymakers in order to influence national, regional and global strategies.

13.05.2003 Information technology revolution is opening up opportunities to access information even in the most "unreachable" of Indian villages. Information shops are becoming indispensable to the fishermen and farmers in the villages around Villianur, Pondicherry in south India.

04.05.2003 A Civil Society Bureau has been set up to ensure active participation and contribution of civil society organisations in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process and the summit itself. The bureau is the result of year-long intense discussions between the Civil Society Division of the WSIS Executive Secretariat and numerous representatives of civil society.