Right to Communicate

Information Society: Voices from the South

Summary of discussions on the topic
'Freedom, rights, laws and ethics'

Prepared by Partha Pratim Sarker
Co-editor, Bytes for All
& Moderator, Information Society Discussion Forum

Time Frame: June 16 to July 31, 2003
Number of Subscribers (Until July 31): 372 members

Main theme line of discussion

2. Freedom, rights, laws and ethics: How to address these issues for Information Society in the South?

Sub-topics:

(2.A.) Community and Freedom
(2.B.) Development and Self-Expression
(2.C.) Issue of Censorship and Self-Censorship
(2.D.) Issue of Patent and Copyright
(2.E.) Wi-fi, Internet and other technology issues
(2.F.) Right to Communicate

Kanti Kumar of Digital Opportunity Channel brought this relevant point of discussion by referring to an article and by mentioning that fact that WSIS has started a timely debate whether to provide any support to a declaration on “the right to communicate”. The writers of this article, John Barker & Peter Noorlender, analyze the different rationales expressed to support formulation of a new or emerging right to communicate and address among others the issues of freedom of expression; pluralism, diversity and access; freedom of information and restrictions.

And they advocate for a declaration on a right to communicate that endorses strongly the individual right to freedom of expression. They say: “Governments, not individuals, are charged under international law to make this a reality, including by encouraging diversity and plurality. The right to be informed, the right to practice one’s culture and the right to participate in public decision-making process are further essential elements, as are facilitating rights such as the right to respect for private life including freedom to communicate anonymously, and the right to be free from unwarranted interference.” Kanti posted the article at Dgroups.

The issue of 'right to communicate' has brought different views and opinions.

But Thomas Thichar raised his concern whether Wi Fi can really make any difference as its not the hardware itself but the policy and applications as to how hardware is used and maintained that makes the real difference.

Thomas Tichar made two comments. First: Though the idea of right to communicate is not disputable, he thinks making it as an international law might be a problem for many countries. Cause it is unclear how exactly one proposes to implement the right on an everyday basis. Furthermore, because of it's vagueness, the letter of this law is easy to circumnavigate. For example, in USA information in the media is very much defined by how many viewers it can attract, yet seemingly the media are representing all cultures, diversities and factual news. Second: he points out that, objectivity in the media is a farce, and thus trying to quantify any type of proper representation or real truthfulness of the media is a rather difficult task. One cannot apply all the same rules to different nations because difference in culture implies a different approach. He argues that the process would take some time for trial & error to improve the communication because every situation demands a different approach. Another important requirement would be much less top-down approach of work for all government and international bodies.

Guido Sohne extended the arguments to the question of 'right to travel freely'. He thinks, visa restrictions on travel are used to prevent citizens of less developed countries from traveling to developed countries. He says, 'while maintenance and quality of life as well as preservation of cultures are essential to the integrity of a nation and the well being of its people, the conditions of life, lack of opportunities and adverse sociopolitical circumstances are what create the desire for migration. These problems should be addressed with solutions, not by building walls that deprive people of their right to communication.

Shashikala Gurpur from Manipal, India thinks that the articulation of right to communicate 'looks vague and not in tandem' compared to other international legal documents such as the right to development. As she says, 'basically, it implies right to be heard, right to be known. It should be conceptualized as based on 'needs' of persons (including human beings and groups). In that sense, 'objectivity' may have to be maneuvered to accommodate advocacy and equality may have to provide for positive discrimination in favour of those who are as yet underrepresented... It also would be interesting to see if the 'right to communicate' has been asserted regarding the 'need' or the 'mode', in other words, to see that the debate should be underpinned by the urge of the community to spell out their needs than to master some kind of technology! I think there is a funny situation here: those who ask for legalisation and ensuring of these rights do not speak in the legalese. Part of the lobbying is to 'put in the right words'.

Myriam Horngren, Advocacy and Network Coordinator of Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) clarified some important points of 'right to communicate'. She sets up the points this way-

1. A right is not enforced on an entity (be it organisational or individual) but is there to protect the entity. It can be used in case of abuse on that entity.
2. The communication process actually goes beyond the media sector although the latter is primordial to the kind of governance (democracy or not) under which we govern ourselves or are governed.

She made an excellent conclusion by referring to the CR IS charter.

Through the charter, they believe, communication is central to the democratic processes and goes beyond issues of the "Digital Divide" or Media ownership. She urges to focus the debate on 4 key areas- Issues of Access, Intellectual property rights on content and culture, "information security" and a varied and democratic media sphere (a healthy public sphere) are key to guaranteeing better communication.

Tai Parcell made an interesting judgement. By referring to his personal experience, he says, freedom of rights have led to the increase in cyber scams. He has blocked 15 addresses of email scams from all of Africa and still he thinks people fall for these scams. He stresses the need for addressing this issue.

WSIS's attention or focus on communication rights generated different opinions.

Myriam Horngren thinks, WSIS's latest articulation of communication rights is the narrowest ever imaginable. All reference to human rights have been taken out of the Draft Declaration. Issue related to media is completely absent, as well as traditional forms of communication.

Bala Pillai seems to be a bit disappointed with the processes of WSIS and its mode of addressing the issues. He says, 'Does the WSIS really matter? In the scheme of a world including the Open Source movement, WSIS doesn't to me. Compared to the Open Source movement, it appears like a Lake Geneva NGO talk-fest to me'.

Peter Burgess of Profit in Africa made some interesting points related to communication rights. He thinks the current practices of Information and Communication Technologies are missing 90% potential of Information. It is true that technologies give a level-playing field for everyone to be engaged in the information society and knowledge society. He seems to be quite critical about development going into useless conference mode, which brought nothing else other than wasting of resources. As he says, ‘"Development" went into "conference mode" about fifteen or twenty years ago when development was starting to obviously fail, and conferences offered a way to seem to be doing something without actually having to produce any results. Policy changes can be driven from grassroots changes in ways of actually doing things (a process that works well) or can be driven by top down conferences to agreements and protocols and treaties.’ Mr. Burgess also mentioned about lack of transparency and accountability in development for that we had been unable to determine the failures and the causes behind it.

Claude Almansi supported this critical judgment on development and summit issues and brought about few topics related to WSIS events. She mentioned about the initiative of World Electronic Media Forum that seems to be a part of WSIS event and hugely funded but was largely unheard of. She also refereed to some lacks of professionalism at the WSIS Secretariat who usually does not reply to any email enquiry and newsletter means to them two PDF files: one in English and the other one is in German. She is overtly unhappy with the preparation of WSIS events particularly at ICT ends.

Go to other sub-topics:

Information Society: Voices from the South is an online discussion forum run by Digital Opportunity Channel in partnership with Bytes for All. The forum will run until December 2003 and will discuss a number of broad themes related to the emerging information society and the process of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).