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WORLD SUMMIT ON THE INFORMATION SOCIETY: POTENTIAL FOR ADDRESSING THE GENDER DIGITAL DIVIDE?
This paper summarise what has been achieved so far in regards to gender equality in WSIS process and clarifying “gender and ICT” agenda for both phases of WSIS. It analyses why gender advocacy was such a challenge within the whole process, and assess the outcomes as well as some of the indirect benefits WSIS brought for gender and ICT advocates. In the end the paper outline the priority issues for gender advocacy in the second phase of WSIS. Written by Karen Banks
Table of content
WSIS:Background
The first phase – outlining a common vision and steps for actions
The second phase – monitoring and implementation
WSIS: Process, challenges and outcomes from gender perspectives
Gender & final documents
Reflection on the challenges and outcomes of WSIS phase I
Gender advocacy in the second implementation phase
WSIS:Background
In December 2001, the UN General Assembly resolved Resolution 56/1831 (December 2001) to hold the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The first UN World Summit dealing with the challenges of building an information society was divided in two phases.
The first phase – outlining a common vision and steps for actions
The first phase (2002-2003), hosted by the Government of Switzerland, aimed to “develop and foster a clear statement of political will and take concrete steps to establish the foundations for an Information Society for all, reflecting all the different interests at stake”. At the Geneva Summit in December 2003 175 governments endorsed the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Action Plan.
The Declaration outlines a ‘common vision’ of the information society ‘premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’. Governments were unable to reach consensus on two critical issues – financing mechanisms and internet governance. Governments requested the UN Secretary General to establish working groups on both issues to ‘find solutions and reach agreements’ which will be reported back to governments during Phase Two of the WSIS.
The Action plan intends to articulate ‘concrete action lines to advance the achievement of the internationally-agreed development goals, including those in the Millennium Declaration, the Monterrey Consensus and the Johannesburg Declaration and Plan of Implementation’ guided by the vision and principles of the Political Declaration.
The second phase – monitoring and implementation
The second phase (2004-2005), hosted by the Government of Tunisia, focus on monitoring and implementation of the ‘progress of feasible actions laid out in the Geneva Plan and a concrete set of deliverables that must be achieved by the time the Summit meets again in Tunis in November 20051.’ Concretely, this involve:
- developing a core set of benchmarks or indicators which can be used to evaluate ICT for Development initiatives
- surveying and presenting ICT project and initiative ‘best practice’ and ‘lessons learned’
- presenting recommendations of two working groups working under the patronage of the UN Secretary General; Financing Mechanisms and Internet Governance.
Financing Mechanisms
The Plan of Action adopted at the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva 2003 requested the Secretary General of the United Nations to create a Task Force to study the issue of financial mechanisms for ICT and present a report to facilitate discussions in the second phase of WSIS. UNDP has been asked to lead the Task Force in conjunction with the World Bank and UN DESA.
In phase I the governments discussions hinged around four key positions:
- more effective utilisation of existing financial mechanisms
- a growing digital divide that could be resolved by an act of digital solidarity
- a concept that extending access to the Information Society in developing countries is a global public good that benefits everyone. The private sector in developed countries, which stands to benefit from the extension of ICTs in developing countries, should help pay for ICT for development (ICTD). Thereby the Global ICT Fund similar to the Global Environmental Facility should be created .
- existing financial mechanisms for ICTD do not extend beyond the borders of the market and a new a new body should be established that can represent all stakeholders in ICTD and have the functions of mobilisation of new sources of finance for ICTD; the creation of a new policy paradigm for ICTD and the coordination of the relationship between existing financial mechanisms and enabling policy environments in developing countries.
The Task Force report was released in early January 20052 . The final report findings and conclusions make reference to the growing digital divide, the importance of integrating ICT policies into Poverty Reduction strategies, the importance of funding Civil Society Organisations (CSO) community networks as they are found to be effective in expanding ICT access to high cost (predominantly rural) and low income populations, the need for National Universal Service/Access Funds and other mechanisms to lower the costs of delivery to under-served markets and to promote community access in helping to address ICT access gaps.
Internet Governance
At the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society the issue of Internet governance emerged as a contested issue among governments. The two key points of disagreement were:
- should the scope of Internet governance be defined narrowly or broadly? While developed countries argued for narrow definition of governance as technical coordination, the developing countries promoted a broad definition of governance addressing not only technical aspects but issues as network security or pricing.
- who should be responsible for Internet governance? Developed countries held position that the current system of private sector leadership should be maintained and because it works well. However the developing countries, argued that Internet governance is linked to related to national sovereignty and should fall under an intergovernmental body such as the UN and the ITU.
Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) was established to pursue the dialogue on Internet governance, and asked to prepare a report defining the Internet governance, outlining relevant public policy issues and assessing the respective roles and responsibilities of divers actors for the second phase of the WSIS in Tunis 2005. The final report was submitted by WGIG in July 2005.
WSIS: Process, challenges and outcomes from gender perspectives
Gender advocates were amongst the most visible and consistently active during the first phase of the WSIS. The results of their work is reflected directly in both the WSIS Declaration and Action Plan. Their success, however, cannot be seen or measured solely by an assessment of the language of the official documents, which was largely disappointing, but in specific partnerships and collaborations with certain governments, intergovernmental agencies and other stakeholders as a result of increased networking, awareness and knowledge sharing which has emerged from the WSIS process.
Gender & final docuGments
 After 2 years of intense lobbying, all references to gender equality and women’s empowerment disappeared from the documents in a period just prior to the last preparatory meeting (Prepcom-3, Geneve, September 2003). The majority of stakeholders did not prioritise gender concerns, and the language that had been successfully incorporated into official regional documents was ignored. The references to gender equality were reinserted only after a good old-fashioned ‘t’-shirt campaign, which secured one strong paragraph in the first section of the Political Declaration – paragraph 12:
“We affirm that development of ICTs provides enormous opportunities for women, who should be an integral part of, and key actors, in the Information Society. We are committed to ensuring that the Information Society enables women's empowerment and their full participation on the basis on equality in all spheres of society and in all decision-making processes. To this end, we should mainstream a gender equality perspective and use ICTs as a tool to that end.”
The Action Plan contains references to the special needs of women in relation to capacity building;participation of women in formulating ICT policies; ICT applications (e-health and e-employment); cultural diversity and identity; media; and follow-up and evaluation. There is a special reference to the need for “putting in place the conditions for mobilizing human, financial and technological resources for inclusion of all men and women in the emerging Information Society.” in the document outlining the work of the Task Force on Financing Mechanisms.
Reflection on the challenges and outcomes of WSIS phase I
In summary, the hard work of gender and ICT policy advocacy during Phase I was carried out by a small group of (largely) women from Civil Society in partnership with gender advocates from specific UN agencies (in particular ITU WGGI, UNIFEM, UNDAW and UNESCO) and a handful of sympathetic governments.
Gender advocates were successful not only in lobbying around substantive issues, but also in lobbying for gender equality in relation to internal WSIS processes. For example, in the formation of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), gender equality was one of the primary criteria used in the selection of candidates.
Gender advocates were undoubtedly successful in raising awareness about gender equality and women’s empowerment and it would be difficult to find a government, intergovernmental agency, private sector body or civil society organisation who would disagree with the principles of gender equality and women’s empowerment in principle but as noted in the UNESCO WSIS paper 'Gender issues in the Information Society', there is still “an ingrained tendency to regard it as something separate from the core debate”.
A factor contributing to this tendency was the nature and make-up of government delegations. Very few contained delegates who had expertise or experience with gender equality of women’s empowerment issues. Most delegations were comprised of trade and telecommunications ministry staff. This factor was also relevant in relation to other issue areas such as network security, intellectual property rights and media policy. Few delegations had the expertise or skills to deal with the broad scope of issues on the WSIS agenda.
In addition, few delegations had the resources to send large enough teams to deal with the scope of issues, even if they had the expertise – this is of course bring particularly pertinent with respect developing country delegations.
Another major factor contributing to the challenge of gender advocacy in WSIS (and in any multi-gender policy space) is the assumption that the work of gender advocacy is primarily women’s work. Gender advocates often found themselves wearing several hats as members of gender advocacy spaces (for example the WSIS Gender Caucus and NGO Gender Strategies Working Group), as members of regional caucuses, and as members of issue specific caucuses within Civil Society (for example, several members were active in the media and community media, network security, human rights, and other caucuses) where they found themselves having to lobby their own colleagues to ensure gender advocacies were core to the regional and thematic lobbying spaces.
In terms of strategy, some gender advocates agreed early in the process, to support the work of the human rights lobby when it appeared that references to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were in danger of being removed from the Declaration. It is fair to say that these efforts, though contributing to securing strong language with respect human rights in the documents, detracted from efforts to secure strong language regarding gender equality and women’s empowerment. This is probably one of the greatest challenges gender advocates have to confront in the second phase of the WSIS where human rights will be a central focus of attention.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is underpinned by the principle of universality, however in practice, human rights instruments have proved to be insufficient in allowing women to claim the same dignity, protection and redress as men. As noted in a paper on Gender issues in the Information Society, although Summit declarations do not have the force of law, they constitute a global normative consensus that can impact how existing conventions are interpreted and refocused and may even exert considerable influence on future conventions.
Gender advocacy in the second implementation phase
Gender advocates along with many stakeholders, need to establish effective communication and networking mechanisms to be able to address the broad range of issues during the second phase of the WSIS. Priority areas for intervention agreed by most gender and ICT advocates are:
- lobbying for the incorporation of gender awareness in the development of national level ICT policies and ‘e- strategies’
- developing ICT indicators and targets as a tool for achieving the development goals of the Millennium Declaration
- contributing information on best practice with respect gender and ICT initiatives
- capacity-building on gender and ICT issues among organizations that represent women's interests
- enhancing multistakeholder process and gender balanced representation in all aspects of internet governance
- analysing implications of Internet governance and financing positions for women and men
- ensuring that women concerns and needs are addressed in the discussions and any decision made on internet governance and financing
Gender advocacy in the Financing Mechanisms Task Force
Participation in the Task Force on Financing Mechanisms has not been as transparent as WSIS delegates would have liked and it is therefore difficult to qualify the level of gender advocacy within the process. Several briefing and position papers have been commissioned by UNDP which have included organizations active in gender and ICT advocacy and it goes without saying that financing ICT for Development is a critical gender issue.
Among others, gender and ICT advocates are concerned with reliance on the market driven investments for delivering of ICT for Development, which tends to exclude rural areas and less profitable communities, and propose to treat ICT infrastructure as a global public common. Promotion of free/libre and open source software, support appropriate technology development and investments to local content productions are another gender issues highlighted.
Gender advocacy in the Working Group on Internet Governance(WGIG)
The WGIG was formed with gender equality as one of the primary criteria in the selection of candidates. Of the 39 members, 9 are female, with a stakeholder balance of Government (18), Private Sector (6) and Civil Society (15). Two members of the WSIS gender caucus and NGO Gender Strategies Working Group are on the WGIG.
The work of the WGIG was quite transparent and anyone was welcome to make a contribution to discussions, fact papers, or just make a general comment (by email, in online discussions, or through interactive tools on the website).
Gender advocacy around internet governance is challenging as the range of issues is broad and abstract, and the time available for comment is brief. Many of the issues are still seen to be largely technical, and therefore, “gender-neutral”. Thereby the inputs from gender and ICT advocates in regards to language and issues addressed was limited, and the WGIG report to governments submitted in July 2005 was disappointing on first reading for many women’s rights activists. The report refers to women only in regards to multistakeholder and balanced participation in internet governace.
Gender advocacy work must continue to unpack the internet governance issues that are of specific concern to women, in relation to access, to content, or to the perpetration of violence against women and children through ICTs.
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Karen Banks is a networking pioneer who is working in the area of ICTs application as a tool for social change since 1990. She coordinates the overall networking and advocacy work of the Association For Progressive Communications (APC). Among others she leads APC's participation in the WSIS process . Karen has been an member of the WSIS Civil Society Content and Themes Coordination Group, and a co-facilitator of the WSIS NGO Gender Strategies Working Group. She is also one of a few women active in the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG).
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