Ten years ago the Association for Progressive Communications published a review of communications rights following the first WSIS Forum in Geneva a decade earlier. This drew on an interview-based survey with civil society stakeholders, and considered multiple issues, including the instability of the language used when talking about participation and inclusion, awareness of WSIS and the impact of its outcomes at the national level, and the extent to which many of the WSIS priorities have concretely entered into policy discussions, including the rights of different groups such as women, the youth, and Indigenous communities. Another ten years after this review, APC and its partner organisations are developing a GISWatch Special Edition that is intended to provoke fresh questions and offer informed analyses on the successes, failures and challenges of the WSIS process and outcomes in a changed context. That analysis would be presented in this session that aims to stimulate, contribute to and help frame the deliberations in upcoming WSIS+20 events from a civil society and social justice perspective.
Session format
Spectrogram exercise.
Structure
1. Introduction to the session and the spectrogram exercise.
2. Spectogram
- The WSIS vision was for a people-centred human rights oriented information society. This vision is more elusive now than ever. Agree / Disagree
- 2. Inclusion has become a central component of digital policy and implementation. Agree / Disagree
- Civil society's influence in the digital space is more powerful now than 20 years ago. Agree/ Disagree
3. Next steps
- In one word. What do you want to see come out of WSIS +20.
4. Brief presentation of the Global Information Society Watch special edition - WSIS+20: Reimagining horizons of dignity, equity and justice for our digital future
Facilitators: Anriette Esterhuysen (APC), Anita Gurumurthy (IT for Change) and Valeria Betancourt (APC).
