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WSIS-CS Multistakeholder Partnership Family makes a proposal for post-WSIS cooperation.
Title: Civil Society Multi-Stakeholder Process Monitor Initiative (MuSt).
Note: The present text is an initial draft aimed at fostering discussion and identifying interested partners for the initiative. We plan to further develop this proposal before Tunis, making the wsis-msp mailing list available for a very open discussion. We also plan to have meeting opportunities in Tunis, to refine the proposal and decide future steps. This is supposed to be an initiative of civil society groups involved or interested in WSIS and its follow ups, with a view to possibly opening it to other interested stakeholders
Background
The multi-stakeholder (MS) approach discourse has accompanied our involvement as civil society organizations in the WSIS process from the very beginning, giving raise to expectations and frustration at different times. On the basis of GA Resolution 56/183 and following arrangements we have seen interesting developments and some innovative practice and we have put a lot of effort and energies in trying to make the MS concept more than just a label in WSIS.
The knowledge and competence of many of us has in fact helped making the WSIS somehow different from former UN and global processes and we have all mastered our understanding of the potential and challenges that go along with stakeholders' attempts to cooperate in building visions of information and knowledge societies. Yet events in prepcom3 and the way to Tunis are seeing a foreseeable step back in governments' commitment to participatory processes, both in the conduct of this last phase of the Summit and in identifying ways and means to implement decisions and actions after Tunis.
We have different possible scenarios in front of us:
- The commitments to multi-stakeholder processes could be completely abandoned by governments in the final rush to find agreements on the many still open and controversial issues before Tunis;
- Multi-stakeholder processes could be not included in any meaningful way in the final Tunis documents;
- Multi-stakeholder processes could be included in documents, fostering participatory arrangements for the implementation of the different WSIS lines of action at the national and international levels, but then we may have some positive developments and much "lip-service-and-no-development".
Whatever the scenario, we thought it is timely to promote an initiative that would stress the necessity for multi-stakeholder approaches to be made concrete realities, responding to need recognized in the Geneva Declaration for "new forms of solidarity, partnership and cooperation among governments and other stakeholders ... (who) should work together ... (and) have an important role and responsibility in the development of the Information Society and, as appropriate, in decision making processes". At the same time this initiative would show governments and other actors that civil society organizations not only care for a participatory approach to communication governance but that we also have competence in designing, developing, taking part in and monitoring participatory processes.
We do not think MSPs are "the solution" for neither WSIS follow ups nor for communication and information governance (CIG) more broadly. Nor they should be developed in a way that does not recognize the importance of other participatory arrangements, particularly through effective, collaborative and inclusive use of ICT. Nevertheless we think MSPs are a reality already and offer the opportunity for some innovation in governance processes at different levels. Furthermore, we believe MSPs may be one of the mechanisms that would allow to foster democratic practice in political processes, at all levels, from the national to the global. Therefore they should be based on clear principles (transparency, openness and inclusion, responsiveness, equality, accountability and effectiveness), a clear vision of different stakeholders' role in the process and a clearer understanding of MSPs' potential as well as possible shortcomings.
Learning from past experiences
During the WSIS process we have many times built on individuals' and organizations' existing knowledge of global institutional processes and we have listened and taken advantage of different people's expertise. Yet if we look at the multi-stakeholder "dimension" we have not always recognized the relevance of former experiences to our own effort.
For instance we did not pay enough attention to the work done in the context of the World Summit on Sustainable Development by people who have focused on how the multi-stakeholder concept (and related ones, such as: multi-sector arrangements, societal learning and change, tripartite approach) was brought to the international scene. We are here referring in particular to two initiatives: the work done by Minu Hemmati and colleagues around the Earthsummit2002 Project and the Partnership for Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration connected to The Access Initiative (TAI).
The Earthsummit Project was an attempt to clarify multi-stakeholderism as a concept by looking at different practices, in order to develop a framework for the conduct of MSP, based on a number of preconditions and principles relating to effective communication in highly diversified groups. A book was published in 2002, which can be a useful resource for both understanding and building MSPs.
The Partnership for Principle 10 (PP10) is an international initiative committed to translating Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration [1] into action by promoting transparent, inclusive, and accountable decision-making at the national level. The Partnership provides a venue for governments, international organizations, and civil society groups to work together to implement practical solutions that provide the public with access to information, participation, and justice for environmentally sustainable decisions.
The idea of interested parties' participation in national and international processes concerning complex issues is being fostered through interesting initiatives to which we could connect in order to broaden the public debate and level of understanding. Most important for us, MSPs are being promoted through very practical means, such as frameworks for the assessment and evaluation of participatory practices.
The MuSt proposal
Looking at these reflections and suggested frameworks as a resource to start from, which can be adopted and integrated on the basis of our direct experience in WSIS, we are proposing to develop our own initiative for the assessment of participatory practices in the Implementation of WSIS in the years to come.
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WHY |
Instead of waiting for a WSIS+5 or WSIS+10 and discover that not much has been accomplished in terms of stakeholder involvement, we believe it is possible and timely to get organized for an international monitoring exercise.
This would allow:
- to keep the momentum of our involvement and sustain some kind of trans-national cooperation in the post-WSIS, building on the trust and knowledge developed in the past years;
- to offer a very concrete tool for groups and associations in national contexts to be concretely active and remain connected to the broader mobilization while developing specific knowledge and relations, among civil society organizations, as well as with other stakeholders in their national space;
- to give an incentive to governments who seem to be very reluctant to any serious commitment to participatory decision-finding and decision-making, showing that civil society organizations are willing to commit to the multi-stakeholder approach;
- to offer a very concrete opportunity to design, develop and monitor participatory practices in communication governance at different levels, from the national to the global.
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WHAT |
The idea is to elaborate, building on the abovementioned experiences, a framework for the design and/or assessment of participatory practices specifically targeted at information and communication policies and strategies that will emerge from the Tunis meeting.
The framework could be applied at the national level by voluntary coalitions and groups of interested stakeholders, in order to follow closely and assess actions developed to respond to the commitment to building people-centred and inclusive information and knowledge societies.
The framework could also be applied internationally, to follow closely and assess the multi-stakeholder dimension of the WSIS follow up (whatever form this will take).
This would allow to keep a focus on multi-stakeholderism as a challenging outcome of the WSIS, through an ongoing evaluation of practices that would promote a better understanding of the challenges connected to MSPs in different contexts and their potential in democratizing communication and information governance.
It could aim at producing reports to be presented on the occasion of WSIS follow ups in the future, for comparative analysis , as well as identifying good practices and shortcomings. Finally, there is also a need to address the dynamics between the online and the offline within multi-stakeholder processes in which the Internet is inceasingly used to ‘facilitate' participation. There are, however, a number of issues that need to be addressed in this regard, such as representativeness, geographic and gender imbalances, expertisation, human and financial resources that are neccesary to participate in multi-stakeholder processes online and offline and the need to embed online processes in a democratic culture offline, which also refers to power mechanisms. |
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HOW |
Following the recommendations of the international conference "UNESCO between Two Phases of the World Summit on the Information Society" conducted in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, on 17-19 May 2005 under the auspices of UNESCO we suggest to create an inclusive, transparent, multi-stakeholder and multi-disciplinary trans-national working group with the following missions:
- to develop/identify, as a necessary prerequisite to an evaluation of MS processes:
- the basic principles of effective, equitable, transparent and inclusive multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs);
- a set of guidelines concerning the ethical standards of MSPs;
- a template for decision-making and decision-implementing mechanisms for MSPs;
- to develop a set of indicators - an MSP framework – that would allow to assess the participatory practices in the implementation of WSIS decisions and recommendations at the national level;
- to develop a methodology for the application of this framework to evaluate to what extent various countries adopt the multi-stakeholder approach in implementing WSIS decisions and recommendations, as well as to conduct a comparative analysis between countries / regions;
- to prepare every two years analytical comparative assessment reports.
The assessment should be based both on an analysis of the pre-conditions for and the factors affecting the successful implementation of multi-stakeholder processes in the perspective of more democratic and effective governance mechanisms for information and communication plicies and strategies.
The development of an assessment methodology presupposes:
- identification of policy areas to be assessed (building on action lines addressed in the WSIS documents and former experiences such as wsis-online);
- identification of a set of parameters to be used for the evaluation, with possible adaptation for each policy area;
- selection of quantitative and qualitative indicators for each parameter;
- eventually we could think of a scale for each of these parameters that would allow to rank countries' capacity to implement effective MSPs, proceeding from the indicators' values.
This methodology will be discussed with the CS structure that will emerge in the post-WSIS period, in order to promote an inclusive and transparent processes and continuity in the positive collaboration developed in the past four years.
We can foresee country reports as well as an international assessment of WSIS as such. Country reports will be published on the WSIS MSP web-site and we could forsee to publish, every two years, a comprehensive and comparative report which will be widely circulated.
The level and modality of intereaction of this initiative with whatever follow-up mechanisms will be put in place after Tunis is to be discussed; but we believe this initiative can be developed independently from any such mechanism, mainly focusing on national developments. Financial and other needed resources will also be discussed. |
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WHO |
We therefore foresee two levels of organization for the conduct of this exercise:
- an international coordinating group, composed of interested people from the WSIS CS sector, yet open to other interested individuals and organizations, who will work to elaborate, develop and refine the framework for MSP assessment and subsequently guarantee some level of coordination among national teams. The initial group will be formed on the basis of (self-)nominations after an open call disseminated widly through WSIS CS channels.
- National teams to be set up in national context, composed on NGOs and other CS groups, with the involvement of other interested stakeholders as appropriate, who can guarantee a certain level of competence, resource and continuity in applying the proposed framework, and willing to cooperate for the comparative analysis.
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We plan to further develop this proposal, as far as its goals, framework refinement, partners identification, the potentially multi-stakeholder nature of the exercise and follow ups in the coming weeks in order to arrive in Tunis with a more refined draft.
All interested people and WSIS CS participants can join the discussion on the wsis-msp list: wsis-msp@yahoogroups.com. The website http://www.wsis-msp.org will be used as a collaborative space, for the archive of relevant documents, the collection of proposals and comments and the elaboration of a final project to be launched in Tunis, where we foree the possibility to raise the attention in different meetings.
Claudia Padovani - University of Padova (Italy)
Tatiana Ershova - Institute for the Information Society (Russia)
Other supporters should sign...
 [1] "Environmental issues are best handled with participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level. Each individual shall have appropriate access to information concerning the environment that is held by public authorities, ..., and the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes"
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