Communication Rights Ten Years After the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS): Civil Society Perceptions

This 33-page Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) special report by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) collates civil society perceptions of the changes that have taken place in the information and knowledge-sharing society since 2003. Using the both the WSIS Declaration of Principles (2003) as well as the Civil Society Declaration to the World Summit on the Information Society (2003) as a starting point, it captures the kinds of shifts that have been experienced by communications activists and stakeholders.

There were two components to this report: an online survey, which called for input from civil society organisations from across the globe; and one-on-one interviews with stakeholders who participated in the WSIS process in the past. Civil society stakeholders who had either participated in WSIS processes, or have a keen interest in and knowledge of developments in the information and knowledge-sharing society in their country, region, or at global level were targeted for the online survey. Interviews with experts were open-ended and wide-ranging, a number of them conducted at the WSIS+10 review that was held in Paris in February 2013.

The report highlights the following findings:

• "Gains and losses": a context of unstable perspectives: The strength of a people-centred information and knowledge-sharing environment in any country is dependent on the strength of the democracy in that country. People-centred policy gains, like democracies, can also be fragile. Policy-guarantees can change, or be reneged on. Therefore any gains made in policy landscapes need to be protected. Moreover, there is a distinction to be made between principle and practice. Policy gains, for example in areas such as freedom of expression and universal access, do not necessarily translate to real-world results on the ground.
• Positioning of the WSIS Declarations:Nearly a third of respondents to the survey said that the WSiS Declaration of principles as well as the Civil Society Declaration to the WSiS had little impact on policy development in their country. The Civil Society Declaration is, however, more visible in civil society positions – even if it is not used frequently as a lobbying tool. While the Declarations may have lent coherence to advocacy focal areas, most changes experienced over the past ten years are the result of a complex interplay between advocacy, global economies, market expansion, politics, and shifts in social dynamics, among others. However, there was general agreement amongst those interviewed that the Civil Society Declaration in itself was not necessarily going to achieve concrete outcomes, and that this was recognised at the time.
• Visibility of rights:The survey suggested that traditional advocacy focus areas such as women’s rights, media freedoms, and advocating for free and open source software have had a greater positive impact on the communications environment over the past ten years than other areas, although there remains work to be done. Fifty-six percent of survey respondents felt that there were medium (34%) to high focus on addressing gender injustices in policy processes at the national level. Nevertheless, a number of interviewees felt that progress in gender rights depended on how one defined a women’s rights agenda. Young people received comparatively strong attention in the development of programmes to empower them in the information and knowledge-sharing society, with 58% of survey respondents saying these programmes existed in their country, compared to 28% who said they did not. While ICTs could help to mitigate the practical, everyday risks faced by young people, there was an increased need for programmes that educated children and youth about the dangers of using ICTs. The rights of indigenous and displaced people, as well as disabled people have received relatively little attention – the survey suggests that these groups were the least likely to be able to contribute effectively to the information and knowledge-sharing society.
• Freedom of expression and public debate: The extent to which freedom of expression is felt to exist in practice in countries suggests a positive communications climate overall. Sixty-one percent of respondents described their country’s media as "free", compared to 38% who said they would not describe their country’s media in this way. There is a distinction between freedom of expression in theory and in practice. Most respondents felt that a culture of public debate was openly encouraged and supported in the information and knowledge-sharing society in their country. However, when asked about the extent to which information was made available to the public by governments or other institutions in an open and transparent way so that this participation in public debate and discussion can be proactive and informed, 41% of respondents suggested that this information was not sufficiently available. The positive responses to whether a country’s media could be described as free do not entirely agree with the diversity of ownership of media, with only 30% saying that the ownership of their country’s media was diverse.
• Access to technology: While interviewees felt that there was a significant increase in access globally over the last ten years (most obviously in the area of mobile telephony), this was not necessarily due to people-centred policies, but to market growth. However, in some contexts increased access does not mean more affordable access. Perhaps reflecting this, community ownership has a low policy priority in most countries. Access, as a result, still followed class and geography, with those enjoying an increase in access being predominantly urban based. Free and open source software (FOSS) solutions were more often than not actively explored as a way to increase access to the information and knowledge-sharing society for marginalised groups in countries. However, it was not necessarily the case that governments were following open procurement processes when deciding between proprietary and FOSS solutions. Although the gap between technology and human rights has narrowed for some over the past ten years, some developments in the open source field are also seen to have drifted from the ethical dimensions that have underpinned the FOSS movement. 11% of respondents felt that basic literacy programmes were not actively pursued in their countries. In comparison, information literacy programmes targeting marginalised and poor communities fared worse. 35% of respondents said that these were not pursued by governments or any other groups in their countries. In contrast, technology played an increasingly vital part in basic education, and, in doing so, sometimes helped to provide access to the broader community. Overall, it was felt that state security overrode the need to access information. In this regard, the technical developments in the internet have been important over the last ten years. 16% of respondents felt that their privacy was not adequately protected by legislation when they used their internet for transactions.
• Cultural rights in communication: There was a mixed sense as to whether cultural and linguistic diversity was supported in countries: 14% of respondents felt that it wasn’t supported much, with 29% giving this a low rating. In the main, displaced people do not have appropriate access to important information that is critical to their livelihoods and the exercising of their rights (i.e. political information for voting, opportunities for displaced people, or information on health or safety). Nearly a third of respondents also felt that the rights of indigenous peoples were not actively pursued in policy discussions regarding the information and knowledge sharing society. Nearly half of the respondents surveyed (49%) also felt that persons with disabilities did not have appropriate access to important information that is critical to their livelihoods and the exercising of their rights.
• The fragmentation of the "communications rights movement": This survey began with the perspective that the communications rights movement had become fragmented. There was general agreement that the movement was now "very disparate". On the one hand this was seen as an issue of definition, that until activists were able to answer clearly what such a movement was, and spell out its advocacy goals, it could not be considered a "movement". Moreover, there was some disagreement as to whether there was any sense of coherence amongst activists at the WSIS. However, there was an equal sense that the WSIS process allowed different groupings to cohere around a unified perspective (the Civil Society Declaration), which allowed some sense of commonality between the disparate groups to emerge.
• Multistakeholder processes: “Multistakeholder processes” or a “diversification of stakeholders” was seen as a critical outcome of the WSiS process, which also resulted in several forums where multi-stakeholder engagement was practised, such as the internet Governance Forum (IGF), Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD), and WSIS Forum. A distinction can be made between "collective learning" and "substantive learning" that was a result of the WSIS process. Collective learning depends on the strength of the multi-stakeholder process, while substantive learning resulted in "new concepts and frameworks" through this engagement. Besides the WSIS launching new fora for multi-stakeholder engagement, it has also influenced previously “closed” institutions such as the internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Click here to download the report in PDF format in English.

Click here to download the report in PDF format in French.

Click here to download the report in PDF format in Spanish.