The final Tunis documents were released this morning to be adopted by governments at the World Summit on the Information Society.
The official Tunis texts can be downloaded from the WSIS website. I have put up not-so-beautiful html versions of the “Tunis Agenda” (action document) and the “Tunis Commitments” (political chapeau) documents.
Among the main agreements reached:
- Calls upon ECOSOC to restructure the existing Commission on Science and Technology for Development to be the follow-up coordination body, with multi-stakeholder participation.
- Calls for the creation of an Internet Governance Forum for broad-based, multi-stakeholder dialogue on public policy issues related to internet governance. Greece has already offered to host the first meeting of the IGP.
- Recognizes that the ITU, UNESCO and UNDP should play “leading facilitating roles.”
- Requests the Secretary General to create a group within the CEB on the Information Society to facilitate cooperation.
- Calls for a review of the Summit commitments in 2015.
- Language on the importance of human rights in the information society, particularly the freedom of expression, right to receive information and a free press.
- Affirms the importance of education in science and technology of girls and women to enable their effective participation in decision-making fora.
- Supports the creation of child helplines in all countries.
- Includes an annex on which organizations should be involved in the coordination of implementation activities
- Declares 17 May to be “World Information Society Day.”
In general, civil society folks seem happy with the texts. The main reservations remain around how the IG Forum and the Commission will actually operate. So the next negotiating target centers around the actual organization of these new policy spaces.