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Today is the first day that I have been able to attend some parallel events at the WSIS, with my major responsibilities completed. Lots of interesting things going on around the Kram Centre. I spent the morning at a panel organized by UBUNTU and the CRIS campaign with the unwieldy title of “Which Reforms of…

Yesterday, Iranian human rights activist Ms. Shirin Ebadi addressed the opening ceremony of the WSIS on behalf of civil society. It was a moving moment for many of us. The text of Shirin Ebadi’s speech in French can be found on the WSIS website. Among the main points of her speech: She drew attention to…

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…

We’re receiving alarming reports that human rights activists are being harassed, prevented from meeting, and even brutalized by Tunisian police during the last couple of days. Worldsummit2005.org, run by the Boell Foundation, and the Association for Progressive Communications are reporting that the site of a preparatory meeting for a “Citizen’s Summit” was blocked by Tunisian…

As we get to the final hours of the final Prepcom of the WSIS today, the final question remains: what is to be the follow-up mechanism to ensure that the commitments of Tunis are honored? At the final Prepcom III, debate remains on para 24 of the Tunis Agenda for Action document (DT 26), which…

The final-final WSIS Prepcom began this afternoon with the Sub-committee on Internet Governance attempting to push through the significant amount of bracketed text left to negotiate. Then the Sub-committee on follow-up, implementation and “all other issues” tried to reach agreement on the texts on international cooperation and post-summit follow-up. As we have been predicting for…

The government of Canada is working with IBM technology to sponsor a global online dialogue on urban sustainability called “Habitat JAM.” Under the auspices of UN-Habitat, the Canadians are hosting a 3 day virtual conference from December 1-3 that seeks to turn “ideas into action on critical issues related to urban sustainability” through engaging and…

Kofi Annan wrote an editorial in the Washington Post to address the “mistaken notion” that the United Nations wants to “take over, police or otherwise control the Internet.” “Nothing could be farther from the truth,” he maintains. In the editorial, the UN Secretary-General seeks to do damage-control to counter the US government’s and popular media’s…

I just heard that Nicholas Negroponte of MIT Media Lab will be unveiling the $100 laptop they have been working on at the WSIS in Tunis in a couple of weeks! I’m quite excited to see the device and how it works. I blogged about the MIT “One Laptop Per Child” Project, as well as…