Destination: Tunis

Movements for social inclusion try to influence Latin American
governments that will send representatives to the World Summit on the
Information Society in Tunis. The idea is to promote resistance against
software monopoly
Rafael Evangelista

Big companies on the technology business have known for long that the
dissemination of information and communication technologies can promote
democracy, but that it can also be a very profitable business. Seeking
new potential markets, they send their best lobbyists to pressure
governments and international agencies into using their products. Their
pretext is that they are offering help to these costumers (some from
third world countries) so they can overcome the inadmissible digital
exclusion they face. The World summit on Information Society, which is
organized by the United Nations (UN), is one of the places these
companies put their lobbyists to work.

They have already acted in the Latin American and Caribbean preparatory
meeting, which took place in Ecuador between May 4th and May 6th, and
will probably act again in the Regional Summit on Information Society
that is to take place in Rio next July, from the 8th to the 10th.

At the meeting in Ecuador, and with the support of Argentina, Chile,
Uruguay and the Dominican Republic, Brazil defended the making of a
regional report on free software and open source use. The report is to
be taken to the World Summit on Information Society, in Tunis.
Representatives of Mexico, El Salvador and Ecuador suggested the
inclusion of proprietary software in the report, stating that they favor
a neutral technological policy.

According to Paulo Lima - member of the Information Network for the
Third Sector (Rits) -, the representative for Ecuador, who does not
support the Brazilian proposal, was, until not long ago, part of a group
of lawyers who worked for Microsoft. “The debate, which was only about
the development of a work group to produce studies and a report on its
initiatives, showed that some delegations are articulated in favor of
the proprietary software. This attitude, as well as the resistance to
the establishment of regional agreements which could mean an obstacle to
free trade agreements with the USA, have been a strong characteristic of
the negotiations,” Paulo Lima states.

The Summit itself cannot impose regulations to the countries taking part
in it. However, multilateral agreements usually result from these
meetings, which play an important roll in the international political
chess. Rio-92, for instance, was a similar event regarding the
environmental sector. There, agreements like the Convention on
Biological Diversity (CDB) were signed.

Necessary Actions

In order to overcome the pressure exercised by corporations and give
some countries the needed support, social movements related to the
Information Technology area are gathering to take action in the meetings
in Rio and Tunis. Between April 25th and April 26th, a preparatory
meeting was held to advertise regional and world summits and to invite
the civil society to participate. At this meeting a letter directed at
the Foreign Relations minister, Celso Amorin, was approved. This
document, as well as others, claims that the participation of social
movements in the event should receive wider support. The movements
should have access to better infra-structure. It also asks for an
extended enrolment period for the summit – ironically, the official site
has had technical problems.

The participation of civil society in the summit takes crooked ways.
Social movements’ representatives can join delegations as long as they
are invited by their countries’ governments – and therefore they are
able to vote as representative for the country – but independent
entities can only participate as observers or in activities that will
take place in parallel to the summit and that are going to be organized
by civil society movements.

The Regional Conference, which is going happen in Rio de Janeiro, is
also a preparatory meeting to the World Summit in November. It will be a
milestone for the second and last phase of a process that begun with the
Geneva World Summit in 2003. According to Summit’s organizers, at the
meeting in Tunis the implementation of the Action Plan will be reviewed,
and new goals, that will have to be achieved by the countries until
2015, will be defined.

Action Plan developed in Geneva:

http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/doc_multi.asp?lang=en&id=1161|1160



Site Social Movements Preparatory site:

http://xango.metareciclagem.org/cupula/


Site Regional Conference on the Information Society - Official site:

http://www.riocmsi.gov.br/


Translation: Ruby Zatz and Adriana Bosco