<TITLE: European Information Society
ACADEMIC DOMAIN: social sciences
DISCIPLINE: journalism and mass communication
EVENT TYPE: lecture
FILE ID: ULEC01B
NOTES: continuation of ULEC01A, continued in ULECD010

RECORDING DURATION: 67 min 47 sec

RECORDING DATE: 4.10.2002

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: unknown

NUMBER OF SPEAKERS: 2

S1: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Finnish; ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: male; AGE: 51-over

S2: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Dutch; ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: male; AGE: 51-over

SU: unidentified speaker

SS: several simultaneous speakers>


<S1> tried to do this , er er at least to to somehow participate with <NAME S2> maybe you can , you can inspire them to <SU> [@@] </SU> [they were] kept quiet and you should get some feedback from them , although time is running but anyhow so <NAME S2> is the author of this book er the first pages of which i had distributed to you , he has also written numerous other books both in dutch in his er domes- er own own language and in english he is er er as i told you considered to be one of the leading , scholars of international communication and currently he has this , exceptional position of having a role in the preparations of the er world summit er er especially with the er NGO community so , <NAME S2> </S1>
<S2> thank you as er as as my dear friend and colleague <NAME S1> has told you in the 1990s it looks as if the information issue is back on the international agenda , and since throughout the 90s everyone talks about the information society , the UN decides that it's about time that is has a world summit on the information society , er as you realise over the past decade the UN has had many different summits , the summit on women the summit on population the summit on social development the famous summit on the environment the UNCED conference in rio de janeiro and the idea was that in addition to all these topics the UN also needs to deal with the information society , good , big problem , the largest member state of the united nations doesn't want this , the US administration makes very clear half way the 90s it doesn't want a world summit on the information society , why is that that is because , couple of leading companies in the information communication make it quite clear to the US administration that they see no advantage of having a world summit on the information society , they basically think that nothing good for them can come out of this , cause whatever will come out of it will probably be some (fort) of regulations some form of rule setting which they think they don't need so they are somewhat hesitant about having a world summit and they plead with the US administration to vote against it , gets even worse w- when there's a rumour in the UN that the organisation that would convene the world summit was going to be UNESCO , and as <NAME S1> told to the united states of america had left UNESCO , this was the worst thing that even the clinton administration because we still talk about the clinton administration could think of to have a meeting on the , information society that convened by , UNESCO , this of course with the succeeding administration bush administration didn't get any better , for bush it was absolutely clear that the summit was not something that he was really desperate about having and having it convened by UNESCO was even worse , so some compromise has to be found that's what always happens in international diplomacy , so the compromise that eventually emerges is yes we will have a world summit on the information society but it will not be convened by UNESCO , it will convened by the I-T-U , that's a very significant beginning because within the united nations circles we always call the I-T-U the plumbers , that those are the guys who are worried about pipelines you know , they are worried about telephones and networks they are the engineers the technicians , they don't have this broad political cultural vision that one may expect from UNESCO , so the decision is yes let's have a summit but let's have it , under the umbrella of a fairly narrowly focused technical organisation , the I-T-U , first problem , sort of resolved , second problem where is the summit going to take place . while the tunisian government says let's have it in tunisia let's have it in tunis , why they have a very strong argument they say one may expect , that the anti-globalists will show up at this conference , and we don't want to ever repeat of the battle of seattle , now to keep the bastards out the best thing is to do it in tunisia because the tunisian police will know how to deal you know with this rabble with all these shouting demonstrating bastards now we put them in prison or we send them back immediately before they even touch the airport of tunis , it seems to be a good idea everyone is very pleased with it , the only trouble is tunisians don't have a lot of money , and erm then you get the complication because then the swiss government takes it an enormously courageous attitude the swiss say we have lots of money we will host the conference , and although some people tell the swiss maybe this is not such a good idea because you know if all these anti-globalists come to geneva and throw stones through the beautiful shop windows of all these watch makers and jewel houses but the swiss government says no we also have a very adequate and effective police force just like the tunisians we can deal with it , so the compromise is then there will be two , instalments of the world summit the first one will be the end of next year 2003 in geneva and at the end of 2005 the second one will take place in tunis , no one really knows what that means no one really knows why there should be two world summits no one knows at present what the second summit is going to do after the first one , but you know if a political compromise the two governments have to be kept happy so we have two , instalments of the summit one in geneva , one in tunisia . then we get to the third problem even before it all starts , the secretary general of the united nations kofi annan has a plan , he thinks that the world summit should be different from all the other summits , this should for the first time in history of united nations be a real open conference , not a classical intergovernmental conference but a conference in which also citizens really participate , on equal level with government , it's going to be a real democratic exercise , he thinks , that's what he wants , so he establishes a small panel and that's w- w- why i got involved in this and he asks th- three or four people around the world whether on formal basis they want to work with the secretary general on trying to see that we manoeuvre the world summit towards a different arrangement from the past summits , er and i belong to that small circle of people who occasionally talk to the secretary general about how we can do this , because the secretary general er has only mentioned his desire to make this into a different conference or there is immediate opposition , from an alliance of governments , there's a small coalition created led by the pakistani ambassador to the UN in geneva , er and she says this is no good there's no way that civil society should be involved in this conference on the same level as governments , it's a nice dream by the secretary general but we don't want this , this summit on such an important topic as the information society is typically a governmental issue , maybe citizens can be consulted , maybe we can occasionally listen to them but that's about the limit , and the pakistani ambassador gets the support from the turkish ambassador and the tunisian ambassador they form a little <FOREIGN> (kabal) </FOREIGN> they begin to lobby with a movement of non-aligned nations they get a fair deal of support so we have one major problem even before we get to the first preparatory conference , then we have another problem which is interesting for you academics because as as i'm meeting in preparation of all these things in geneva with the executive secretariat of the conference it dawns upon me , that this is a very peculiar summit because this is the first time in the history of the united nations that we have a summit on something that no one knows what it is <SS> @@ </SS> you see when there was a summit on women at least we- i would not say all participants but at least most participants knew what this was all about at least 50 per cent of the participants knew what women are all about , and environment that is sort of clear but now there is a major conference convened on a rather nebulous concept the information society , no-one has the real and ultimate definition of what it is in the academic literature there is an enormous debate as many of my colleagues who say it doesn't even exist an information society , why can't you see this , er so it's a controversial it's a contested issue , so it seems to me that it may be a good idea if we do a little bit of thinking before we go to a conference because we need to have some sort of maybe working definition some sort of idea as to what that is the information society get some orientation , so i talk to kofi annan and he says that is really great we really need reflection so what you do you propose to the I-T-U that they convene this an academic panel so that's what i do , i phone around the world and get some of my best friends like manuel castell (xx) these leading these famous names all to say yes we will be in your panel so i think i add a couple of nobel prize winners to this i asked noam chomsky also to come on board because i think at least one nobel prize winner should be on the panel er that will you know get a good deal so er whole thing is proposed to geneva to the I-T-U . the pakistani ambassador hears about this gets in touch with the turkish and the tunisian ambassador the little <FOREIGN> (kabal) </FOREIGN> runs up to the headquarters of the I-T-U and they say no way , you se- tal- we don't need citizens involved and the last thing we need is academicians once you get these bloody academicians involved you have a real problem they just mess up the whole thing they ask all these stupid questions they only create trouble , out of the window it went , that was the end of my academic panel even before it all begins so this is just to tell you that these i sort of note some of the background data that you that you need to know so that you realise in what climate , we get early july to geneva where the first preparatory committee takes place , in the UN system summits are always preceded by so-called prepcoms it's one of those slogans you use within the UN and the first prepcom takes place in july of this year , that's going to be a big meeting with all the governments will be represented there there will be representatives from business and there will be a large delegation from citizens from civil society , there will be some 150 to 200 NGOs represented and of course you know we're all full of expectation and great hopes because the secretary general has said this is going to be a different conference , so we feel as we travel to geneva that you know this will be a different set-up from the past we'll all be talking to each other as if we were equals . and on an anecdotal basis , i felt @myself@ that it went wrong on the first monday when the conference is supposed to start because i had a little e-mail from from new york that says the opening session will be on monday morning and the first speaker will be the representative of the UN secretary general who had already told some of us that he wouldn't come himself because he felt there might be political problems and then he would rather stay away so he could lobby better later on so he sent his representative he sent one of his assistant , secretary generals , then the director general of the I-T-U would speak makes perfect sense then the ambassador of the host country the swiss ambassador would speak , makes (eminent) sense then the newly elected president of the conference a conference always elects a chair would speak and then someone on the behalf of the citizens of this world would speak and that would be me <SS> @@ </SS> that's perfect now i take these jobs as a good old dutch calvinist very seriously so i go in time early morning in geneva i arrive into geneva being very pleased with myself to have this opportunity cause i want to check the microphones because since i always talk like like i do now you know just without paper and just er from the heart so to say i need these spe- for big audience mean- m- m- we look at hundreds and hundreds of people that i need a special microphone so i can easily rove around , i'm testing the microphone on the podium someone comes up to me and says what the hell are you doing here <SS> @@ </SS> i say well now it seems to me that i'm on the list of speakers this morning so i thought it may be good idea to test the microphone and the guy says you're not on the list at all , i say i say wha- what's- what's happened he says no you've been removed you are at the other side of the street , you see there's two meetings here in this hall this is where the states meet and where they have their speeches and across the street there is another building and that's where the citizens meet <SU> oh </SU> they have their own meeting and you're supposed to talk to the citizens and not to the governments , so that was the beginning of the prepcom we were just physically divided we were <DISC CHANGE> many of the if you talk to many of the third world ambassadors they say well this whole conference is only about a digital divide it's only about resolving the problem of infrastructure . then there are governments that are slightly more advanced so it's as the member states of the , european union , whenever you talk to ambassadors from the EU they always say well the information society it's the internet it's just technology so there's a narrow focus in many member states that either concentrates just on the digital divide or that concentrates just on the technology side of the information society and then particularly on the internet , i find that very very troublesome . because . let me give you one example . the thinking is too short-sighted , if you only focus on resolving the digital divide , then you don't ask the real difficult question which is what are we going to do once we have resolved the digital divide <SU> mhm </SU> that's much more difficult you see you neg- you need a lot of money , and technology transfer but let's let's be optimistic today i mean it's a nice day anyway so let's say before the end of this week we resolve the digital divide we get all these people telephones mobile phones we get them all computers around the world , one problem less in the international community , no , an enormous new problem because if tomorrow the problem is resolved and the whole six billion in people in the world just hook into the internet that is the end of the panel . because we don't have the energy to support a completely resolved digital divide we don't have today enough energy resources , in my city amsterdam we don't even have enough energy to support a full use of mobile phones and computers in that one city we have enormous problems with it . and whatever the industry tells you and tries to do , doesn't turn out to be so easy to resolve the energy problem it demands an enormous level of energy to produce all that equipment and to use it , first problem we need to think about i'm not saying that it could not be resolved but i think if you don't think about this you may be fuf- in for a very funny problem the end of the planet that's not what we had negotiated for we had expected something else . secondly we also need to urgently find a resolution for the question as to what we going to do once all that equipment and now you talk about you know an enormous increase in equipment around the world is obsolete , we want to have our equipment very rapidly obsolete i mean if you have a mobile phone that is three months old then they'll tell you that's mediaeval throw it away get something new get a new generation that's all nice and well but all that equipment contains rather large volumes of poisonous materials led strontium ca- calcium cadmium , cadmium is something that you need to be particularly worried about it's in your mobile phone and now cadmium gives you kidney problems that's why i see many people standing like this you know <SS> @@ </SS> because it begins here that's where the kidneys are it's dangerous material . we also have a resource problem and i would like to spoil the rest of your weekend because most of you will probably have mobile phones <SS> @@ </SS> will you please do me a favour every time you use your mobile phone think about the fact that you're subsidising civil war in congo . and that people are killed on your behalf because in order to use your mobile phone you need a resource which stabilises the electricity in your phone which is called colton and colton is found for 50 per cent in the republic of congo that's where a- a- almost half of the world's raw resource of colton are found that's why they're killing each other off the- over this resource so i mean jus- ju- . think about it we connect we connect phone calls , so think about what we going to do once we have resolved all these issues now the the US government has made last year a very odd proposal because they are worried about the enormous levels of what is called double E W E-E-W electric and electronic waste which is rapidly exceeding the level of normal domestic waste in major capitals around the world european commission is worried about it the americans are worried about this the americans have asked the pakistani government and the indian government and the chinese government if they were willing to have the american electronic waste dropped in their countries of course the americans would generously pay for that while the p- de- the countries were not absolutely amused they didn't think this was a good idea but that's a real problem i mean so we need to think about what happens next rather than just rushing into solving one problem and not knowing what the next problem is , the narrow focus on technology pat- particularly on the internet is also for me very troublesome because if you read all the preparatory documents there's almost like a euphoric tone there is what you might call technology optimism . now , i can see that i can appreciate that thing a- a- i i like all these the most advanced technologies i mean . for me they are they are great i'm the only person in the netherlands that has a fully digitised toilet for example i really like that it has grz- great facilities at great possibilities i bought it in tokyo in a trade fare i mean it's 5,000 dollars it's a bit of an investment but you get almost like a 747 cockpit in your house it's marvelous you get used to it but if you like modern equipment it's absolutely , great it's only one problem it has a manual what you absolutely need and the manual is in japanese but for the rest it's it's okay you get used to it i was in tokyo again last year the same trade fair where they sell these things and the guy said to me you should buy the next generation we now have a digital toilet 2.1 <SS> @@ </SS> and i say to him what's so good about it he says well that's marvellous because of course the toilet has this chemical analytical facility i mean that's that's nice you immediately know what's wrong with you <SS> @@ </SS> but he said this one's even better because we're now building a digital telephone line to an outside post so whatever the result of diagnosis is can be immediately fed into the office of your medical doctor or the nearby hospital so i look at him rather puzzled and he says no that's great because if something wrong with you before you leave the toilet the ambulance is on its way to get you <SS> @@ </SS> (xx) that's only to say i have nothing i- i- i- i- i'm not a (xx) i'm not against technology i- i greatly enjoy the robot in my garden in the french house it's it's great i like conversations with a robot nothing wrong with that <SS> @@ </SS> but there's always a downside to technology . and i don't see in any of the preparatory documents a realistic view of technology let's take into account it may not all be roses , let's take into seriously account that things may go wrong , let's think of the titanic i missed the titanic , in the focus of technology mean the titanic sank because it was believed this was absolute perfect technology remember the big ship 1912 going out from southampton , 1,500 people died , rather unnecessary if the ship had had enough lifeboats , but if technology is perfect you don't need to stock lifeboats , now i would hope that we would look at technology as something marvellous something great beneficial but that we also think that the titanic may sink one day , and that we then need lifeboats i'm curious as a matter of fact . talking about that i'm always reminded of the fact that the last december day of 1999 must have been for me the most depressing day in my life , because i had great hopes for the millennium bug and i sat the whole day in front of my television set , hoping that something would go wrong , almost in a perverse way and nothing happened in new zealand in the morning and then nothing happened in australia and then the timezone went on to the former soviet union and i thought well there there it goes wrong there's at least one S-S-20 rocket that will go off <SS> @@ </SS> and . and nothing happened . and then of course what happens afterwards everyone says well see this was all hype this was all a hoax you know don't have to take this seriously now it's good probably that nothing happened but i think i would have wanted that it would have made people realise that we are dealing today increasingly worldwide that a very vulnerable . very fallible . technology that we can't rely on all the time that it's in its complexity still ill-understood even by the best experts and that we make our societies increasingly dependent . upon a complex ill-understood technology that to some extent human intelligence can no longer handle , that is unreliable that has its own way that has inbuilt errors that whatever you do you'll never be able to get them out of this system probably and a- does it all matter unless you're willing to think about the day it may go wrong and i'm very pleased to see that nowadays in a small number though . but a small number of international companies companies no longer just have fire drills but like IBM for example has every month a computer drill they do every month one day as if the whole system worldwide just crashes , and the company will still have to continue to operate in that situation that i think is taking lifeboats seriously and it's a pity that there are so few corporations and so few public institutions that do that , that'll be the second challenge the the focus . the third challenge is of course this whole issue of who participates . is this going to be indeed an open conference the world summit or is it going to be restricted to just governments making the decisions , who will eventually sign up for a final declaration in the conference , now this is a major issue because , mind you this conference is about the information society and whatever that precisely means it talks about a whole of society this conference is about how are we going to shape our future societies , now the world summit will send an absolutely wrong signal to the world if the decisions about the future of the information society are only taken by states are only taken by governments so i think it's desperately needed that we find some sort of democratic arrangements by which , governments and business representatives and civil society representatives in the sense of NGO sit together and come together to some sort of conclusion about how we want . to see the world developing in relation to all these information and communication issues and information and communication technologies er there's still a chance that we get it on the right track the world summit er there is er in in in bucharest shortly a major conference convened by the romanian government for the european region and i know that in the european region there's many governments that feel that this ought to be a different conference and it will be very interesting question to see whether the european union really dares to stick out its neck on behalf of civil society and wants to open up this this conference er because this i think will have enormous effect because within the NGO community , which was very active at this first preparatory committee er meeting . and of course i- within brackets what also needs to say you can understand there is a little bit of fear on the part of member states if you looked for example at the difference in level of knowledge , if in geneva you would talk to the ambassadors and your official state delegations most people had no idea as to what this whole issue was all about . whereas within the NGO community there is an enormous amount of knowledge there is all these people you know worked for many many years with the internet who know all the technology and there's the hacker community there is the APC the association for progressive communication there's radio television community broadcasters so i had this very strong feeling that one of the tensions in geneva in july was this enormous difference in knowledge here you have the people who think they have to take decisions with no knowledge and here you have the people who have no power and they have all the knowledge so in one way or another we've got to resolve that also because within the NGO community there's a very strong feeling that if it's not resolved in a democratic way then there will have to be a parallel conference just like with other UN summits there will have to be an official state conference and at the same time in geneva there will be the alternative the parallel conference convened by citizens but it's again i think you know , maybe nice for the excitement of the moment and of course now we get a couple of conflicts we get a couple of stones thrown through windows we get the swiss police all upset we get big media coverage but that doesn't lead anywhere for the issues at stake which are so important that would not be very productive so we need to find a way to to resolve er that . that's the fourth major challenge . er i think it- if i if i'm right we had to focus you know in a way to civil society and of course we had the topics now in the fourth is . and that's closest to my to my heart in this whole thing . you see it's a conference about the information society , and if you look at all the preparatory documents now this is a document made by all the UN agencies in the document that you've seen and if you look at all the preparatory documentation then you find the word information is mentioned umpteen times and the word communication is hardly found <P:05> now i would be very worried that the world summit makes the same mistake as the world conference on human rights in 93 the biggest conference of the UN on human rights and in its final declaration it mentions information and it doesn't mention communication . i think it would be a fatal mistake if the information society conference only continues to focus on information and not on communication let me explain why . i do believe that what the world does not need is more information . you can have maybe a little more information but there is already such an enormous amount of information available in the world . much too much for most of us to process anyway . what we don't have enough in this world is communication . i would rather see the development of communication societies than information societies because societies in which people have an enormous access to information , or access to knowledge if you want but where they can't converse with each other is only asking for trouble . as a key to the resolution of a major social conflict is not more information actually often at the root of conflict is the fact that people have too much information about each other it's really a myth to believe that people get into conflict with each other because they don't know enough about each other . that is often not true often people get in conflict precisely because they know about the other and i can assure you you should call yourself blessed on this friday morning that you have so little information about each other if all of you had precise information about all these others in the room you had raving civil war here <SS> @@ </SS> so don't expect too much of more and more information . if people don't learn to talk to each other you can feed them as much information as you want and nothing will be resolved so the key to our great social troubles is our incapacity to dialogue , to communicate and i would really want the world summit to stress the need to learn to communicate rather than stress information in a communication society the notion of the dialogue would be central now i always notice when i say this people look at yourself did he travel all the way from amsterdam to talk to us about the need for a dialogue as if we didn't know . i say well you know that sort of verbally nominally because you've heard people talk about the multicultural society and the need for dialogue between christians and muslims but what you seldom hear is how extremely difficult that is and that maybe the notion of the dialogue is to- asking too much of us why , i'll give you couple of arguments , dialogue is about listening , it's a capacity that in our western societies we've almost totally lost . listening implies an ear-centered culture and our culture is becoming increasingly eye-centered visual cultures but the more you focus on a visual culture the more you lose the capacity to to listen , we talk endlessly . you see on television quite a lot of talkshows i've never seen a listen-show that would be really great you saw people listening to each other i don't know how it is er finnish television may be the only example that is different from the rest of the world but you (all) have to be careful if you're hosted in a country (knwon) to offend people but outside finland on television worldwide people don't listen to each other . so so how would anyone learn the art of conversation . there's babbling on television babbling shouting there's debate a lot of debate but debate is not dialogue it's about winning the battle dialogue is about understanding listening dialogue also involves silence . er that's increasingly difficult in our , noisy cultures we want to have noise all the time we get very worried if it's one second on radio there's nothing oh gosh there must be music must be noise must be filled , people get restless if there is silence , the dialogue also means that you begin with questioning your own assumptions in the debate you immediately jump into you begin to attack someone else you begin to attack them by your assumption of what's wrong with your bias and that your stereotypes and i don't think about my own assumptions that's much easier because it gets me very nervous and sleepless nights if i begin to seriously question my own , assumptions i don't do that but in a real dialogue that's what you would do and the dialogue of course needs time . now in our cultures we no longer have time . anything has to be done yesterday can't just spend no you've got to hurry up i notice this because i do now in dutch television regularly a programme that wa- wa- where journalists get involved and i talk with them and the director of the programme is always tremendously worried because he's tells to me you do something dramatically wrong you allow these people to complete a sentence . i say well that's the way in which i was taught at home by my parents to always say ki- let someone speak and now when the sentence is out you begin to speak and he says no no no that may be that may be right for your family but that's no television in television you've got to interrupt all the time speed the process up halfway a sentence of someone else you begin that makes real good dramatic television that's what people like . and that kind of culture , communications conversation and dialogue are a very difficult a scarce commodity yet i believe we need to try to think in that direction and in order to get there and here is where the homework that <NAME S1> promised you gets into the the (came) this morning , if you plead for the dialogue if you plead for communication societies you'd need to of course create conditions within which people can talk to each other , which means that you need to create in societies the security of the right to freely express yourself to freely associate with others the right to also to not communicate the right to communicate in confidence to have confidential communications , the right to speak in your own language the right to express your own identity if all these conditions are not fulfilled then the plea for dialogue . and the plea for a communication society makes no sense so here we get to a very concrete topic . my hidden agenda if you want and that's also why i accepted the request by kofi annan is that i think what the international community needs is a very clear statement on the right to communicate . am i- and i realise statements are not going to change the world and another declaration will not make this world suddenly paradise but i think at some point in time we need to commit ourselves as an international community not only to the right to freedom of expression as we have done in the past but to a rather more complex a composite right that deals with all these aspects of communications that deals of course with information transfer and with expression but also with the cultural dimension and with the dimension of the right to participate in decision making about communication , now in order to get that done and have something accepted by the world summit in whatever form or by the alternative conference if the states don't want to play along one needs to begin early on by drafting a document because in these diplomatic conference if you have a final declaration that declaration is never written at the time of the final meeting that declaration was already written months before (you do that in your) (xx) you get to the conference that's what you want out of the conference , so i thought i have a small group of people who are from different parts in the world some international lawyers and one of my assistants work with me on this and i thought we'd begin to draft how such a declaration might look like and we begin to think about how such a declaration might be enforced so you find in the document , now why don't you just send this out you find in the document also the proposal for an international ombud's office for communication rights an independent office where people can go with their complaints when communication rights are violated and where you know all kinds of actions can be taken to deal with those violations if you want a bit of an amnesty international for the right to communicate , that's the that's the idea now why i'm handing this out is that i would very much hope that after this session you find a little time to look at the text , and that you begin to help us in making this (draft) this is only a first attempt and a lot of work still needs to be done and i'd like to also hear from you whether you think things are totally missing from a document like this or whether you think there should be other emphases whether you think certain things may have to be taken out any just any input really counts because a document like this will only work if it's the end result of a cooperative project this cannot be written by one person and then dumped on the rest of the world , so you see i'm not only going to ask you but i'm going to ask groups of students around the world in many different countries and cultures to make contribution to think about this some point in time we'll have a an international web-discussion er on this so that by the time we get next year to the last prepcom which will around the summer 2003 we'll have a document that is supported by a large community of people around the world , er so that we can bring that then into the negotiations and say well here is a proposal of how the world summit could make a a difference this is a kind of document that the summit could end with and this is not just no- one man show but this is the result many different people from many different angles having looked at er at this so that's a complex editorial process but i think it's the only way in which it's going to work so now i'd really hope we can have a little bit of a discussion on this now as far as time permits and er and that you er in whatever way we have to organise this maybe we should talk about it , er maybe it would also be good if we could give to the group the er the U-R-L of the CRIS campaign there's all these NGOs to civil society or maybe it it's the </S2>
<S1> they have received er the package of this <S2> yeah </S2> CRIS campaign that you are right there with this on the second page of the </S1>
<S2> that's the communication rights for the information society campaign that brings together a large number of NGOs in this in this field and that is also i think you know where a lot of motivation for the right to communicate will come from . okay let me stop for a little while </S2>
<S1> yeah maybe we could er perhaps it's er useful for you to just erm go through by outlining them the composition of this document still and </S1>
<S2> well the document has of course we , we try to follow sort of the UN model that makes it sometimes now a bit difficult to read and this is where a lot editing has to be done because the UN of course has its own secret language er and a bit of legalese now you have to find a way between on the one hand the language that that also ordinary human beings can understand and the language that the diplomats will recognise because otherwise they will throw it out of the window straight away so the structure of the document is like this you begin with the preamble and the preamble is simply to do two things you make reference to earlier document that gives you a justification so you know we're not just talking about , something totally new the- there is a legal background to this and secondly you use the background to <COUGH> define key concepts what is it we really talk about and we want to talk about communication the right to communicate and as you will read through this you will find that that is still a very weak part of the preamble , we haven't really yet found a good formulation good definition of what that solves that still needs to be done , then it formulates a set of classical information models those rights are already part of international law like the right for the freedom of expression the right to receive information the right to (apart) information so that just once more stating what is already there <COUGH> in international law within a different context . the second part focuses on the so-called cultural rights now again cultural rights are already found in international law but they're always sort of you know , shoveled under the carpet , in the international debates on human rights it's usually about civil and political rights cultural rights are not really being taken seriously whereas we believe that they are extremely crucial and they also often are at a heart of the violation of civil and political rights cultural rights need to be focused on like for example in in the sense of access to your own language then you have a side of er series of protection rights those are for example a right to be protected in terms of your confidential communications then and that is relatively new , there is paragraph on participation rights reading from all the information and your right to documentation people are given quite a strong right to participate in the culture and communication life of their societies but also in the decision making related to it to it so that's a part we also want to see in the declaration then obviously any right will always have its limits there are no absolute rights so you need to have a paragraph that very carefully sort of limits the limits , a right to communicate will always be on defence or being limited by governments but you can't be unrealistic and say there can be no limits whatsoever so here the challenge is to formulate the limits in such a way they can't be abused by by governments and then the last part inevitably is about implementation it's nice and well to have a declaration like this if you don't have an implementation mechanism you might as well not waste all your time and money er and and and a proposal and again you know this is open for discussion if someone has a much better proposal is to create an independent ombud's office for the right to communicate something that we don't have today in the world if he would have a complaint about any of these rights being violated you don't have a real good place where you could could go where you could easily go without an enormous amount of money or legal trouble and where you would be accepted as someone who can really talk about a violation so that that would be the last the last part of the of the declaration that is in general so that you the outline at least there are a lot of things open so don't consider your homework to be contribution to something that is already set in stone no on the contrary any any smart idea any nobel prize winning suggestion is more than welcome </S2>
<S1> so this CRIS campaign the doc- maybe you can er add a couple of a er re- er prepa- er remarks on [joining this one] </S1>
<S2> [yeah well i think] well the the the CRIS campaign again you know erm [has has has it] </S2>
<S1> [that's the document] which you have received </S1>
<S2> yeah has its own history but er . well again in an anecdotal way it it all begins , once upon a time in the early 1990s immediately after the gulf war a group of social activists and communication researchers meet in malaysia <PLACE NAME> . and what we are very worried about is the fact that although the media in a grand scale had deceived their audiences during the gulf war , and have been easy victims of the propaganda machinery of the allied forces apparently audiences around the world don't care , so we were very worried and we said isn't it peculiar that people around the world are increasingly worried about all kinds of things like the environment nature about all kinds of consumer articles there's critical consumer movements around the world but that apparently people don't really seem to care about the quality of information . so we said what what what could we do about it 'cause it's funny isn't it you buy a television set you go home plug it in smoke , end of your television set you know what to do don't you you call the shop you get very angry you call the consumer's movement you do all kinds of things you get a new television set you plug it in again no smoke get something even worse you get television programmes <SS> @@ </SS> you got to watch you sit day and day after day and you get the most incredible things thrown at you and you never complain . there's no critical consumer movement for media and the quality of information provision in the world so we thought you need we need to do something so we said what what we'll do is we organise a major tribunal in the hague in the peace palace and we get all this international media . that as we called it spoil our cultural environment we accuse them of , the destruction of our cultural environment and we hold them responsible for that and we make a nice big stink and major international . question of course was would they come so i i went off in 92 to atlanta to meet ted turner , to ask him whether he would come whether he would like to stand trial in the international tribunal on which he was accused with misleading the world with his global television station actually within brackets why did i go to see ted turner oh quite easily i've always been throughout my life tremendously in love with jane fonda <SS> @@ </SS> it's always been my dream you know to see jane and then die <SS> @@ </SS> and i knew that ted turner had married jane fonda so i thought if i go to atlanta it's a very good chance and i met <NAME> <SS> @@ </SS> marv- marvellous person i'm so happy to see that she is now divorced from him i think it's such a wise decision he's such a stupid <SS> @@ </SS> anyway . she made a very good point at the f- at the mar- i had the most remarkable lunches in my lifetime in atlanta when she says what you need to do you get yourself a document and a movement and then she says it's very conf- she tal- she talked (during the half an hour) she talked about him whereas he was present you know er as if he wasn't in and then she says you get the document you get one million signatures and then he will take it seriously because he's just a businessman yeah so i went home and i drafted what is called the people's communication chart document that you can find in many different books and that you also find on the inevitable website of course the people's communication chart sort of lines out what ordinary people may expect from the media and from communication again same editorial process we did took almost six years it went throughout the world thousands of people had contributions extremely complex irritating at times , but we went through that to get a document and on the basis of that document a campaign began , which sort of was mobilised by an organisation in london which is called the world association for christian communication they are a real good activist group they got many other organisations in the communications field together such as AMARK , AMARK is the leading organisation of community broadcasters in the world <NAME OF ORGANISATION> that's the organisation of alternative video makers , ABC the internet people a large number we ended up with having a coalition of some 19 20 NGO organisations that all were inspired by this idea of a people's charter , and we began talking about how we could have an effect in the world and then of course when it became clear that there would be a world summit now we said to each other now this is a unique chance for us to make ourselves heard to make a representation on behalf of a civil coalition to fight for our inclusion in the process and to make you know our face indeed known to a much wider constituency so then then of course we had to find a good name for this for the campaign where all these NGOs would get together er and we decided that we would call it CRIS to have a nice easy er acronym communication rights in the information society so under that umbrella there is now a growing number and one er the meeting in geneva took place actually , CRIS was really if you want the centre of all all activity there they organised most of the NGO sessions and they got more and more people the international women's tribunal in new york for example came on board and there was an increasing number of of organisations just said let's join this campaign because together we have better chance to to work with or to possibly work against governments er which er and i also must add to this yet another complication that er CRIS brings together if you want real civil society organisations , er and where we have to be increasingly careful is that nowadays the worlds of NGOs non-governmental organisations or civil society organisations isn't necessarily so clean any longer , er governments have begun to underst- to understand that these civil society organisations play increasingly an important part in international politics , you can no longer ignore them . er you have to deal with them whether you like it or not whether it's about the environment you can't bypass and you can't bypass greenpeace international if it's about human rights you can't ignore amnesty international you've got to deal with these organisations and as a result of that there is a number of governments around the world that have begun to establish their own NGOs , they finance NGOs . er they finance particularly in you see this happening in a number of developing countries pakistan is a good example pakistan has a number of very active human rights NGOs , and it all looks very good until the moment you're going to look at where the funding comes from and how they were organised and established by the pakistani government itself . so one of the difficulties we had was that in one of the meetings in geneva when we were sitting together with all these NGOs and were complaining about the fact that we did have no access to the governments and that we were simply just locked out and that we could not participate we were not even given information , someone stands up on behalf of a third world NGO and says yeah but we should be realistic we should be fair we should really understand that we are just the citizens we don't have the same responsibility as states we should leave the real decisions really to states . that created as you can understand an enormous tension in that in that room because most people realised that this was a statement on behalf of a state funded er NGO er which is a dangerous element because this may very easily lead to dividing the NGO community between those who are really in for full citizens' participation and those who choose to side for all kinds of reasons of the governments and the states governments will also try to diffuse this whole problem by asking members of the NGO community on board of that allegations also something that i think also in this and other countries we have begun this discussion in the netherlands nee- needs to be looked at very carefully , er if a government allegation is composed of people from various ministries . who then will they asks form a non-governmental institution many western governments now do that , that m- m- maybe could maybe could if you're there but you also need to realise it may also be dangerous because it may also lead to splitting up the other community that's something to really think about and anyway whatever country you come from i would really like to impress upon you if you have any opportunity to do this or if you have any leads or any connection try to find out how the national delegation to the world summit in your country is being composed , who will go there , it's very clear that at the first preparatory committee that most governments had just sent their telecom people . narrowly focused delegations , peoples people from the ministries of transport and telecommunication . er some governments may just send people from their ministry of trade that's another narrow focus , that's tremendously crucial that national delegation will be composed in a very broad way and that international delegation will also have people who represent cultural interests a UNESCO affiliate ministries also to delegation . so ha- have a have a look at it it's interesting also because er i don't know whether anyone of you has ever done that but you suddenly get into a new world and you suddenly discover that those are things that few people think about you may well phone up your ministry of foreign affairs and say er could i just have a simple infom- i'm writing my thesis on the united nations and i'd like to know about the world summit on the information that the other side of the line says what world summit never heard of it is that something that's taken place no it's something that's going to take place wow i must ask my colleagues about that and then he or she asks colleagues and a good chance the colleagues will say well i- i don't know that that that i've seen something on this or ask members of parliament said d- d- do they know how the national delegations put together sh- shouldn't the national parliament have a say in this shouldn't the national parliament have a say in the instructions that which people go there see these are fairly not necessarily by any ill-intent i'm not necessarily suggesting that this is all conspiracy but the way in which these things operate it's often fairly highly secret no-one <COUGH> no-one knows but i know this from my own country we are a small country everyone knows everyone else you know open lines and yet how delegations are being composed it's usually a very well kept secret that also members of parliament are always puzzled about and they're always puzzled about what these characters who finally end up in geneva then say on their behalf , cause you've got to realise it's not unimportant what a national delegation does over there . that depends again upon the instructions and that in itself should also be a democratic process . or calling into account for let's assume this is going to be a major failure this conference now i think national parliament should call the relevant ministries to account for that and say what the heck have you done in geneva it's nice and well to talk about democracy in your own country than to shut up on the international level . so , lots of things that can be done that can be </S2>
<S1> source of this CRIS campaign is erm something which emerged already before <S2> yeah yeah </S2> the world summit but now it is focused <S2> yeah </S2> it serves like a <S2> [yeah yeah yeah] </S2> [platform of the NGOs] er and er your erm draft will er be pres- er erm be submitted on behalf of that [campaign] </S1>
<S2> [yeah because] because one of the things the ke- kept coming back of course we when i was giving the speech in geneva and not to governments but to . to my own folks so to say which i thought was a real pity i mean i was really prepared i mean i made myself throughout the weekend absolutely angry if i'd go after these states and don't tell them you know got to really excite them and make them very angry provoke them i was all ready to go and then i was told i had to speak to those who were already converted <SS> @@ </SS> any- anyway er but interesting thing was that throughout that weekend notion of the right to communicate came back in practically all the speeches this was sort of picked up and that begun sort of to to be the buzz with people had the feeling we needed one way or another to express that we mean with the information society more than just the right to information and not just to information we mean more than just the one way process of i'm free to talk to you , communications is still different from just you know this it's it's it's of course by definition a two-way process and practically all the legal definitions that you find so far in international law are based on just assumption of of a one way process and that needs space and freedom there's nothing wrong with that on the contrary , communication is a somewhat more so you need to think more if you want to have an intellectual challenge . for your next thesis or whatever it is or your paper one thing that we haven't or you find that in the preamble as i said what what we haven't resolved is the follow-up . if you think like i do that in societies the capacity to dialogue and particularly in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies and again let me use the example of my own society in the dutch society we simply lack the capacity to really dialogue between christians and jews and muslims and muslim and secular people , we try to have debates and we have them almost endlessly night after night on television and they are time after time total failures , some of the basic rules of how you dialogue with each other are apparently not understood we don't know how to do it we need to learn that we need to desperately learn that . now if if if you if you would accept that that that's important if you would also accept the f- following argument that that kind of dialogue will only take place in a situation where there is the freedom and the openness and the public space to do that , and where people are not like this happened just in my country now where very courageous young somali woman who speaks up in . defense of muslim women in the country is now threatened , to be murdered and no longer appears in public space she's under very heavy protection of dutch police she's probably going to leave the country . you see w- we are getting into an absolutely wrong situation , so we need to create the kind of s- public space and the protection of public space in which the real dialogue cause mind you the real dialogue is not only difficult it's also very challenging it goes to the core of what you believe . and your willingness to also put it at risk and question it . what are the condition that you need to do that that's the question that still holds me and it puzzles me what is beyond say why you need the freedom of expression okay that's free speech tr- what else is needed in terms of the environment to create a safe space for that kind of social dialogue that's what we still need to think through and anyone of you who has some ideas some creative notion about this please help us because that's what we need to sort of if you want to conceptually intellectually establish before you then can draw legal consequences from that so there's still a lot of work to be done </S2>
<S1> mhm . well er </S1>
