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<DIV>By all means distribute to other relevant lists. </DIV>
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<DIV>Hi everyone, in a letter signed jointly by Lea Kaspar and Richard Hill, the
civil society reps on the WSIS+10 speaker selection committee have just
forwarded the following names to UNDESA.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But this is not the end of the story – UNDESA forwards the names to the
Office of the President of the General Assembly (OPGA), who makes final
choices. So these are not confirmed names yet.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>However, we have argued, and are currently preparing a letter to OPGA to
continue to argue, that their initial concept of us supplying a list of 15 names
for them to choose from was unacceptable, and could result in some significant
imbalances among the various perspectives in civil society. We are also arguing
for a stronger understanding in future of the separate role of technical and
academic communities, who were lumped together with us in this exercise
(although we did separate civil society towards the end to ensure we made our
own selections). But I must say we worked very well with their representatives;
but the separation is a matter of principle, that they also agree with. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Private sector made their selections by a different and separate mechanism
– we want to encourage that for civil society as well.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>This process has been extremely difficult; continually changing timetables,
communication problems, phone linkups that didnt work, and many other
unnecessary problems not worth mentioning here. But in the midst of that the
civil society reps worked very well together to come up with this result, and
will continue working to get a letter to OPGA together which we will publish
when finalised, <BR></DIV>
<DIV>This is what our letter to UNDESA stated:<BR><BR>The five selected speakers
for the High Level Meeting are:<BR></DIV>
<DIV>
<OL>
<LI>Anriette Esterhuysen<BR>
<LI>Parminder Singh<BR>
<LI>Deniz Duru Aydin<BR>
<LI>Avri Doria<BR>
<LI>Roberto Bissio<BR></LI></OL></DIV>
<DIV>The ten additional speakers for the side events are:<BR>
<OL>
<LI>Matthew Shears<BR>
<LI>Puneeth Nagaraj<BR>
<LI>Kapinga K. Tatiana<BR>
<LI>Daniel Stauffacher<BR>
<LI>David Allen<BR>
<LI>Abozer Elligai<BR>
<LI>Anja Kovacs<BR>
<LI>Rajkumar Prasad<BR>
<LI>Chinyere Ezenwokike<BR>
<LI>Jayesh Joshi</LI></OL></DIV>
<DIV>As mentioned, this may change when OPGA gets involved. But this is what has
been recommended.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Ian Peter</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>PS the civil society reps on the selection committee chosen by UNDESA from
names sub mitted, included Ian Peter, Lea Kaspar, Richard Hill, Michael
Gurstein, Anelia Apsis, Anita Gurumurthy, Reza Salim, Badouin Schombe, and Remmy
Nweke</DIV>
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