Info from ITU on participation at WCIT

[Deborah Brown]

Hi all,

Access has received some information from the ITU Secretariat regarding
avenues of participation for civil society/public on WCIT that we thought
might be of interest to this list.

Apologies for cross posting.

Best,
Deborah


 1. Public Comments page

The publicly accessible webpage was established so that all stakeholders
could express their views until one month before the Conference. Member
States may use the submitted comments in any way they consider appropriate
and civil society organizations are of course welcome to encourage member
states to take their concerns and proposals on board.

The ITU Secretariat will not summarize or compile the submitted comments.
The Secretariat was specifically instructed not to process the comments in
any way, so the Secretariat will not be producing a compiled document, nor
will the comments be translated.  The reason for the 3 November deadline is
that that is the deadline on which Member States are encouraged to submit
their contributions, so we decided to apply the same deadline to the public
comments.  Member States can submit contributions after 3 November, so they
can take all the public comments into account if they wish.  Any Member
State can, at any time, submit a contribution, which contribution could
include any of the public comments and the ITU Secretariat will continue to
regularly inform and promote to its Members about the public consultation
platform. Sfter the deadline we will be following up with a letter to
Member States reiterating what has been said previously i.e. “Member States
are encouraged to give due consideration to views and opinions expressed at
this website in their preparation for the WCIT-12.”

2. Delegation deadlines

According to the Convention of the ITU and the General Rules for
Conferences, Assemblies and Meetings of the ITU (CV49 and GR Ch I, Sections
1&2 – all texts available here:
http://www.itu.int/net/about/basic-texts/index.aspx ) – Host Country
invites Member States and invites them to communicate to SG at earliest
convenience whether Government accepts the invitation. *No deadline to
register* (Registration for WCIT-12 opened on 20 August and will remain
open throughout the event). *No limit* on number of delegates in a
delegation. Depending on room capacity, larger delegations may not be
guaranteed total number of seats together. Worth recalling too that each
Member State is free to make up its delegation as it wishes.

3. Civil Society Participation

GR 164 provides that the press and the public may be present at WCIT. This,
in principle and practice is a formality, and is formally decided at the
meeting of Heads of Delegations at opening of WCIT-12 on Monday, 3rd Dec
2012. There is therefore no formal mechanism for Civsoc registration.
However, if Civsoc delegates want to announce their wish to attend, they
can do so by informing wcitregistration at itu.int. The secretariat will be
happy to provide feedback on the conference decision regarding admitting
press and public to WCIT. This information, of course, can only be provided
on 3 Dec, keeping in mind also that the conference runs for two weeks.

In accordance with practice, it will be proposed that the press and the
public be admitted to the plenary meetings and to plenary sessions of
substantive committees. In principle, all other meetings are private (e.g.
working groups, focus groups…).

4.  Public Webcast

In accordance with practice, WCIT plenary meetings and plenary sessions of
substantive committees will be broadcast to ITU membership. As mentioned
above media participation is confirmed at the opening of the meeting and
standard practice would imply that this is perfunctory – in this context
webcast of plenary sessions should follow. Communications will follow up
more on this to try and get complete confirmation.

We will be ready to live stream (technically speaking) once the green light
is given by membership at the opening plus we would intend that the event
be broadcast live in all six official languages, and the sessions can
archived for future viewing and download. Communications is fully preparing
for a live webcast in anticipation of the official endorsement from the
Conference which has traditionally been the case.





-- 
Deborah Brown
Policy Analyst
Access | AccessNow.org
E. deborah at accessnow.org
S. deborah.l.brown
T. deblebrown
PGP 0x5EB4727D
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