[bestbits] [governance] Remarks at UNESCO Closing Ceremony of "Connecting the Dots Conference"

[Norbert Bollow]

On Thu, 5 Mar 2015 15:23:57 -0800
Jeremy Malcolm <jmalcolm at eff.org> wrote:

> if this means that you no longer support para 35 of the Tunis Agenda

JNC's position in relation to para 35 of the Tunis Agenda has not
changed.

It is as follows:

"Just Net Coalition agrees with the spirit of paragraph 35 of the Tunis
Agenda in that that governments have specific public policy roles and
responsibilities, and other stakeholders cannot claim a similar
position as governments in this regard. However, we consider that the
description of the role given to civil society in this section is
inadequate. While the text does speak of an important role that civil
society should continue to play, this is inadequate because the
exclusive mention of 'community level' and not 'policy level' gives an
unbalanced view of civil society's role. While community level work and
linkages constitute the key legitimising factors of civil society,
civil society also has a strong role to play at the policy level in
terms of 'deepening democracy' whereby it brings to the policy table
representation of otherwise under-represented voices."

(This is the content of note 5 in JNC's October 14, 2014 Statement to
the 2014 Plenipotentiary Conference of the International
Telecommunication Union.) 
http://justnetcoalition.org/sites/default/files/ITU_PP_2014.pdf

Greetings,
Norbert
co-convenor, Just Net Coalition
http://JustNetCoalition.org