Access to information

APC’s partner IPS (InterPress Service) sent a letter of complaint to the Secretary General of the ITU (organisers of last week’s World Summit on the Information Society) following the removal of many hundreds of their independent newspapers, Terra Viva, by Tunisians trying to suppress criticism of their government. The same people were disrupting meetings critical of the Tunisian h...

Several issues which civil society has been advocating in WSIS negotiations are not adequately addressed in the current ICT policy framework of the Philippine government. This was the general observation that surfaced in a workshop which the Foundation for Media Alternatives organized to open up discussions on WSIS and its impact on local policies here.

The first victim of war is the truth, so goes the old proverb. At a conference yesterday in the World Forum on Communication Rights, a parallel forum to the official World Summit on the Information Society, speakers from the United States, Colombia, and a Kenyan technologist working in Rwanda took up the theme of how war situations deny communities the right to communicate and how citizens can ...

Carlos Afonso, Director of Planning at APC member in Brazil, RITS (Rede de Informações para o Terceiro Setor – Information Network for the Third Sector) left government delegates clear during his speech on behalf of civil society at the Plenary Session of the World Summit on the Information Society that "digital inclusion [..] will only be possible with the decisive support of a nation...

At a conference this afternoon, civil society representatives presented an ‘alternative’ declaration to the official Declaration expected to be approved by the world’s governments tomorrow at the final day of the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva. The civil society declaration called “Shaping information societies for human needs” was needed because the pr...

Seán Ó Siochrú is a researcher, writer and activist in media and communication. As a director of Nexus Research Cooperative in Dublin, he works for international agencies in information and communication technologies. A founder of the Platform for Communication Rights, he has been actively involved in the WSIS process since the beginning.

Today, December 10th at 14:00, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) officially began – after a preparatory process that was longer that foreseen, due to difficulty in reaching a consensus on the Declaration of Principles and the Action Plan, the final documents to be discussed and sanctioned by the heads of government present in Geneva.

Stories in English and French from the IPS news agency and InfoSud agence de presse about media, communication and technology. During the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) this website will carry daily, electronic versions of the TerraViva Conference newspaper from Geneva.