See correction below
Delegates laying the groundwork for December's World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) agreed on a variety of goals this week, but more talks are in store before the summit, an International Telecommunication Union (ITU) spokesman said Friday.
The summit, spearheaded by the United Nations' ITU, is intended to bring together heads of state and executives of U.N. agencies, non-governmental organizations, industry and other parties to work toward broader global access to information technology. The first phase of the summit will take place Dec. 10-12 in Geneva, with more than 50 heads of state and government expected to participate. The second phase is scheduled for Nov. 16-18, 2005, in Tunis, Tunisia.
This week about 1,600 delegates from U.N. member states met at the third global Preparatory Conference to draft documents to be discussed and finalized at the December summit. They hammered out a Draft Declaration of Principles and a Draft Plan of Action for improving access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) for all people.
Development targets for 2015 in the action plan include connecting villages with ICTs and establishing community access points, connecting local health centers and hospitals, adapting all primary and secondary school curricula to meet the challenges of the information society and encouraging the presence of all world languages on the Internet. The plan also calls for ensuring more than half the world's inhabitants have access to ICTs.
Following the meeting, the major issues are ready to be taken up at the December summit. However, delegates weren't able to resolve some issues, including Internet security, Internet governance and ways to stimulate investment and to fund development, according to a WSIS statement released Friday. As a result, where resources are available, members of the same group will meet again in Geneva Nov. 10-14 to continue negotiations on the Draft Declaration of Principles and Draft Plan of Action, said WSIS spokesman Gary Fowlie.
The question of different software models raised intense debate, with some countries believing copyright-protected software is not the best solution to all users' needs because of high costs and restricted options, according to the statement. Other debates involved intellectual property rights on the Internet and balancing free access to information with the protection of innovation.
Correction
In this article, the dates for the second phase of the WSIS summit meeting were originally incorrect. The correct dates are Nov. 16-18, 2005.
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