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February 24, 2005
Civil Society Gets Shafted on Speaking Slots
We're in the middle of this evening's planning meeting for tomorrow's civil society speaking slots, and we've just received the news from the WSIS secretariate that civil society will not have the speaking slot as had been expected. Lots of people here have put an enormous amount of work into crafting statements for tomorrow on recommendations for the working modalities of the summit in November, including recommendations on equal access for the disabled, and now all of this work has been made moot. Apparently the secretariate is willing to let us speak again on financing mechanisms to bridge the digital divide, but most of the groups planning to address this topic have already done so.
"If it's limited to financing mechanisms, we don't have much to say," disability caucus chair Hiroshi Kawamura said a few minutes ago, clearly shocked by the announcement.
This is extremely demoralizing. Right now we're trying to figure out if there's a way that we can force disability rights onto the table, particularly given the fact that it hasn't been addressed at all in the plenary. Hiroshi is now saying that he'll be able to adjust his statement to focus on the connection between disability and poverty, thus making it a financing issue.
Stay tuned... -andy
Posted by acarvin at February 24, 2005 12:23 PM
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