THE world is entering a golden era of information, founded on the internet, telephone networks and satellite communication. But no one can decide who should benefit, who should pay for it, or how it should be run.
This is the message that emerged from the first ever world summit dedicated to the 鈥淚nformation Society鈥�. The very existence of the summit was hailed as evidence of just how much the information age is starting to dominate global society, politics and economics. But critics were disappointed by the failure of the 10,000 delegates from 176 countries to agree to any concrete measures. They say the conference is a missed opportunity to hook millions of people into the world鈥檚 computer networks and close the growing information gap between rich and poor.
The United Nations has hosted only nine other such meetings in the past decade or so. Among them were the Earth Summit, held in Rio in 1992, and last year鈥檚 follow-up in Johannesburg, the World Summit on Sustainable Development. These alerted the world to the precarious state of our climate and secured aid for places where food and clean water are still not guaranteed. The UN has now granted 鈥渋nformation鈥� the same status, as delegates ranging from presidents and prime ministers to community volunteers travelled to Geneva for the three-day summit.
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Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, set out the goals and challenges in his opening speech: 鈥淔rom trade to telemedicine, from education to environmental protection, we have in our hands, on our desktops and in the skies above, the ability to improve standards of living for millions upon millions of people.鈥� With that endorsement, the summit tried to tackle the growing digital divide.
The benefits of the information age are being felt by only a tiny fraction of the 6 billion people in the world, the conference heard, as lack of infrastructure and awareness in developing countries excludes their populations from the emerging information society. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN agency that organised the summit, 30 per cent of westerners used the internet in 2001, compared with just 3 per cent of people in the developing world.
That divide was apparent at the conference, too. Although 55 heads of state attended the summit, the majority were African leaders eager to enter the information age. Few travelled from Europe or North America.
鈥淲hat we saw is a reflection of the problem itself,鈥� ITU spokesman Gary Fowlie told 快猫短视频. He says the developed world takes ready access to information completely for granted. 鈥淭he only time we talk about the information society is when our mobile phone doesn鈥檛 work, or our computer crashes.鈥� This makes it hard to mobilise support from western countries for initiatives aimed at narrowing the gap.
The summit rejected for now calls from African nations to create a 鈥淒igital Solidarity Fund鈥� 鈥� a money-pot funded by richer nations that would finance the construction of new networks and community projects.
Also deferred was a decision on who should control the internet. Many nations were unhappy that US organisations run so much of the technical infrastructure of the net, including the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which assigns domain names. Delegates from Brazil, South Africa and India called for a UN body to take control.
With these contentious issues brushed aside, all 176 nations signed up to a 鈥淧lan of Action鈥� with a host of recommendations, including that half of the world鈥檚 population should have access to information and communication technologies by 2015. But no mechanism for achieving this was set out. 鈥淭hat is the single abject failure of the summit,鈥� says Simon Davies of Privacy International, who turned down an invitation to give a lecture to the conference.
He and many other representatives of civil society groups invited as observers were also unhappy with the political wrangling in the run-up to the summit. In the two years of negotiations that preceded the event, the language of the Plan of Action, and the accompanying Declaration of Principles, was fine-tuned to please all the countries involved. But the final documents contain too many compromises, critics say.
For instance, western nations have widely criticised China and some Arab states for restricting their citizens鈥� access to certain websites. But they in turn have been lambasted for failing to support internet access in developing nations. 鈥淭hey cut a deal: provided the poor countries didn鈥檛 agitate too much for funding, then the rich countries wouldn鈥檛 agitate too much over surveillance and control,鈥� Davies told 快猫短视频.
Civil society groups also had to fight to have the right to freedom of expression included in the summit鈥檚 formal declarations. But there was disappointment that concern for intellectual property rights overrode support for free software.
The summit will reconvene in Tunisia in 2005. Many delegates are now hoping that the second part of the world summit on information will result in action as well as words.