Regional preparations in high gear

Information and communication technologies hold out the global promise of better government and could strengthen respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, ITU Secretary-General, Yoshio Utsumi told participants in the Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Conference for the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Bávaro (Dominican Republic) from 29 to 31 January 2003. He stressed that while there has been no shortage of international initiatives and good intentions to bridge the “digital divide” that exists between the developed and developing world, the time had come to mobilize global resources and investment for the benefit of all humanity. “We need a commitment on the part of governments, the private sector and civil society to realistic targets and concrete action,” Mr Utsumi said, urging all participants to help ensure that political leaders focus on the Summit as a unique opportunity to bring the tools of the information revolution to the service of global development.

Regional preparatory conferences are taking place around the world to ensure that the Summit addresses the specific concerns, needs and priorities of the various regions. According to Adama Samassékou, President of the Preparatory Committee for WSIS, regional conferences provide the opportunity for each region to involve the greatest possible number of participants in securing effective input for the Summit’s preparatory process. “Together we shall make the World Summit on the Information Society the scene of a new world dialogue, a new form of international communication based on the values of responsiveness, exchange, solidarity and sharing.”

In mid-January 2003, the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference adopted the Tokyo Declaration following three days of deliberations (Tokyo, 13–15 January 2003). This conference brought together from the region representatives of the governments of 47 countries, 22 international organizations, 54 private sector entities and 116 non-governmental organizations. “Until we address the injustices of the digital divide, we cannot embrace the promise of cyberspace with a clear conscience,” Mr Utsumi said in his remarks to the Tokyo Conference.

The Tokyo Declaration highlights the unique features of the Asia-Pacific region to be taken account of when building the information society. These features include the region’s geographic and demographic diversity; its cultural and linguistic diversity; issues of gender imbalance; and disability issues — an estimated 400 million people with disabilities in Asia and the Pacific are poor and have been excluded from the benefits of ICTs due to the lack of appropriate or affordable technology.

Coming up soon are the Western Asia Regional Preparatory Conference, to be held in Beirut (Lebanon) from 4 to 6 February 2003, and the League of Arab States Regional Conference, scheduled to take place in Cairo (Egypt) in June 2003. Reports on these regional events will be published in future issues of ITU News.

The sixteenth ITU Plenipotentiary Conference (Marrakesh, 2002) gave the Secretary-General a strong mandate to take immediate steps to ensure the inclusion of a gender perspective in all ITU contributions to the World Summit on the Information Society. This underscores the importance that plenipotentiaries attach to gender in the context of the Summit and the information society.

WSIS has a unique opportunity to reinforce the direct linkage between information and communication technologies, national poverty reduction strategies and the global Millennium Development Goals intended to reduce world poverty by half, by the year 2015.

The ultimate goal is to give all people access to ICTs. In this context, it becomes a necessity to underline the fact, however obvious it may be, that women make up over half of the world’s population. Yet, they do not have the same opportunities or the same responsibilities as men.

To quote Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO): “There isn’t a single country or institution in the world where men and women enjoy equal opportunity.” This makes it all the more important to focus on, and address the needs of women in special ways.

Women’s right to equal opportunity and treatment, and respect for their dignity, are neither a luxury nor a favour to be granted. Rather, they are basic to the process of democratisation and to social justice. They are also equally an economic imperative. While undeniable progress has been made around the world to promote women at national and international levels, it must be universally understood and recognized that without women’s participation in decision-making in all spheres of life and at all levels of society, we cannot eradicate poverty, we cannot create fully democratic societies, and we cannot formulate economic and financial policies which promote social and economic justice for all.

ICT is an important tool for providing women with access to lifelong learning and training, to productive assets and to credit. Neglecting to give women access to this tool not only deprives them and their families of income, but also reduces the skill-level of a nation’s human resources, limits national production and bars countries from being competitive in the global market.

Bearing this in mind, the goals for the information society — which are to utilize the power of knowledge and technology to combat poverty and achieve sustainable development — cannot be a reality without taking gender aspects into consideration. The message to all those concerned about creating an information society for all is simple, but crucial — take gender and women’s rights into account as you develop a vision of this society and deliberate on the critically important issues of access and application.

It will be crucial to focus on the three areas highlighted below in order to make a difference in women’s lives, and in national development:

  Ensure women’s participation and apply a gender analysis in shaping the regulatory and policy framework that governs ICTs.

  Invest in innovative capacity-building strategies that can ensure that women and girls, particularly those who are marginalized and poor, shape the digital future and generate content that is relevant to their interests.

  Ensure that social responsibility and gender justice form an integral part of all ICT strategies and programmes.

There are differences in the possibilities and opportunities women and men, or boys and girls are given. The persistence and pervasiveness of gender-specific structural inequalities constitute real barriers to equal access by all human beings. Among the factors that affect women’s capacity of access to, and use of, ICTs are: global patterns of inequality between women and men, as reflected in women’s political participation and their representation in decision-making structures; differences in women’s and men’s economic opportunities, access to resources, and division of labour within the economy; women’s over-representation among the poor; their higher levels of illiteracy; the persistence of stereotypical attitudes about women’s roles and of discriminatory laws and practices.

The Millennium Declaration reinforced the commitment to gender equality, and clearly recognized the promotion of this equality and the empowerment of women as effective ways of combating poverty, hunger, and disease, and of stimulating development that is truly sustainable.

Let us therefore act so that all the world’s people can benefit from the potential of the ICT revolution. We have the knowledge and the means; the question is whether we have the wisdom and the will.