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Program :: Chris Bailey /Thematic
Session III Role of the Civil Society in the Creation of Abstract Summary of speech to Thematic Session III NGO Roundtable at Belgrade "Telecommunications for Development" conference, October 29th Chris Bailey Brief introduction of myself. I was the coordinator of the European Civil Society Internet Rights project, funded by the Open Society Institute, which finished earlier this year. My main area of activity at the moment is in Bulgaria where I am the founder and policy coordinator of Internet Rights Bulgaria. This is a pilot project with the aim of developing similar projects in other CEE/SEE countries. Our experience at European level led us to prioritise this work. We strongly share the convictions of the governments represented at this conference that SEE must become a fully integrated part of the Information Society. An essential aspect of achieving this aim concerns developing the use of Information and Communications Technologies by the emerging civil society organisations in SEE. This is the central job our Internet Rights projects want to help to tackle and I am very pleased to see that it is one this conference is taking seriously by holding this session. What do we mean by Internet Rights? Our conception of this comes out of the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights, which specifically recognises that human rights cannot just remain static in a continuously changing world, but have to be developed in the context of these changes, including technological ones. The same conception was strongly expressed at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe last year by a delegate from FYR Macedonia, when he called for the European Convention on Human Rights to be amended to include "the right to Internet access, the right to a unique identity in cyber space and the right freely to receive information from it". In the modern world, exclusion from the Information Society means your voice will not be heard. The Internet has become a vital aspect of international civil society. An essential aspect of the growth of civil society in SEE concerns the need for the emerging NGOs there to fully participate in the already existing NGO networks of Western Europe. It is impossible for them to do so without having access to and the ability to use the Internet. I want to stress the importance of this question for the overall
development of SEE. Civil society NGO input into the ongoing plans
and activities arising from this conference is essential. I believe
civil society use of the Internet has already played a vital part
in bringing about the democratic changes that have made this conference
possible. I will give a brief outline of the use of the Internet
by Radio B92 and its Internet subsidiary, OpenNet. Also the fight
of fellow panellist, Veni Markovski, in 1998-99 to bring about a
free and open Internet in Bulgaria. These were important steps in
developing both democratic civil society and the Information Society
in SEE. The Joint Statement of Intent that preceded this conference
put the role the Information Society could play to "contribute
to improved democratic structures" as the first item coming
before "economy progress, social cohesion and regional security".
I think that is the correct order of things. Important as all these
other issues are, the possibility of tackling these longstanding
problems in new ways has been opened up primarily by the democratic
developments. Development of the Information Society in SEE and
the further development of democracy and civil society must go hand
in hand. Both need each other. |