Hmmm.... walking into the closing plenary, I happened to grab a copy of the "Proposal of the Swiss Delegation for a Paper on the Implementation of the Geneva Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action." From the 1.5 page document, it sounds like this proposal is the Swiss attempt to break some deadlocks around Chapter One of the Operational Part (Implementation Mechanism). If you look at the most recent Compilation of Comments on Chapter One, it's obvious that many countries and civil society are trying to insert real content into that Chapter regarding the types of initiatives that should be implemented. The problem is that this document wasn't really meant to do that. That was what the Plan of Action in Phase I was for.

So the Swiss are suggesting that the ITU and WSIS Secretariat work together on a paper regarding the implementation of the Geneva Declaraion and Plan of Action. On the surface, it seems like a reasonable recommendation.

My only concern is that the ITU doesn't seem to recognize that civil society exists. Before this PrepCom started, the ITU issued a "Preliminary stocktaking report" about activities that are going on around the world. When I read this document, it was obvious that a) either civil society hasn't been entering data in the WSIS stocktaking site; or b) that the ITU didn't think the civil society initiatives were important since they weren't as big or flashy as the initiatives started by the governments or UN agencies. Either way, it ends up looking like the only people doing any work are governments and the UN. It's frustrating since at the end of the day, there is a whole host of CSOs doing the implementation of these government and UN projects because they have greater on-the-ground capacity to deliver the programmes. But, they don't get any recognition in the UN documents.

So... I'm all for a nice paper to break the deadlock on Chapter One, but could we have the SDC and the GKP watching over their shoulder to make sure that the role of civil society in implementation is acknowledged properly???