Communication Rights (CR) as a broad over-arching concept featured variously, at times controversially, at the Tunis World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Ironically, it is yet to find a mention in the Summit declaration.
Communication rights is an all-encompassing notion. Activists gathered in this north African city have cited it to campaign on a diverse range of issues from gender to poverty (the poor have a right to be heard) to press freedom.
One generally-accepted definition comes from Professor Cees J Hamelink, a University of Amsterdam scholar. Participating in the first phase of WSIS in 2003, he listed the key CR principles as "freedom, inclusiveness, diversity and participation".
Many delegates in Tunis say freedom of expression is central to CR and feel their demands have not been adequately addressed in the WSIS process, even though sections of the Geneva WSIS Declaration echo Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
"The WSIS text is too weak; it is too shy," said Alain Modoux, former Assistant Director-General of Communication and Information at UNESCO.
"There was some hope in the early 90s with the advent of ICTs [information and communication technologies] but now governments are organising themselves to put ICTs under greater control," he added.
Although the WSIS declaration makes several strong mentions of human rights, nowhere does it explicitly refer to communications rights.
It does, however, say that under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; that this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers".
"Communication is a fundamental social process, a basic human need and the foundation of all social organisation. It is central to the information society," the WSIS declaration adds.
However, Seán Ó Siochrú of the London-based group Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) said the concept of CR goes much beyond the right to freedom of expression.
Opening the first plenary, International Telecommunications Union Secretary General Yoshio Utsumi set the tone by stressing the need to "defend the right to communicate rather than the right to govern". However, he added, "In order to guarantee the right to communicate we must solve issues of connectivity".
Civil society activists were more forthright. Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights activist and Nobel peace prize winner, criticised governments for attempting to limit communication rights while addressing digital divide issues. She said the UN should set up a committee "to monitor site-filtering and prevent states from sacrificing the interests of their people on the altar of their own political convenience".
Ebadi’s comments came as CRIS launched a report showing that governments across the world from Kenya to Colombia and the Philippines are guilty of violating the communication rights of their citizens.
The most ironic, though anticipated, violation of communication rights came in Tunisia itself.
Rights campaigners at the summit said the Tunisian government had shut down at least 20 websites that were critical of it. Also reported were incidents of harassment, attacks, detention and jailing of journalists before and during the summit.
Responding to letters of protest from 100 civil society groups before the Tunis WSIS, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan suggested that Tunisia use the Summit "to address various human rights concerns", adding: "Those rights are crucial for any country hoping to use information and communication technologies to advance their economic and social development".
Nalaka Gunawardene, a Sri Lankan journalist, placed the debate in a wider context, saying while all violations of communication rights ought to be condemned "these violations are happening not just on the streets of Tunis, but everywhere".
"Violations are happening every time a poor person in any country is not allowed to speak. Restricting it to Tunis trivialises the issue".
Fred Mudhai is a columnist with the Sunday Standard (Nairobi)
