Asia Regional Consultation on the WSIS+10 Review

Ten years after the second World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was concluded, the process and its outcomes are now up for a Review. The overarching goal of the WSIS has been to create ‘a people-centred, development-oriented, inclusive information society’. A government-led process at the UN General Assembly to review the extent to which we have achieved this goal was initiated in June 2015, and will come to a conclusion with a High-Level meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York, in December of this year.

[New] Pattaya Key Messages on the WSIS+10 Review: Voices from the Asia-Pacific Region

The Asian Regional Consultation on the WSIS+10 Review brought together in Thailand around forty experts from different backgrounds and from around the Asian region who are concerned about issues concerning ICTs, sustainable development, human rights and Internet governance, to ask: what are the issues that our governments need to squarely address in the process of the review?

The meeting was timed so as to be able for the group to comment on the non-paper that will have been released by the co-facilitators of the review process in late August (inputs into that paper can be made by all stakeholders and are due on 31 July). The group will take stock of the extent to which priorities for the Asian region have been reflected in the non-paper, and will work together on formulating a joint comment on the non-paper (comments on the non-paper will be due in mid-September, and will be drawn on by the co-facilitators to formulate a zero-draft).

Topics likely to be discussed during the meeting included concrete priorities in the areas of development and human rights, the link with the post-2015 development agenda, the issue of financing mechanisms (especially for capacity building and transfer of technology), and ways in which progress could be made on the enhanced cooperation agenda without undermining multistakeholder processes in Internet governance.