Please sign-on - Letter to OHCHR

[Meryem Marzouki <marzouki@ras.eu.org>]

Please sign-on the letter to the OHCHR, now that we all agreed that:
1/ The letter would be sent to Deputy High Commission
2/ The sentence "Like all scientific innovations, information 
communications technologies in themselves are value-neutral" would be 
removed
3/ The reference to repression would be added, following the remark by 
Christine (OMCT) which nobody seemed to disagree with

In case we gathered enough signatures from the Hr caucus members, I 
propose that this letter be presented as a common initiative from the 
WFM and the HR caucus.

Members of the HR caucus who already signed:
- CMIC
- Danish Institute for Human Rights
- Digital Rights Denmark
- IRIS
- OMCT

Please other members tell us if your organization would sign, and 
please gather other organizations signatures by, let's say, June 12.
I'll circulate the text of this letter to the WSIS plenary list, and to 
other organizations. Please also try to get other signatures with name 
of the org, web site if any, contact person name and email.

Final text of the letter:
June 2003

Bertrand Ramcharan
Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations
Geneva, Switzerland

RE: Human Rights and the World Summit on the Information Society


Your Excellency Mr. Bertrand Ramchara:

The under-signed civil society organizations strongly encourage your 
active participation in the preparatory committee and summit meeting of 
the World Summit on the Information Society, taking place in September 
and December 2003, respectively.  Human rights are an essential 
requirement of the Information Society, as elaborated in the draft 
declaration of the WSIS (WSIS/PCIP/DT/1-E):

10. The essential requirements for the development of an equitable 
Information Society include: The respect for all internationally 
recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms. Notably the right to 
freedom of opinion and expression, including the right to hold opinions 
without interference and seek to, receive and impart information and 
ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers in accordance with 
article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to 
unhindered access by individuals to communication media and information 
sources…

As the United Nations highest human rights official, your good offices 
are needed to ensure that human rights language in the WSIS process is 
comprehensive, strong and consistent with resolutions and decisions 
adopted by the Commission on Human Rights and build upon human rights 
language developed through the various UN world summits and conferences.

Civil society organizations view ICTs as having both tremendous 
applications that enhance human rights, such as through the rapid 
dissemination of action alerts and instant access to human rights 
information, and disturbing capacities to greatly diminish human 
rights, such as by providing governments with means enabling intrusive 
surveillance and monitoring and therefore, repression.

Only through the active participation of governments, civil society, 
and international human rights institutions such as your Office can 
these ICTs be best harnessed to maximize the protection of human rights 
worldwide.

We thank you for your consideration of this request and look forward to 
seeing you in September.

Sincerely,


[under-signed NGOs]