Tunisia Internet Summit Marred By Criticism

Tunisia fell under harsh criticism for failing to improve media transparency, as over 10,000 heads of state, business leaders, technology experts and non-government organisations gathered there for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) last week.

The three-day summit, which ended Friday November 18 and was sponsored by the United Nations, sought to address the crucial question of Internet governance, as well closing the “digital gap” between the rich and the poor nations.

The debate of who should control the world’s wireless communications dominated the talks in the capital city Tunis. Developing African countries, as well as some US critics such as Iran, Cuba and China, pushed the idea that Internet management should be taken from the California-based ICANN and given to the UN.

ICANN, a not-for-profit organisation, was set up by the US Department of Commerce to oversee the use of domain names, addresses and country domain suffixes. However, the group’s head, Dr Paul Twomey, a former senior Australian diplomat, said handing it over to the UN would have allowed governments to set policies against political agendas, which would have affected the Internet’s stability and integrity, reported AAP.

Despite fierce debates the Tunis summit left ICANN in the supervising position. It did, however, agree to create an annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) made up of governments and civil society groups. The new body, though, will not have decision-making powers.

Although claimed to be a “step forward” by the Japanese summit leader, Yoshio Utsumi, the UN was criticised for choosing Tunisia as a host country. Media groups and rights organisations accused Tunisia of wide-spread human rights abuses and restriction of press freedom, which contradicted the spirit of the event.

“Never again should the UN hold a world summit in a country that does not abide by international obligations to uphold human rights and freedom of the press,” said Steve Buckley, a human rights organisation watcher in Tunisia, reported Bangkok Post.

AFP reported that leading up to the summit foreign journalists were detained and denied access to public meetings – actions that prompted protests form the US and the European Union. In one instance the head of international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) was reportedly refused entry to the country.

The question of Internet censorship was also discussed as a form of restricting free-flow of information. RSF took a more liberal approach by unfurling a banner at the summit naming the top 15 “black holes of the web”. The group listed Belarus, China, Cuba, Iran, Libya, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and Vietnam as “enemies of the Internet”.

In the meantime, China insisted that Internet restriction was warranted to “protect the state”. China recently obliged Internet search engine Yahoo to hand over data that would allow it to track down a journalist who was critical of the authorities.

The Tunisia Summit was the second phase of a two-part meeting that began in Geneva just under two years ago, which set the goal of bringing half of the world’s population online by 2015.

According to the International Telecommunication Union, the 15 per cent of the world population that lives in the industrialised world enjoys five times better access to fixed-line and mobile phone services, nine times better access to Internet services, and owns 13 times more personal computers than the 85 per cent living in poor and middle-ranking countries, reported Times.