Geneva Plan of Action: Online Multi-Stakeholder Consultation

This initiative is organised as a follow-up process to inspire participation in the "WSIS Plan of Action", which sets time-bound targets in an effort to turn the vision of an inclusive and equitable information society into reality. World leaders who gathered at the Geneva Phase of WSIS endorsed this Action Plan in December 2003; the Tunis phase of the Summit provided more detailed directions on Actions to be undertaken between 2005 and 2015.

UNESCO initiated this web-based process through an in-person consultation in Geneva, February 2006. Participants in this meeting of decided that, in order to launch activities under each Action Line and foster initial contacts among facilitators and participants, UNESCO should develop a web-based exchange to gather diverse opinions on how to accomplish multi-stakeholder implementation. Specifically, UNESCO has opened an online platform to facilitate contacts among stakeholders and to invite online comments on - and organise activities related to - the following Action Lines:

• C3: Access to information and knowledge
• C7: E-learning and E-science
• C8: Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic diversity and local content
• C9: Media
• C10: Ethical dimensions of the Information Society

Any visitor to this website may post suggestions for implementations of each of these Action Lines; these comments are shared publicly. The suggestions will be used to shape WSIS follow-up events such as a Global Symposium on Promoting the Multilingual Internet, scheduled to take place in May 2006.

Technology, Rights.

This initiative was developed in response to a particular portion of the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, as follows:

"108. We attach great importance to multi-stakeholder implementation at the international level, which should be organized taking into account the themes and action lines in the Geneva Plan of Action, and moderated or facilitated by UN agencies when appropriate. An Annex to this document offers an indicative and non-exhaustive list of facilitators/moderators for the action lines of the Geneva Plan of Action.

109. The experience of, and the activities undertaken by, UN agencies in the WSIS process - notably ITU, UNESCO and UNDP - should continue to be used to their fullest extent. These three agencies should play leading facilitating roles in the implementation of the Geneva Plan of Action and organize a meeting of moderators/facilitators of action lines, as mentioned in the Annex."