A UN Internet summit with delegates from 175 different countries recently concluded in Geneva Switzerland. The summit concluded that the Internet should be expanded to include the millions of people around the world who currently have limited or nonexistent access to the online world.
The BBC News web site is reporting that the delegates emphasized the importance of alerting governments to the opportunity of expanding Internet technology into all continents, and shrinking the so-called “technology gap” between wealthy and poor countries. However, the final report issued by the summit did not include an allocation of funds to bankroll this expansion, as some delegates had demanded.
Swiss President Pascal Couchepin hosted the event and said in a statement, “the summit has placed a new subject on the international agenda,” referring to the importance of decreasing the technology gap and expanding Internet use into poor nations around the world.
This was the first world summit to take place focusing upon the “information society.” Other than expanded Internet access, the delegates also examined the effects of cell phones and mobile Internet technology. The three-day summit’s final declaration set a goal of the Internet reaching 50% of the world’s population by 2015. However, no specific measures were laid out, or funding provided to achieve this goal.
Basically, the summit was little more than a “photo op” with the potential to expand awareness, but without the bureaucratic teeth or funding to set any realistic plan of action to work. Some delegates were left unimpressed by the outcome, failing to see agreement among the major powers on basic issues such as funding for expanding the Internet to developing nations, and Internet governance that would oversee fairness and ensure a level playing field online.
But other delegates at least conceded that the summit achieved its goal of producing a general statement of principle concerning the online world. As an awareness raising event, the UN summit could certainly be seen as a success, even if no concrete measures were produced to bring about the expansion of the Internet.
Western countries often forget that most of the world is not online. It can be easy to overlook this fact when you consider the rapid growth over the past 10 years of Internet access within the wealthy industrial nations. At times it seems that everyone and his dog has Internet access — and probably even a blog.
But the reality is that millions of people around the world have no access to the Internet, or at best, very limited access, creating an ever widening technology gap between the haves and have-nots.
If nothing else, the UN information society summit should at least draw attention to the critical matter of providing access to the online world for all citizens of all nations.
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