huridocs-tech World Conference on 'Governing Globalisation'

Title: COMMUNICATION: World Conference on 'Governing
Globalisation'

By Tito Drago

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, Spain, Apr 3 (IPS) - The Society for
International Development (SID) plans to organise a global
conference towards the end of the year to set lines of
action that would enable the governing of the globalisation
process.

Susan George, the director of the Transnational Institute in
Amsterdam, announced the plans for the conference Monday in
the northwestern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela.

The conference will be held on the recommendation of experts
in communications and development from 10 African, Latin
American, Asian and European nations, who met over the
weekend in Santiago de Compostela.

Among them were Roberto Savio, the secretary-general of SID,
the rector of Spain's Sociedad de Estudios Internacionales,
Fernando de Salas, the dean of the School of Journalism of
the University of Santiago de Compostela, José L¢pez Garc¡a,
and the coordinator of the International Channel of
'Televisi¢n Espaxola', José Manuel Mart¡n Medem.

The site for the conference has not yet been chosen, but it
is likely to be held in Santiago de Compostela, where SID's
Galicia Chapter is based.

SID is the oldest international non-governmental
organisation dedicated to providing support for developing
countries. The organisation's national headquarters is in
Rome, and its president is former United Nations
secretary-general Boutros Boutros Ghali.

SID decided to promote a debate on the knowledge society and
communication in meetings organised by its national chapters
as well as through Internet. The debate will culminate in
the Global Conference, which is to draw some 500 experts and
representatives of business, trade unions and
non-governmental organisations from around the world.

The development of communication technology and the
communication industry opens many possibilities, but also
gives rise to the risk that the gap between the
industrialised North and developing South, and between the
rich and poor in each nation, will widen, warns SID.

Savio pointed out that 83 percent of production by the
information and communication industries is concentrated in
the United States, European Union (EU) and Japan, while the
rest is unevenly distributed.

The participants at this weekend's gathering in Santiago de
Compostela stressed that the summit of EU heads of state and
government in Lisbon and the Mar 7-10 Second Global
Knowledge Conference organised by the World Bank in Malaysia
put high priority on the question of Information and
Communication Technology (ICT).

The most serious problems mentioned by the participants were
that a large part of the world's population were excluded
from the development of ICTs, which - they said - lacked the
necessary citizen participation and transparency.

So far, the process of globalisation has been more closely
tied to trade and finances than to society and its values,
they warned, while adding that it was precisely in finances
and international trade where the lack of transparency and
participation stood out the most.

Thus, new paths must be forged and means must be found to
enable civil society to actively participate in
decision-making, which must not be solely left up to the
markets and states, the experts stressed.

Today's economy, which is moving ahead faster and faster
based on technological innovations, promises new jobs,
better working conditions, economic growth and more
familiarity and greater mutual understanding between
cultures.

That new technological and economic scenario creates
expectations within societies as well as in North-South
relations.

The participants at the meeting in Santiago de Compostela
underlined, however, that since the early 1990s, the digital
revolution has provided evidence that the differences
between the rich and poor are growing within each individual
society and between the First and Third Worlds.

Access to ICTs should be universal and not steered by
transnational corporations, technological advances should
not destroy, but strengthen, ancestral cultures, and
development of ICTs should be homogeneous, steady,
sustainable and independent, in order to pave the way
towards a new era of equity, justice and democracy for all,
they stated.

Those convoked by SID will now focus their efforts on
finding ways to realise those goals, which will be defined
in greater detail at the conference itself.

Broadly speaking, the questions raised do not differ greatly
from those put forth by many during the 20th century, said
the experts.

The SID initiative is aimed at coming up with answers to
help prevent the world from being split between globalisers
and globalised, and to ensure that the development of ICTs
takes place in democracy, with justice and equity for all of
the world's peoples. (END/IPS/tra-so/td/mp/sw/00)





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