The African Civil
Society on the Information Society (ACSIS) has called for more inclusion
and multilingualism in the affairs and organization of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
Forums, reports ITRealms.
In his address to the forum which ended last weekend in
Geneva, Switzerland, the President of ACSIS, Dr. Cisse Kane, appealed to the
international community to support the WSIS Forum secretariat.
Welcoming the unique framework of the WSIS Forum, which he
said, allows greater interaction between all actors in the Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) sector.
Dr. Kane also said this is essential in the present and
future, given the centrality of ICTs in the lives and the necessity to link ICT
with sustainable development goals.
He commended the remarkable work of the secretariat of the
Forum, beckoning on all actors, including the private sector, to further
support the WSIS Forum by providing it with sufficient resources to strengthen
the inclusiveness and enhance its resonance.
According to him, some of these supports would include to:
1. Translate the entire website of the WSIS forum at least
in all United Nations official languages;
2. Ensure that all sessions of the WSIS forum are
interpreted in UN official languages
3. Translate all WSIS Forum programmes into all United
Nations official languages
4. Provide a significant number of scholarships (at least 20
per continent) each year to enable the most deserving members of the civil
society and academic sector to travel to Geneva and participate in the WSIS
Forum
5. Provide the opportunity to supplement the governmental
delegations participating in the WSIS Forum by some deserving members of the
Civil Society and the Academic Sector.
2 comments:
This is well made. Achieving inclusiveness in the forum will certainly be fast-tracked when ICT (both hardware and software) are made relevant to excluded groups. Populations that speak and understand only their mother tongues are the greatest number in these groups. Most of their tongues are not (and may never be) among the UN official languages.
One key way then to make ICT relevant to these populations is producing hardware, software and contents in their mother tongues. So, more commitment (in terms of financing, initiatives and time) and increased partnerships are unarguably needed for ICT to make its expected impact toward having a robust information society and achieving sustainable development goals timely. Big commercial ICT organizations must be willing to make a little more sacrifice to accommodate the mother tongued only populations, because (of a truth) products and contents in most mother tongues may hold no monetary profit for them but the ultimate benefits can be so pervasive that they outweigh the usual profit-after-tax expectations.
I submitted these views during the preparatory process for the WSIS Forum. A very good example to copy is the European missionaries' translation of the Holy Bible into mother tongues, to which many of us are witnesses to their high-level success in "making converts" with it.
Long live WSIS Forum; long live Africa and other continents with numerous mother tongued only populations.
CPU
This is so fun! What a great idea. Also I love how authentic you seem to be.
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