Too Marvelous for Words Staring: A. Fielding and J. McGrath Supporting actors: U. Nwosu, T. Dawkins, T. Akinsamni, Produced by: F. Seel Technical assistance: J. McGrath

I promised myself and Alberto (coordinator of the WSIS Youth Caucus communications group) to write a daily blog from Tunis, but after returning to Germany, I had to realize that I stopped reporting from WSIS on Wednesday. It is now hard for me to look back and recapture what happened, but I also don’t think that anyone, who didn’t have the chance to attend the Summit itself, is still interested in this. Instead I would like to use this blog to look back and reflect more broadly on what WSIS meant to me and TIG and so many other people.

I first joined the WSIS Youth Caucus during PrepCom 2 in Geneva, February 2003. I was volunteering for YOIS at that time and went to Geneva for a few days with a small team from Hamburg. We had a couple of projects running at YOIS that were connected to WSIS and later on became what was called the German National Information Society Youth Campaign. Looking back at the beginning of 2003, however, I first and foremost remember endless sessions with Maike, going through the draft outcome documents and making amendments with a focus on sustainable development. It was that work which taught me the structures of UN policy documents and how important a comma or slightly different phrase could be.

It is generally interesting to look back and see how much of the work of the Youth Caucus was focused on policy in Phase I, whereas it almost didn’t play a role at all anymore in Phase II. I would just like to mention the ups and downs at the Intersessional meeting in Paris, when the youth paragraph was garbled and only through the help of Abel from Fiji became the strong paragraph again that was adopted in December 2003.

The Youth Caucus was also my first real acquaintance with TakingITGlobal (I knew the organization since summer 2001, but never met any of its staff members). I met Nick and later on at the Summit itself also Jennifer and Mike, although I barely remember speaking a word to either of them – a strange thought as they are both dear friends of mine today.
Asking Nick for an internship opportunity in North America was how I ended up living in Toronto and working for TIG for 10 months. His response in early 2004 was: Why don’t you come to Toronto and work for TakingITGlobal? Yeah why not was my thought and so I went almost a year later, not knowing what I would be doing, how long I would stay and even with some doubts if I’m welcome by Mike and Jen.

WSIS has thus always been strangely connected to my personal life in a very intensive way. And no doubt that many other members of the Youth Caucus can say the same: Nick, Alex, Maja, Titi, Thomas – just to name a few. For all of us (I assume), WSIS has never been just a conference but so much more.
And even for TakingITGlobal itself: looking back three years, of course TIG was still very young at that time, but would it be today what it is without WSIS? I don’t think so.

But now that it is all over, the question is: what comes next? Where to go from here? You could here quite a few voices at WSIS asking for the recreation of YCDO and even more now than ever before, we need to take action and make reality what we promised the world we could do!
One of the greatest memories that I’ll keep from Tunisia are the moments I spent talking to ‘Gbenga about the youth initiatives in Nigeria. These are the initiatives we need, carried out with passion and the conviction that young people can make a change.

And of course there is the personal level as well. It will be quite a bit of a challenge to keep in touch over such great distances, but as we are all global citizens, I’m full of hope that one day I’ll see every single member of the Youth Caucus again somewhere.

P.S.: I’ve uploaded a few pictures from the Summit to my Flickr gallery – Enjoy!

It’s 7pm and I would have no problem falling asleep right here right now (I’m still in the youth hub). I went to bed yesterday night at 2am after “interviewing” ‘Gbenga Sesan from Nigeria about their National Information Society Campaign as preparation for a speech that I was giving today on behalf of the Youth Caucus.

But let me start in the early morning… It was the first day of the actual Summit and for some strange reason, there was only one bus going to Le Kram (the exhibition center) – at 7:30am! Too early for me, so Eman, Sofya, Jarra and I decided to take a cap together at 8:30am as we all had to be at the National Information Society panel, which started at 9am. What we didn’t expect was to find a huge line-up in front of the exhibition center. It took us 1,5 hours to get in!! But we still made it for the end of the panel and I was able to take a few pictures (as Titi and Robert had asked me to). After that I went to the Youth Hub, where I gave an interview to BBC about youth in the Information Society. I think the interview went well, although I found it a little strange that the woman was asking me mainly questions focused on the digital divide from the perspective of youth from developing countries. For example she asked what the most frustrating thing is for young people from developing countries in terms of the Internet. But how shall I know? I can guess certain things, based especially on the experience of working with TIG’s regional youth editors who have continuously trouble with their Internet speed. But at some point I really thought: Why is she asking me this and not a person from a developing country who knows the situation better? Oh well, lets see how the final story will actually look like…

After the interview, I had a coffee and prepared my speech for the afternoon. CONGO (Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in consultative relationship with the United Nations) had invited one speaker from the Youth Caucus to speak on National Level Best Practices from Civil Society in bridging the digital divide, and the Youth Caucus had chosen me to speak. As I had feared it would happen, however, I just received the confirmation yesterday and had no clue what I would be saying. So I ended up preparing my speech one hour before the event started…

The event was quite interesting though. In the session before mine about grassroots best practices, Geeta Malhotra from OneWorld South Asia was focusing her speech a lot about involving youth and especially getting educated young people to go into rural areas and train other young people there – exactly what the Youth Caucus did in some countries as part of their National Campaigns!

My panel actually had two high-level people on it: Nitin Desai, Special Advisor to UN Secretary General for WSIS and Shashi Tharoor, United Nations Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information. I had seen Shashi Tharoor speak at the UN DPI-NGO conference and just last week read an interview with him in the magazine of the German United Nations Association and I was really looking forward to meeting him. But of course he was just giving his speech and then rushing to another event. The only thing I could do was handing him an invitation to the World Summit Youth Awards while he was leaving the panel. Pretty sad that he didn’t stay longer – it would have been so cool if he had heard my presentation, which I think went quite well (Rik from CONGO and a few other people told me at least that I did a good job and that it was great to see my enthusiasm – Marc filmed it and I’ll for sure have a look at how I did later on).

After the presentation I went to the youth hub reception and just hang out in the hub, talking to people etc. At 5:30pm me, Eman and Luke wanted to leave to the World Youth Award, which was just a few meters away in another exhibition tent. However, the security guards had decided not to let anybody into the other tent anymore. It was a crazy scene with lots and lots of people trying to convince the guards that they need to go to the other tent, while at the same time pushing them further and further back. Some of them actually came up with crazy reasons why they had to go: “My bag is over there”, “I’m working at a booth in this tent” or “I’m speaking in the plenary right now and have to go there”. I guess, the way Luke finally got us through wasn’t much better, but pretty smart nevertheless. I had Jarra’s camera with me and Luke figured out that one of the security guys was letting media people through, so he just told him that I was a photographer and had to go to the awards ceremony.

About the rest of the evening there isn’t much interesting to say. But to end with a few general thoughts: I’m starting to feel very… how to say: in a cage? All the security people and the fact that there are only men in the street (well, 90%) makes me feel very uncomfortable. In the exhibition area and especially on the way there, I feel totally under control of some external force. And when I’m downtown I’m walking through the streets and feel that there are only guys sitting in the cafes and everyone is staring at me. I don’t like this feeling. I think I would really enjoy Tunisia a lot otherwise. Everything is clean and the old parts of cities are very beautiful. Also the weather is gorgeous and people are extremely friendly (especially to women ;-)

Let’s see what the end of the week brings…

After missing my shuttle bus in the morning and spending the time I had to wait in a nice street café downtown, I arrived at the exhibition center and to my surprise there were suddenly thousands of people. The last days, the exhibition center seemed like a ghost area, but this morning it was crowded with people.

Also the youth hub is extremely busy at all times. We have music running all the time, which attracts a lot of people to stay here, hang out and chat/network – and this even though there is no air conditioning in this part of the exhibition center, which means that the tent is heated up by the Tunisian sun and we all feel like in a sauna. It’s terrible and Nick has already started a petition, trying to collect signatures from other booths in this hall to protest against it.

Besides that, everyone seems to be busy running around, attending events, giving interviews. Personally though, I feel as I already did two years ago in Geneva: There are so many parallel events that I have a hard time figuring out where I want to go to. I think I need to make myself a proper plan for the next days, so that I don’t end up just hanging out at the youth hub…

Well, more soon – the Nigerians are taking over the youth hub now, showing a video about their projects Nigeria Rocks! which seems to be a fun event with great African music! Can’t miss it…

On Saturday night, Jennifer, Mike and I arrived in Tunisia for the World Summit on the Information Society. Marouen, Jarra and Kate were waiting for us at the airport and it was great to see them again. After arranging where all of our luggage would go, Mike, Jen, Jarra and I left to our Hotel Resort in Hammamet. The way there was actually quite amazing – it was raining and there were lightings every other minute. I had never seen so many and such impressive lightings before in my life! I wish I’d had the chance to try and take pictures of them – I’m sure I’d had the chance to catch a lighting, which would have been an impressive picture…

Our hotel was awesome as well and even though we went to bed at 5am, we decided not to miss the breakfast buffet, so we got up early and spent the rest of the morning lying at the pool and beach :-) In the afternoon we went to see the old fortress in Hammamet, before heading to Tunis to set up our booth. A lot of other people like Gbenga (who I finally met for the first time) and Abdallah were already there and helped us to set everything up.

Today, after a good night sleep, we spent the morning relaxing in our hotel again before moving to our new Hotels for the week in Tunis. Now I’m back at the Youth Hub, setting the last things up and preparing the Youth Pocket Guides, which were printed incorrectly and now all need to have a sticker put on them. Many other people (like Trevor and Moustafa) have arrived as well, so it’s nice to hang out and work together (or sit aside and write a blog as I’m doing right now :-P)

I actually have a positive feeling about the week ahead of us. I think that the Youth Caucus will do a good job; the booth is already a welcoming space for people to work and hang out, the materials and panels look amazing (great job Andrew and Chris!) and many of us will be organizing or speaking at different events, which will give young people a good visibility in this mass of parallel events going on this week.

Other news are not as positive: Heated discussions are still going on about who will govern the Internet and even big newspapers are picking up the discussion now with a lot of interest (for an article in German, check out Wie die USA die Weltherrschaft im Web verteidigen. It will be interesting to see who will “win this fight”: the US or “the rest of the world”? It’s very unfortunate though that this discussion is so prominent now, as the actual objective of the Summit (to come up with solutions how the digital divide can be bridged) is not being discussed at all anymore. It also shows how much power rich countries have in the United Nations, if they can so easily turn a global Summit - set up to help the poor - completely around and center the attention around an issue, which is barely of interest to any poor person on this globe…

Another issue being discussed widely among civil society is the situation in Tunis itself and the bad human rights record of the Tunisian government. Of course, this discussion has been going on ever since it was decided that Tunisia would host Phase II of the Summit, but now people are here, they see all the police that put up roadblocks every 100 meters and there have actually already been a few clashes, which are obviously heating up the discussion. One incident happened this morning, for example, when the police prevented organizers of the Citizen Summit, which will take place parallel to the Summit from Wednesday to Friday, to have a preparatory meeting in the Goethe Institute in Tunis (Tunisian authorities escalate conflict with civil society. Citizen Summit meeting blocked). Hopefully, there won’t be too many other such incidents or the Summit might even turn out to be a Summit about Tunisia, instead of a Summit in Tunisia…