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CIVIL SOCIETY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE 165
‘Development Agenda’ in contrast to its previous mandate that had singularly
favoured the rights of owners of intellectual property over the
creators and the publics or users. 16 In this context, civil society organizations
along with state representatives have been able to legitimately
challenge the terms of trade along social justice principles.
In this chapter, we have traced the origins of civil society participation
in debates on the global information society. We have shown that
the NWICO era’s legacy of redistribution at the expense of recognition
has been reversed in the WSIS era when civil society participation has
become bureaucratized and centralized within the field of global communication
policy. Drawing from the experiences of the Gender Caucus,
we have argued that there is a need to combine claims for recognition and
redistribution in the field of global communication policy which would
mean that concerns about the digital divide should centrally address institutional
sexism, as well as racism and marginalization faced by minority
and immigrant communities in the North. Similarly, while redistributive
claims over appropriate technology and basic ICT access in the South
are crucial, they are in much of the world deeply enmeshed in claims
for recognition by marginalized communities marked by difference –
whether gender, class, race (ethnicity), religion or sexuality. Research
that incorporates the experiences and voices of women from the South,
show the heterogeneity of needs, while at the same time highlighting
the importance of income generation and employment opportunities for
both individual women, and the families and communities that increasingly
rely on them. The institutional limits placed on civil society actors
in shaping the outcome of the WSIS process thus far reveals some of
the problems associated with balancing claims for recognition and redistribution,
and reinforces the importance of representation as a crucial
dimension of struggles for social justice.
Notes
1. As we have discussed earlier, formal mechanisms for NGO participation
increased within the UN and other multilateral organizations
and has been promoted as a central component of development
aid since the 1980s. Studies of organizational structure reveal that
UNESCO has historically had the most formal channels for NGO
participation in its deliberation of cultural and educational policy
in contrast to the WTO which has been criticized for its secrecy
and lack of transparency with NGOs’ participation limited to ‘information
exchange and briefings’. The WIPO and ICANN, although
structurally very different, clearly give preference to corporations