The Tunis Commitment

Phase 2 of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was held in Tunis, November 16-18, 2005, and has now released its final documents. The bad news is that the documents don't even mention open access. The good news is that they explicitly reaffirm the documents from Phase 1.

Phase 1 was held in Geneva in December of 2003 and resulted in two documents that explicitly endorsed open access: the Declaration of Principles (see Paragraph 28) and the Plan of Action (see Paragraphs C3.i and C7.b).

The primary document from WSIS 2 is the Tunis Commitment (November 18, 2005). Here are its OA-related passages:

1. We, the representatives of the peoples of the world, have gathered in Tunis from 16-18 November 2005 for this second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to reiterate our unequivocal support for the Geneva Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action adopted at the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva in December 2003.

2. We reaffirm our desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, international law and multilateralism, and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so that people everywhere can create, access, utilise and share information and knowledge....

9. We reaffirm our resolution in the quest to ensure that everyone can benefit from the opportunities that ICTs can offer, by recalling that governments, as well as private sector, civil society and the United Nations and other international organisations, should work together to: improve access to information and communication infrastructure and technologies as well as to information and knowledge....We confirm that these are the key principles for building an inclusive Information Society, the elaboration of which is found in the Geneva Declaration of Principles.

10. We recognise that access to information and sharing and creation of knowledge contributes significantly to strengthening economic, social and cultural development....

27. We recognise that equitable and sustainable access to information requires the implementation of strategies for the long-term preservation of the digital information that is being created.

28. We reaffirm our desire to build ICT networks and develop applications, in partnership with the private sector, based on open or interoperable standards that are affordable and accessible to all, available anywhere and anytime, to anyone and on any device, leading to a ubiquitous network.

(PS: I'll keep looking for other OA-related developments from WSIS 2 and would like to hear from anyone who can point out any that I've missed.)