Background
In the last decades of the 20th century the new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) was implemented, especially in the developed countries. Using ICT changed the modern society in many ways which is known as digital revolution, and therefore new opportunities and threats had been raised. The world's leaders were hopeful to solve many problems using ICT. At the same time they were concerned with digital divide at an international level as well as national one which could lead to shaping new classes of those who have access to ICT and those who have not.
In such circumstance, recognizing that these challenges and opportunities require global discussion on the highest level, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), following a proposal by the government of Tunisia during ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Minneapolis in 1998, approved Resolution 73 to hold a World Summit on the Information Society and put forward it to the United Nations. In 2001, the ITU Council decided to hold the Summit in two phases, the first from 10 to 12 December 2003, in Geneva, and the second from 16 to 18 November 2005 in Tunis.
On 21 December 2001, the United Nations General Assembly by approving Resolution 56/183 endorsed the holding of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to discuss on information society opportunities and challenges. According to this resolution, the General Assembly related the Summit to the United Nations Millennium Declaration to implement ICT to facilitate achieving Millennium Development Goals. It also emphasize on the multistakeholder approach to use all stakeholders including civil society and private sector beside the governments. The resolution gave ITU the leading managerial role to organize the event in cooperation with other UN bodies as well as the other international organizations and the host countries and recommended that preparations for the Summit take place through an open-ended intergovernmental Preparatory Committee – or PrepCom – that would define the agenda of the Summit, decide on the modalities of the participation of other stakeholders, and finalize both the draft Declaration of Principles and the draft Plan of Action.
Read more about this topic: World Summit On The Information Society
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