News on CoE activities on Human Rights in the Information Society

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On 20 June, Rikke Frank Joergensen (Digital Rights Denmark) and Meryem
Marzouki (Imaginons un réseau Internet solidaire, IRIS – France)
participated as EDRI observers to the 5th Council of Europe meeting of the
Group of Specialists on Human Rights in the Information Society (MC-S-IS).
Among the many points on the agenda, the following news are worth reporting
at this step.

The draft Recommendation on empowering children in the new
information and communications environment has been submitted to the
CoE Steering Committee on the Media and New Communication Services
(CDMC), where some member states (France, Germany, Russia) expressed
their willing to make further comments before having it adopted.
EDRI previously reported on the important changes made to this
document by MC-S-IS group.

The group received information on CoE follow-up to the second phase
of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). This concerns
action line C8 on ‘Cultural diversity and identity, linguistic
diversity and local content’, C9 on ‘Media’ and C10 on ‘The ethical
dimension of the Internet’, as well as the Internet Governance Forum,
which will hold its first meeting in Athens, 30 October to 2 November
2006. EDRI proposed stronger cooperation between CoE and human rights
groups, i.e. through common workshops at the Forum.

The group was also informed that a new CoE Ad Hoc Committee on e-
democracy (CAHDE) was created, in the framework of the CoE project on
‘Good governance in the information society’. The CAHDE mandate,
which runs until December 2007, is inter alia to ‘examine
developments on e-democracy/e-participation at European and
international level, with a view to identifying political, social,
ethical, legislative and technological issues and their
interdependence’. Its first meeting will be held in September 2006.
While there is no observer status for NGOs non member of the CoE
Conference of INGOs, EDRI insisted on the need to associate NGOs
directly involved in these issues to the CAHDE works.

Given the very few (less than 15) answers received so far to the
questionnaire on the implementation by member States of the 2003
Declaration on freedom of communication on the Internet, EDRI
proposed that a European compliance study/mapping based on the
Declaration be rather commissioned by the group.

Finally, the second CoE Pan-European Forum on Human Rights in the
Information Society will be held in Erevan on 5-6 October 2006, on
the main theme of ‘Empowering children and young people’.

EDRi-Gram : CoE Works On New Instrument On Children Empowerment On The
Net (15.03.06)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.5/coe

CoE MC-S-IS public website
http://www.coe.int/t/e/human_rights/media/1_intergovernmental_co-operation/MC-S-IS/

WSIS follow-up action lines and Internet governance forum
http://www.itu.int/wsis/implementation/
http://www.intgovforum.org/

CAHDE draft terms of reference
https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?Ref=CM/Del/Dec(2006)965/2.3&Sector=secCM

(Contribution by Rikke Frank Joergensen and Meryem Marzouki, EDRI-
members Digital Rights Denmark and IRIS)