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Several official announcements and regional developments have come up this past weeks concerning the WSIS.

It was officially announced last 21 July 2003 that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan already appointed Nitin Desai as his Special Adviser for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Desai currently serves as the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. He was also the Secretary-General of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) that took place in Johannesburg, South Africa last 26 August – 04 September 2002.

Last 24 July 2003, a call for nominations of national experts on e-content for the World Summit Award (WSA) was announced.

The World Summit Award is a United Nations member states-initiative of the Austrian government, the UNIDO and other European countries. The WSA is an official Summit event of the WSIS in Geneva this December, aimed as part of the civil society, private sector and public sector collaboration to improve the quality of Information Society by putting into focus quality contents and innovative applications. The WSA Office seeks to establish a United Nations Expert Panel, and the open call is for nominations for the most eminent national expert from each country. Each UN member state is invited to nominate a person who will then propose the nation’s best in e-content products (including all media platforms such as CD-ROM, website and DVD) in the eight categories of the WSA.

The deadline has been extended to 24 August 2003. For more information and for registration details, please consult the following link: http://www.geneva2003.org/wsis/documents/ world%20summit%20award%20shortdescription_engl..pdf.

Several regional developments have also emerged, most notably from women info-com advocates. In Senegal, a commission of women's organisations was recently created by advocates from different Senegalese women's NGO to co-ordinate their participation in the forthcoming WSIS phase one in December and in other subsequent WSIS events. The commission was spearheaded by the women who attended the workshop called "Senegalese women in the information society: issues and perspectives" held in Dakar, Senegal to mark the celebration of the Africa Women's Day last 31 July 2003.

The workshop participants examined the WSIS preparatory process and its national implications in terms of issues and perspectives, in the fields of education, knowledge, employment, governance, poverty reduction and rural development, and the possible actions at the national, regional and international levels. Thus, in order to organise a collective participation and contribution to the Summit, the Commission of Senegalese Women was set up, and the invitation to participate in it was extended to the public services. The aim of the commission is to draw and implement a national action plan, draft a synthesis of their contribution, and launch training actions to promote online content. The organisations involved in this effort are the primary participants of the aforementioned workshop, namely the Senegalese University Women Association (Association Senegalaise des Femmes Diplomees des Universites, ASFDU), the Gender and ICT Network (Reseau Genre et TIC, REGENTIC) and the Senegalese Association of Research (Association des Chercheurs Senegalais, ACS) with the support of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

To read more about the commission and the workshop results, please visit http://www.famafrique.org/regentic/accueil.html.

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