Our Islands Winners, Losers At Information Summit

And the Pacific Islands winners...were Samoa. Amidst a dismal Pacific Islands turnout at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the Samoans shone.

If it hadn't been for the Samoans, the Pacific Islands countries would have been barely noticed amidst this global summit intended to find ways to bridge the digital divide between developed and developing countries. Some 12,000 gathered in the Swiss city of Geneva but Pacific representation was again very poor despite the availability of donors willing to fund Pacific delegations.

Only Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, and Solomon Islands sent government delegations. And apart from the Samoans, these were almost exclusively "techies", Information Communication Technology (ICT) specialists who speak a language of their own.

Which shows just how much Pacific Islands governments missed the point. For this world summit was not just about how things like computers, the Internet and satellite technology work.

It was about the fight against exclusion, the right of all people to access to knowledge, information, technology, education, health and business opportunities. It was about ensuring the people of the villages are not left out of the information revolution.

Yet only the Tongan Prime Minister Prince Ulukalala Lavaka Ata of Pacific Islands leaders made it, dropping into Geneva on his way home from the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Nigeria.

It was as if Pacific leaders unlike so many from Africa didn't get it, shunting something they didn't understand off to those "techies". One of the energetic Samoan delegates, Tai Purcell, said: Pacific representation to the preparatory meetings of the World Summit of the Information Society has been very poor.

Samoa, for one, took advantage of these offers. As a result, it was the only Pacific country during the WSIS which had an office, a car and a cellphone with free calls for its Minister for Communications, who led the largest Pacific Islands delegation.

The Samoans sent government officials, along with representatives from their national ICT committee, the business sector, and NGOs. They also included a group of dancers from the Samoa Tourism Authority, and used the opportunity to showcase their Polynesian nation as a safe tourism destination where ICT is a key component of its economic and social development.

Amidst all the long meetings and speeches, the lithe, swaying young Samoan women dancers and their energetic bare-chested male counterparts were a sensation.

Samoa was also one of only two Pacific islands countries making use of this high-powered meeting to showcase their ICT development projects. The other was the Solomon Islands, which showcased its award-winning People First Network (PFNet). This uses the simple technology of VHF and HF radio to establish a network of email stations in the most remote parts of the country.

Purcell says Pacific countries need to work together because there are some ICT initiatives that can only be cost effective if they are developed at regional rather than national levels. She cited a central payment clearing system to validate credit cards and a development gateway as examples. But despite the pitiful representation, our small Pacific Islands delegations, largely without the help of their leaders, need to be congratulated for a job well done.

Two highlights:

ONE: Samoa and Fiji government delegates fought to ensure the inclusion of a paragraph in the draft Declaration of Principles, now referred to as the Pacific paragraph. This urges, amongst other things, special attention to the particular needs of people of Small Island Developing States.

At one stage in the mammoth preparatory process, this paragraph disappeared. But Fiji (through its energetic representative, Abel Caine) and the Samoans worked and lobbied hard together to get it included. It will have long term benefits for the islands-if governments now follow this up.

TWO: The Pacific Islands news media played an important and active role in the global media effort at the summit. This included helping successfully fight off efforts by some less enlightened countries to use the summit declarations to control and reduce rather than expand freedom of information and expression. They also stressed the continuing importance of the role of the traditional news media in developing countries, and made sure they were included in the summit declaration.

These Pacific efforts were led by the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA). It became heavily involved through the vision and energy of the former head of its Suva secretariat, Fijian Nina Ratulele.

Ratulele, working with Japan's Sasakawa Pacific Island Nations Fund, got a strong Pacific Islands media delegation to the huge Asia-Pacific preparatory conference in Tokyo. They then got important Pacific Islands media views included in its WSIS declaration, which was being sent on to Geneva.

Then working with UNESCO, Ratulele got PINA's former president, Johnson Honimae, to those crucial preparatory meetings in Geneva as PINA representative. By the time he went to the summit itself, Honimae had become a WSIS expert, knowing his way around the many lobbying corridors in Geneva. He became a one-person army on behalf of the Pacific media.

Outside of Samoa, PINA through Honimae and Ratulele probably knew best in the Pacific Islands the importance of the whole World Summit on the Information Society process. Since then, Ratulele has left PINA. She has moved on to live and work in Samoa. Maybe she knows something.