ReliefSource

Sanjana has posted his thoughts about ICT4Peace in a post that takes a slightly different angle. He appreciates that the report was written at all; but laments the fact that is has such a bias towards website-based, northern initiatives. Unfortunately, we’re guilty as charged, particularly because most of the research was carried out via the web. However the charge of northern bias doesn’t stick that well, for two reasons.

First, as Sanjana points out:

“It is however interesting how a single report of this calibre - well written and relatively well researched - can overwhelm the work of a smaller organisation, such as InfoShare in Sri Lanka. Though we receive brief mention in the report, I know not of any other organisation that pioneers the use of ICT in Peacebuilding in the fashion that we’ve engineered in Sri Lanka over the past 3 years.”

There’s the problem in a nutshell; although our resources were limited, we certainly looked for other organisations in southern countries working with technology in this arena - but we couldn’t find them. That doesn’t mean that they’re not there - but the digital divide just makes it very difficult to get away from a northern bias.

Second, the report was targeted at a very specific audience. As Sanjana says,

“This failure to engage with the South, and the top-down approach of research, is never more explicit than in the recommendations of the report - which though good are somewhat mundane to those of us who have gone beyond them in our work. It is perhaps a question of audience as well - the report necessarily addresses those unfamiliar with the concept of ICT for Peacebuilding and thereby needs to capture what to us may be obvious and passe.”

The report was indeed targeted at an audience unfamiliar with the concept - or indeed, unfamiliar with conflict issues in general. The recommendations were targeted more at international organisations than those working at the grassroots, for several reasons. The most important reason was that institutions such as national governments and the United Nations are in a position to allocate funding and other resources to create an environment that would make the work of grassroots organisations easier.

One of the problems we faced with the report was exactly this: how does one bridge the gap between high-level policy institutions and grassroots operations? In the spirit of the chicken and the egg, which comes first? Hopefully the next iteration of ICT4Peace will start to address that issue, by opening up the text for wider contributions, and focusing more on building communities and networks around these issues. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, though - if anybody does, please feel free to send them to me on a postcard (or in the comments box below).

Rik Panganiban posted some interesting thoughts about our ICT4Peace report - worth reading if you can’t be bothered to go through the entire report. His final point is particularly relevant:

“I hope that this important area of ICT4Peace doesn’t get left by the wayside. But without a specific policy arena for those issue areas to be addressed, that seems to be a likely future.”

We discussed this a lot while I was editing the report. It was clear that, although there was a lot of interest in the subject, there wasn’t anybody jumping at the opportunity to pick up the baton. We’re now looking at how to take the findings of the report forward, but that’s going to be difficult without a specific forum for those discussions.

The knowledgeable Nancy White takes a different tack, from a Web 2.0 perspective:

“For those of you who are big Web2.0 thinkers, how do you imagine the changing web tools and environments might help? How do our grand ideas jive with the electricity, phone and bandwidth scarcity not just in disaster areas, but in 2/3rds world where this is the norm?”

It’s clear that these discussions shouldn’t just be happening at the policy level, but at our level as well - and at the level of affected communities, where possible. In the former case, we can start those discussions right here; in the latter case, we need more imagination if we’re going to reach those affected by disaster. The revolution starts here…

Finally, a decent wireless connection at WSIS. This means I can take my first steps in the wonderful world of blogging live, from the ICT4Peace session. I’ve just descended from the stage, having presented the ICT4Peace report, in order to allow our range of guest speakers to take their seats. From left to right, we have Chamindra de Silva (Lanka Software Foundation), Dag Nielsen (Ericsson Response Team), Linton Wells (US Department of Defense), President Marti Ahtisaari of Finland (who’s speaking as I type), Jose Antonio Ocampo (Under-Secretary General of the UN), Raymond Johansen (Secretary of State of Norway) and Ambassador Daniel Stauffacher of Switzerland.

To be honest, I can’t believe that we managed to put this panel together. If we’re not careful, they’ll reach critical mass and form a diplomatic black hole. (Except for Chamindra and Dag, who we’ll have to rescue, otherwise I won’t be able to continue working with them on Sahana and NGO communications.) All of them are interesting speakers, with very different perspectives - the only thing standing between us and that diplomatic black hole is our moderator, Hilary Bowker.

For the last year, I’ve been working with the Swiss Executive Secretariat on their contribution to a little thing called the World Summit on the Information Society. The fruits of that labour are in the Report on Information and Communications Technology for Peace [PDF] (ICT4Peace), which you can find on the ICT4Peace website. The subtitle of the report is “The Role of ICT in Preventing, Responding to and Recovering from Conflict”, which is a big clue as to what the report covers. It offers an overview of some of the major initiatives and organisations that have been using technology on the international stage to work on humanitarian and peace interventions. The Report will be officially launched at WSIS in Tunisia, with all the bells and whistles - see you there!