A Global Social Movement Takes Shape

by
Fazila Farouk

In our globalising information society, knowledge and information are becoming key areas for protection against becoming commodities that can become tools for censorship and manipulation by conservative governments and profit mongering corporations. Accordingly, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) is a UN body that was established to develop a balanced and flexible global system for intellectual property (IP). In response, the Access to Knowledge (A2K) social movement has been launched to promote a development agenda at WIPO.

Copyright and patent laws, while affording protection to inventors and creators, have fallen foul of progressive governments and civil society groupings who argue that the narrow protectionism created by these laws serve distinctly non-developmental agendas to the extent that they are becoming obstacles to economic growth and sustainable development in the developing world. For example, copyright laws are particularly problematic in the context of education and access to knowledge in poor countries.

From 27-29 April 2007, the A2K movement gathered for the second time at America’s prestigious Yale University for its annual three day event – the A2K2 conference – to galvanise the social movement of diverse players from government, civil society, academia and the private sector around a development and social justice agenda. The movement is being driven, in particular, by Yale’s Information Society Project (ISP).

One of the issues discussed at the recently held conference was the importance of community media as a significant space for people from both the developed and developing worlds to promote cultural diversity, social justice and political democracy. Given the role of the Internet in our current global context, the role of information communication technology (ICT) as a facilitator of this expression, was an important area for reflection in this panel discussion, which I was particularly honoured to moderate. 

It is a well known fact that people from the developing world, particularly those engaged in community media, use their communication to highlight development concerns and human rights abuses – and an important issue that emerged in this panel discussion was that the spaces for expression created by the Internet and related communication technologies, such as community radio, are at risk of being closed in and shut down.

For example, Ethan Zuckerman of Harvard Law School argued that under repressive regimes, community media and civil society activists have no space to use communication tools. In his experience, online communication tools were most popularly used in countries that are moderately repressive. At the same time, Sasha Constanza-Chock of Indy Media demonstrated how community media all over the world are already engaged in a war of ideas between monopoly rights-dependent industries and social movements.

Panelists Natasha Primo of Womensnet and Wijayananda Jayaweera of the UN talked about community voices and respect for the cultural context of expression from different angles. Primo was particularly concerned about the ongoing sustainability of the community media sector. Panelist Murali Shanmugavelan of Panos noted the significance not only of the growing voices from community media but also of new spaces for expression that are being created by new technologies.

By and large this panel promoted the idea that the spaces and needs of those from the developing world must be given priority not only in the A2K movement but also at WIPO.

However, Ahmed Abdel Latif, an Egyptian diplomat who spoke in the opening plenary of the conference, took the audience on an illuminating excursion through the world of knowledge diplomacy in relation to WIPO. He argued that the expansion of global trade and IP rules created tensions between global norms and national agendas. While he contended that agreements were reached through negotiation and compromise, he did concede that power and privilege played an important part in bringing pressure to bear in certain situations.

His clarification highlighted an important issue for the A2K movement in its endeavour to influence WIPO. The A2K movement itself is made up of divergent streams of stakeholders and interests with varying levels of power. A common critique from delegates throughout the event was the fact that panel presentations were delineated according to stakeholder focus. For example, the government plenary session took place separately from the corporate session, while civil society had its own session dedicated to its issues. The fact that these discussions took place in a silo format stifled the opportunity for debate within the A2K movement itself.

What was of most concern throughout the three-day event is that the various discussions did not crystallize around a common development theme to galvanise the movement around. There certainly seemed to be a fair degree of variance between the needs of those from the developed world and those from the developing world, notwithstanding the various stakeholder agendas.

Going forward, in its quest for social justice, the A2K movement will have to carefully balance the sophisticated access to knowledge issues from the North (which are important) alongside the substantive basic issues from the South, but which also happen to be critically important to promote a development agenda at WIPO.

James Love of Knowledge Ecology International made an important point which is worth closing this article on. He said that WIPO is at an important stage in relation to developing a development agenda and added that civil disobedience is important to deal with laws that are not working for people.

– Fazila Farouk is the Editor fo the SANGONeT portal.

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