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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-opera...

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)