World Summit on the Information Society Statement to the General Debate, December 11 by Sally Burch, Agencia Latinoamericana de Información, ALAI. This afternoon, (December 11), civil society launched its Declaration to the WSIS, entitled "Shaping Information Societies for Human Needs", developed over the past months by broad diversity of organizations. Our emphasis has been on constructing a people-centred and inclusive vision of information societies, centred on social justice, sustainable development and human rights, and proposing that developments in this field must be oriented to solving life-critical needs of people. We recognize that this vision has found an echo in the official Summit Declaration, displacing the technocentric vision of the initial drafts. But principles become meaningful when they orient policy and action; and we fail to find these principles adequately reflected in many of the Summit proposals. While the Summit Declaration refers human rights only by naming the Universal Declaration, the civil society document goes further, by reaffirming the full integration of human rights and detailing the particular relevance of specific rights to the information society, and calling for their effective enforcement. Our Declaration underlines that cultural and linguistic diversity, freedom of the media and the public domain of global knowledge are as essential for information societies as biodiversity is for our natural environment. We call for legislation to prevent excessive media concentration and underline the importance of promoting both public service media and community media. We support greater participation of citizens and communities in the design and control of technology, and encourage promotion of collective innovation and cooperative work in the information society. We propose a review of the limited intellectual monopolies regime (otherwise known as "intellectual property rights") and insist on legislation and measures to extend and protect the public domain of global knowledge. We especially argue for the promotion of free software, given its participative character and advantages for developing countries. We express our concern about the deployment of "information warfare" technologies and techniques and call for a future convention against information warfare, as well as actively promoting media and communications for peace. We emphasize guarantees for the right to privacy and call for limits to minimize use of monitoring and surveillance and prevent abuses. And we call for adequate participation of marginalized stakeholders in ICT governance mechanisms, including developing countries, civil society organizations and small and medium enterprises. The Civil Society Declaration is being presented to the Summit as civil society's contribution to the continuing discussions. We are also presenting it to society, as a means of opening a much broader and democratic debate on these crucial issues that are fundamental to the public interest. The Civil Society Declaration is available at: http://alainet.org/active/show_news.phtml?news_id=5118