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Beirut, 5 February 2003 (United Nations Information Service)--
The Western Asia Preparatory Conference for the World Summit on
the Information Society (WSIS) organized by the United Nations
Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) resumed
its deliberations for the second day at the United Nations House
in Beirut.
Three morning workshops were held concurrently on Information
Communication Technology (ICT) Applications for Socio-economic
Development; Capacity Building in ICT; and the Role of Government,
NGOs and the Private Sector.
During the first workshop, Lubna Al-Kasimi, Director of
Information Systems Division at the Port Authority of Dubai, the
United Arab Emirates, elaborated on the benefits of e-commerce.
She said that developing countries should invest in children by
attracting their interest to the Internet. "They are the next
generation and they should be integrated in the Information
Society," she underlined. Al-Kasimi also noted that only the
ignorant were against the Internet usage, claiming that they did
not care about technology.
Ziad Abdul-Hadi, Head of the Computer and Biometrics Services at
the Syria-based International Center for Agricultural Research in
the Dry Areas (ICARDA), said that agriculture constituted 5 to 25
percent of the GDP in Western Asian countries. In his lecture
entitled "ICT and Agriculture: the Challenge", he said that 50
percent of the population of these countries depended on
agriculture and that ICT had so far a very low impact on this
sector. He noted that the digital gap was evident in those rural
and agricultural areas, adding that ICT would play an important
role in agriculture, if technology were successfully transferred
to farmers.
In the second workshop, which was chaired by Ibrahim Hajj, Dean of
Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut
(AUB), a number of experts debated the feasibility of
strengthening ICT in educational institutions in the region.
Ahmad Sartawi, a professor at Al-Quds University in the
Palestinian occupied territory, delivered a lecture about ICT
human resources. "Developing a competitive information-based
economy requires policies, regulations, institutions,
infrastructure and people," he said. He noted that a human
resources development framework should be based on a national
development plan and a proper work environment. "Along these
lines, objectives would be: improvement of government practices;
development of the educational system; creation of linkages with
the private sector; and raising society awareness about ICT," he
underlined.
Speaking at the third workshop, Manuel Rincon, Industrial
Development Officer at ESCWA, gave a presentation on "Delineating
Roles for Partners in the Development of Information Society". "I
do not believe that ESCWA countries should import what worked out
in other regions for it might not work out here because of
cultural differences," he said.
During discussions, which followed, AUB professor Toufic Mezher
said that government corruption undermined the efficiency of the
private sector. "We put an action plan and place the government on
the top of the pyramid without taking into consideration
corruption, which undermines what the private sector does for the
development of Information Society," he pointed. Mezher expressed
his disapproval of the relation between the development of ICT and
that of the economy. "In several Arab countries, we have seen
growth in usage of mobile phones and Internet while the GDP has
gone down," he argued.
Ahmed El-Oteify, Vice President of the Egyptian National
Telecommunications Corporation, talked about partnership
initiatives for regional integration. El-Oteify also discussed the
growing worldwide competition in the aftermath of the terms of the
World Trade Organization (WTO). To this end, he encouraged the
different companies to merge so that they would be able to face
the increasingly competitive market.
The afternoon sessions consisted of another three workshops on the
Arab Digital Content; Development of the ICT Sector; and Regional
Cooperation.
Speaking at the first afternoon workshop, Tarek Shawki,
Communication and Information Regional Advisor at the UNESCO
office in Cairo, said that his office worked hard on preserving
rare Arab and Islamic manuscripts and digitalizing them. "We faced
two problems. First, the Egyptian manuscripts were scattered
worldwide and outside this region; and second, archiving the
digital documents on the Internet was not an easy job," he noted.
During the workshop on "Development of the ICT Sector", Hassan
Sharafeddine, professor and IT advisor at the University of Sanaa,
said that Arabs could not benefit from Western sciences, which
have been available for fifty years. He, therefore, questioned
whether Arabs were able to exploit the current technology.
Sharafeddine also noted that Arab States found out that
"regionalization" is their way out of poverty.
The Beirut Conference, which was opened yesterday under the
auspices of the President of Lebanon, is expected to conclude
tomorrow by a series of recommendations regarding policies,
preliminary plans and initiatives that address the key issues and
tackle the identified problems in building the information
society. The Conference final document will be presented at the
Second Intergovernmental Preparatory Committee meeting to be held
in Geneva from 17 to 28 February 2003. The second preparatory
meeting will discuss the agenda of the Summit and the elements to
be incorporated into the final document for the World Summit on
the Information Society.
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