This post is from Celia Viggo Wexler, Vice President of Advocacy, currently on location in Africa.

Tunis, Tunisia -- This is the second day of the World Summit on the Information Society, and it's clear that all the problems that preoccupy media reformers in the U.S. -- access to new technology, reducing the digital divide, who controls media content, the rights of communications workers, and how to protect children -- are shared by reformers all over the world. 

While we in this country worry about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting being subject to government intrusion, in many countries, the government takes a more direct and threatening role. The owners of cybercafes are held responsible for whatever their customers do.  There has been improvement in the numbers of individuals conntected to the Internet throughout the Middle East.  For example, the growth of Internet users in Iran has grown exponentially, noted panelists Elijah Zirwan. "Farsi is the fourth most common language in the blogosphere."  And Internet use in Tunisia, fostered by the government, has grown from about 5,000 in 1999 to about 800,000 today.  In Syria, the first private Internet Service Provider has been launched, and private ISPs tend to be less restrictive than government run ones.  But much remains to be done, Zirwan said.  He noted that in Egypt and Syria, there are laws on the books abridging the rights of free expression, including online expression, and that people have been detained for their online communications.  Governments routinely block the web sites of groups such as Human Rights Watch or Reporters Without Borders.  And today, we got a vivid demonstration of that intervention when a panel on Human Rights inthe Information Society was not permitted to go forward.