MULTI-STAKEHOLDER DIALOGUES

The CSD's unique participatory mechanism, the multi- stakeholder dialogues, will be an important feature of the World Summit preparations and the Summit event itself.

Multi-stakeholder dialogues enable direct interactions between governments and major groups on specific topics and as part of the official inter-governmental process rather than taking place on the margins. The dialogues provide opportunities for major groups to not only share their concerns, experiences and proposals in specific areas but also discuss them in detail with governments. The process helps better inform the inter-governmental process and enables meaningful inputs from major groups into the inter-governmental decision making process. The preparations of the multi-stakeholder dialogues are also conducted in a multi-stakeholder environment through a steering committee composed of key major group networks and the Summit Secretariat.

A multi-stakeholder panel was held at the beginning of PrepCom I ( 30 April - 2 May 2001 at UN Headquarters, New York), to allow major group representatives to bring to the organizational discussion the views of their major group constituencies. Statements were made by representatives of each major group.

A two-day multi- stakeholder dialogue with all nine major group sectors was held during the course of PrepCom II ( 28 January - 8 February 2002, UN Headquarters, New York). The topics of the stakeholder dialogue were based on the outline of the Secretary-General’s overall review report.

There is no dialogue segment planned for PrepCom III.

Prepcom IV, which is scheduled from 27 May - 7 June 2002 in Indonesia, will include a 2 - day multi-stakeholder dialogue segment.

A half day multi-stakeholder dialogue session is planned for the World Summit in South Africa, 2002. In addition, consideration is being given to organizing some of the plenary sessions as a series of partnership events with stakeholders. These could be in the form of dialogues and may include those of a multi-stakeholder nature. The details and topics of these dialogues will be announced as they become clarified.