ABSTRACT
Introduction Summit meetings and world conferences have been convened on issues ranging from sustainable development to social development, and women and children. In December 2003, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was convened under the auspices of the United Nations. This meeting aimed to stimulate action to ensure that the information societies emerging today are more, rather than less, equitable than the societies that have preceded them. Summit meetings generally lead to declarations of principles and intended actions. These are the result of lengthy negotiations that seek to find common ground between the disparate interests of government, business and, in the case of the WSIS, civil society representatives from around the world. One important area that engendered considerable debate in the case of this Summit and the necessity for compromise was a core issue that is addressed in this volume: human rights and their legal protection.
