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Derestricted
FTAA.soc/20
August 8, 2003
Original: English
FTAA – COMMITTEE OF GOVERNMENT
REPRESENTATIVES ON THE PARTICIPATION OF CIVIL SOCIETY
REQUEST FOR TNC INSTRUCTIONS
At its 22nd Meeting held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on 26-27 June 2003, the
Committee of Government Representatives on the Participation of Civil
Society (SOC) agreed to take appropriate and necessary measures to
implement the mandate issued by the Vice-Ministers with respect to the
holding of issue meetings and the improvement of the official FTAA website
(reference document: FTAA.TNC/22) in the most timely and efficient way.
As a result, the SOC decided to request that the Trade Negotiations
Committee (TNC) consider and approve the following new instructions:
1. New sub-descriptor for classifying documents related to SOC issue
meetings
- This sub-descriptor falls under the descriptor SOC (FTAA.soc/xxx/…) in
order to identify, file and retrieve the information pertaining to issue
meetings.
- The current types of documents –agenda (a), list of participants (lp),
informative documents (inf), reports (rep), etc.- will apply to the
sub-descriptor. For example, the agenda of the issue meeting will be
classified as “FTAA.soc/xxx/a/#”.
- Any document under this sub-descriptor will be treated as “public”.
- The agenda and the report of issue meetings will only be classified
under this sub-descriptor once the Chair of the SOC notifies the FTAA
Administrative Secretariat that the SOC has reached a consensus on these
documents.
- All other document pertaining to the issue meetings (e.g. notice of the
theme, place and date of the meeting; executive summaries of civil society
statements; etc) will automatically be classified under this
sub-descriptor.
- All the documents under this sub-descriptor will be posted on the
official FTAA website.
2. Treatment of SOC consensus documents
- All the documents for which the SOC reaches consensus are currently
classified under the descriptor “FTAA.soc/#”.
- These documents will be treated as “public”, with the exception of SOC
documents being prepared for TNC or Ministerial action and/or approval
(e.g. SOC Report to Ministers). Informational SOC consensus documents for
the TNC will be treated as “public” (e.g. SOC issue meeting reports).
- All the public documents classified under the descriptor “FTAA.soc/#”
will be posted on the official FTAA website.
3. Improvements to the FTAA official website
- All changes pertaining to the official FTAA website (structure and
content), once the SOC reaches a consensus on it, will be implemented.
4. Posting of de-restricted documents on the FTAA website
- All the FTAA documents that are de-restricted by the TNC shall be posted
on the official FTAA website in a timely manner.
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