by Anwar El-Tawil,, Secretary, ISO/DEVCO
At the first ISO Networking Conference held in Prague in November 2001, participants had the opportunity not only to hear excellent presentations by ISO members' managers in the fields of information, marketing, public relations and training, but also to come up with thoughts and feelings on issues relevant to developing countries. As Secretary of the Committee on developing country matters (ISO/DEVCO), I would like to comment on three specific points raised during that Conference.
One point brought up was that ISO was inhibiting participation of people not of English mother tongue. It is, certainly, an added hurdle to participants to demand the use of one language - English - a foreign language for most of them. However, the advantages of maximum numbers being able to participate and conduct efficient international meetings is at this price. This issue was recently raised by Mario O. Wittner, Deputy General Director of IRAM, ISO member for Argentina. He says: "It is English and English only. In each working group there are representatives of countries whose mother tongue is English.... That seems initially like an "unfair" advantage, doesn't it? Fortunately, ISO English has evolved into a kind of international English, where the content, understandably expressed, is more important than grammatical niceties. But you do have to know English, maybe not perfectly, but sufficiently for you to understand and make yourself understood".
The second point broached was that, by stopping mailing paper documents, ISO was penalizing national standards bodies in developing countries with few IT possibilities. While ISO is fully conscious of the strains that this puts on its members, it is nevertheless attempting to "steal a march" on the future, as these changes are inevitable in the long run, and all ISO members, without distinction, are having to face the problems they involve. This is why the ISO programme for developing countries 2001-2003 is paying special attention to enhancing information and communication technologies (ICT) capabilities, and why the ISO Central Secretariat has put a lot of effort into training ISO members in the use of e-balloting. The Med2000 project which helps developing countries connect to ISO and its members through the Internet and establish Web sites to disseminate information to users of standards is a good example of ICT projects which will be implemented in many countries.
The third point was the perception that ISO is working only for industrialized countries. Our increased technical assistance is, of course, not sufficient to satisfy all needs, and the problem of participation is a persistent one. As is made clear in the ISO Strategies 2002-2004, we will use all the means and imagination at our disposal to encourage effective participation of developing countries in ISO's technical activity. A series of workshops being held this year jointly with the WTO and funded by them and by other donors is gathering more ideas and suggestions to implement this.
A last point: ISO, it was also said, was not holding workshops on subjects other than quality and the environment. A look at the list of our much-demanded training seminars and workshops held during 2000 and 2001 readily shows that they also covered other fields such as standardization, technical barriers to trade, conformity assessment, upgrading of analytical laboratories and use of information and communication technologies.
DEVCO seeks to do everything possible to encourage ISO members from developing countries to participate in international standardization work in order to get their interests dealt with effectively. I look forward to receiving any comments or suggestions that may help us achieve this goal.
