Mexican revolutionaries, relief workers on isolated Honduran islands and advocacy groups from over 30 countries have at least one thing in common - their widespread use of new technology to achieve their aims. This serious use of email, mailing lists and websites is a long way from the widely-held perception of the Internet as a frivolous plaything and marketing tool. "For me, email has been extremely important on a number of occasions this year," says Laura O'Mahony of the Irish development agency, APSO. "During the hurricane disaster in Central America, the political upheavals in Lesotho, the bomb attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, and other situations when things were happening very fast or bubbling under."
She attributes some of the success of the fund-raising effort for Central America to email: "During the initial stages of the Central America crisis, we had access to superb information from the field through email. And our field personnel were also able to circulate their updates to people all over the globe - including newsrooms - not just our head office and the other field offices. That gave rise to a domino effect and the response was incredible. I think that accessibility was a huge factor in the amount of coverage the story received. And also in the success of fund-raising appeals."
Central America-oriented Internet sites and mailing lists were flooded with requests for information on missing friends and family, fund-raising appeals and personal stories from victims of the disaster, giving practical information unavailable from any other source. One week after the hurricane had devastated the northern coast of Honduras, a US missionary, Sharon Francis, emailed: "So far, the people haven't received any of the aid that has come into Trujillo. It has all been confiscated by the soldiers . . . I don't have a clue why - because people are hungry". The word went out to aid agencies to avoid Trujillo's airstrip until the problem was resolved.
Information is crucial, believes O'Mahony: "The whole process of communicating, gathering information, sharing information impacts on your ability to co-ordinate operations on the ground, it impacts on your efficiency . . . Anything that helps improve and speed up the flow of information in a crisis is to be welcomed."
The only drawback to email-based communication, as opposed to radio, is the dependency on phone lines, says O'Mahony. "Once the land lines go down, your email connection is gone too. Presumably, we will see more and more field operations turning to mobile phone systems and linking up via modem with laptops on the field rather than relying solely on radio. Or possibly a combination of the two." Net communications have also been vital to the Zapatistas in the jungles of Chiapas, Mexico. In 1994, after 15,000 Mexican troops poured into Chiapas, Zapatista supporters reached an international audience by using Internet mailing lists to bypass state censorship. According to Andrew Flood of the Irish Mexico Group (IMG), "Chiapas is a Net success story. In general, within a day of a communique leaving the `mountains of the Mexican south east', it will be translated and distributed to thousands of people all over the planet." In November, the IMG's pages received 1,700 visits and 120,000 items were downloaded from the main Zapatista site. The IMG, via an email distribution list, is able to inform and mobilise Irish supporters within hours of an attack on the peasant communities of Chiapas.
Recognising the power of the Net, the Mexican government has now joined in with its own website - and the continuing conflict has been termed a "cyber war". According to an economics lecturer at the University of Texas, Harry Cleaver: "The Mexican state is well aware of the way the Net is being used to undermine its credibility and challenge its policies. This became publicly evident when Jose Angel Guru, Mexican Secretary of State . . .(said) the conflict in Chiapas was `a war of ink, a war of the written word and a war of the Internet'."
Another, less well-known war is being fought on the Internet and here too, information, or the lack of it, is the battlefield. It is a war against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), a proposal by the 29 OECD countries, which, opponents claim, could allow companies to sue governments for introducing environmental or social legislation if it affected the operation of their business.
International negotiations on MAI were taking place without consultation, until there was a leak of a draft text to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in 1996. Then, explains Sadhbh O'Neill, campaigns director of Earthwatch (the Irish section of Friends of the Earth), hundreds of NGOs (trade unions, human rights and environmental groups) were mobilised on the Internet "like a swarm of bees".
In April this year, the cyber activists won their first battle as the OECD countries gave into global pressure and called a six-month break in the negotiations. At the most recent consultation, on December 3rd, the OECD countries said in a statement: "Negotiations on MAI are no longer taking place."
"This is the first successful Internet campaign by NGOs," said a diplomat involved in the negotiations. "It's been very effective." According to O'Neill: "The Internet is an invaluable tool. It's possible to work on international campaigns cheaply and efficiently. It's virtual campaigning. The Internet has the immediacy and currency that nothing in print has. We were getting more up-to-date information than many governments." The next battle, however, is to prevent MAI being transferred to the World Trade organisation.
It is ironic that the Internet - originally developed for the US military - is now being used by environmentalists and revolutionaries to build international support and by citizens' groups from Japan to Senegal to scupper an international investment deal.
As we head towards the next millennium, and the world faces serious environmental, social, economic and political problems, the Internet - often ridiculed as the refuge of the maladjusted teenager - may turn out to be the place where nationality is forgotten as people work together across physical frontiers for an end to war, oppression and suffering.
Honduras - www.honduras.com
Irish sites - www.trocaire.org, www.apso.ie
Zapatistas - http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/zapatista.html
Irish Mexico Group - http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico.html
AntiMAI - www.mai.flora.org
Pro-MAI - www.oecd.org
Friends of the Earth - www.foe.org
Supersite - www.oneworld.org