<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#333333">
Hi <br>
<br>
A happy new year to all!<br>
<br>
Since much has been lamented about what came out of the CSTD
inter-sessional, let me start my notes by trying to give it a positive
spin. <br>
<br>
My impression is that something very remarkable and perhaps
unprecedented happened on the 17th in the CSTD inter-sessional meeting
which is an important step forward in global governance (I have some
misgivings too about 'this step' forward which I will discuss in
another email). I may be
wrong and those more well versed with UN system may correct me, but
this may be the very first time that a 'substantive' UN body, with
political membership and status and not just an expert group,
will have some specified non-gov permanent 'invited participants'
who 'will remain engaged
through-out the process'. Importantly, these participants are not just
'outside experts' but 'representatives' of groups other than states. <br>
<br>
To the extent that I think this is a big step, in the end, in some
ways it may even be better that the WG group is not a Chair's WG, which
would have meant an 'experts group' only giving advise which does not
constitute
a substantive UN body's report, but it is actually a CSTD WG, and thus
based on political representation and not expertise alone. ( I may be
reading too much into this, and would be happy for a discussion on this
issue.)<br>
<br>
In any case, our (my organisation's) initial position was a WGIG kind
of a group. (The WGIG model for the new WG on IGF improvements,
incidentally, was opposed by many business and technical community
members at Vilnius.) I have been a great fan of WGIG model and have
suggested a
few times that MAG should rather try to work more in that model than
its typical abdicating mode when faced with substantive issues, which
alone can make the IGF more productive. However there has been little
engagement from the IGC to forward such a model within the IGF system.
Anyway, this is just to affirm my support for the WGIG model. <br>
<br>
Much of the contestation during ther CSTD meeting, whose real substance
and motives perhaps lie
elsewhere, took place around whether the proposed WG was a Chair's WG
or a CSTD WG. The former could be formed more or less in whichever
manner the Chair
decides, and would be an expert group advising the
CSTD, after which the commission could decide to do what it liked in
its substantive communication to ECOSOC and GA. A CSTD WG on the other
hand will be a
political body with membership based on political status. The text of
the UN GA resolution indeed had some amount of ambiguity about it being
a experts group or an substantive CSTD WG. <br>
<br>
<meta http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title></title>
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.1 (Linux)">
<style type="text/css">
<!--
@page { margin: 2cm }
P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm }
--></style>
<blockquote>18. Welcomes the decision by the Economic and Social
Council in paragraph 30 of its resolution 2010/2 to invite the Chair of
the Commission on Science and Technology for Development to establish,
in an open and inclusive manner, a working group which would seek,
compile and review inputs from all Member States and all other
stakeholders on improvements to the Internet Governance Forum, in line
with the mandate set out in the Tunis Agenda,4 and which would submit a
report to the Commission at its fourteenth session, in 2011, with
recommendations, as appropriate, that would constitute an input by the
Commission to the General Assembly, through the Economic and Social
Council;<br>
</blockquote>
While it was the Chair who was invited to form a WG (which could be a
Chair's WG or as well be a CSTD WG), the last part of the above para is
significant in saying that the report of the WG will 'constitute an
input by the Commission to the General Assembly, through the Economic
and Social Council'. To me, it really does look very unlikely that an
expert group assembled by the chair could give a report which will be
considered 'an input <b>by </b>the commission to the GA'. <br>
<br>
While I was still rooting for a WGIG model during the meeting, I could
see that the developing countries group was clear - they were no way
going to shift from their conviction that it was to be a CSTD WG.
(Sure, it served their political objective too for it to be a CSTD WG.
I dont say they were not pressing their politics here as were other
actors who were present.) This dev countries group pointed to the
description 'CSTD WG' that has been mentioned in all documents
regarding various meetings etc on this issue, apart from their
interpretation of the text.<br>
<br>
If it indeed was to be a substantive CSTD WG with political membership,
their stand that non-gov participants cannot be equal and full members
looked difficult to argue against (though I was still trying to argue
that this is a very new context etc). That would be in violation of all
rules and precedents, even perhaps of general political sensibilities. <br>
<br>
So either this group agreed that it was a Chair's expert group, which I
realized was not going to happen, or we tried to find what best could
be done within the CSTD WG formula. Within this formula there were two
options being proposed at this point.<br>
<br>
One was Egypt's proposal of multistakeholder task forces around
specific sub-issues that would input their report/ recommendations to
the WG proper which was to be inter-gov. Second was Brazil's proposal
of each meeting of WG having speaker/ participants from stakeholder
groups, leaving it to the stakeholders to decide the speakers/
participants. (This later proposal has the problem that only a
continuous participation of the same non-gov participants throughout
the WG's life is really meaningful.)<br>
<br>
To proceed from what looked like a Chair's WG versus CSTD WG
stalemate, seeing that dev countries were not going to move from their
understanding of it being a CSTD WG, I proposed a new formula to one of
the most active developing country participant - that of permanent
'invited participants' 'who will remain fully engaged throughout the
process'. To me, this appeared the best we could get, and still a
considerable step forward. <br>
<br>
The mentioned dev country rep then suggested the text 'The Chair
invites the following stakeholders to participate in the Working
Group....' which is 'the' key part of the agreed document now. I
directly suggested to the chair to add the part 'will remain fully
engaged throughout the process' which she graciously did. I thought
this statement can be used to assure a fair amount of space and rights
within the WG. Later, a developed country rep, pursuing a similar line
of thought, asked for inclusion of the word 'interactively' - as in
'interactively participate'. This was very useful. What we were trying
here was to get some text in to try and guarantee that once the WG is
set up, more excluding norms may not evolve by practise. <br>
<br>
Pushing it further towards greater equality of status of non-gov
participants, Anriette suggested that the text be changed to 'chair
invites to join' rather than participate. This text went up for a while
but got removed later. <br>
<br>
I think that overall it may not be too bad a deal we got. I would much
prefer that we now move on to discussing what substantive changes or
improvements we want to see in the IGF. If we get a good set of 5
people in, we can use the civil society's greater readiness to come up
with new ideas, develop implementable details around them etc to make
some really good impact.<br>
<br>
We need to talk and collaborate with the business and technical
community as we need to with gov reps for pushing what we want to see
happen (and to figure that out is more important). However, developing
any kind of grand alliance with a shrill anti dev country govs
rhetoric may not be the best thing to do now. Yes, our interests are
shared vis a vis greater openness of processes, and we will need to
huddle together every time new efforts get made to demote the level of
participation of nongov stakeholders in the WG processes. But that is a
tactical thing we have always been doing. We may have known
convergences in a few substantive areas - like our opposition to moving
the IGF secretariat to NY and the desire for keeping it independent
etc.... However, there are also a large number of divergences in key
areas where the idea may be to make IGF as a more valuable institution
to be able to really contribute to global IG related policies. These
areas may be the more important ones to focus on in terms of real IGF
improvements. <br>
<br>
In this regard, apart from mentioning how the IGF should complement,
and thus contribute to, the proposed process of enhanced cooperation
which would directly deal with global Internet policy issues, the
relevant part of the GA resolution also gives a significant pointer of
the directions in which it would like to see improvements in the IGF . <br>
<br>
"....... while recognizing at the same time the need to improve it
(IGF), with a view to linking it to the broader dialogue on global
Internet governance".<br>
<br>
Parminder <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">
</pre>
</body>
</html>