[bestbits] c.a.'s speech at 16th CSTD opening ceremony

[Carlos A. Afonso]

Hi people,

I was invited by CSTD to participate in the opening ceremony of its 16th 
Session on June 03. Below is what I said.

fraternal regards

--c.a.

====================

Commision on Science and Technology for Development,
Sixteenth session, Geneva, 3-7 June 2013
Opening Session

Speech by Carlos Afonso, Executive Director, Nupef Institute, Brazil

=======================================

Ambassador Miguel Palomino de la Gala, Chair of the CSTD; Dr. Supachai 
Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of UNCTAD; Dr. Hamadoun Touré, 
Secretary-General of the ITU, in the name of whom I wish to salute all 
present authorities; ladies and gentlemen:

I have been assigned the honorable task of speaking in the opening 
ceremony of this Sixteenth Session of the UN CSTD as a member of a small 
civil society organization, committed to proactively contribute to the 
advance of ICTs for human development in my country.

I am also one of the founding members of a relevant pluralist initiative 
in Internet governance in Brazil, created in 1995, when this concept was 
not yet in our minds, the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee -- a 
joint initiative of government, academia, industry and NGOs. More than 
just a names and numbers assignment organization for Brazil's ".br" top 
domain name, the Steering Committee has the mission to oversee or advise 
on a broad range of issues related to the development and deployment of 
the Internet in our country.

Since 2003, when a multistakeholder model of coordination was 
consolidated, a majority of its 21 members is elected every three years 
by civil society, the private sector, and the technical community. Our 
Steering Committee has been a reference for several countries in 
organizing multistakeholder processes of Internet governance.

In 2009 the Steering Committee managed to reach consensus around its 10 
Principles for the Governance and Use of the Internet in Brazil. Its 
publication has since been used as a reference in many foruns around the 
world, and was the starting point of a challenging proposal: a new bill 
of law setting a Framework of Civil Rights for the Internet in Brazil, 
known in Portuguese as the "Marco Civil da Internet". Marco Civil was 
elaborated during a long, 3-year process of open, highly participatory 
consultations with all sectors, until a final version of the bill of law 
was submitted to Congress last year.

We are now struggling to preserve the essential tenets of Marco Civil as 
it is processed through Congress, against the heavy lobby of the 
telecommunications industry (which strongly opposes net neutrality) and 
the main media companies (which insist on facilities for takedown of 
content without due process of law, as well as imposing undue 
accountability on intermediaries).

In short, these are more or less the same disputes we see in most 
countries, including the largest developed democracies. A strong 
indication of these and other challenges to a free and open Internet was 
the recent appeal, four days ago, of Neelie Kroes, the Vice-President of 
the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, which, along 
with the defense of an European single market for telecommunications, 
stresses the fundamental importance of guaranteeing net neutrality, 
among other fundamental rights.

As the ITU-Unesco broadband commission stated in its 2012 report, "to 
date, the rapid, substantial growth in broadband has not translated into 
significant increases in Internet access in least developed countries 
(LDCs), where only 6 per cent of inhabitants had access as of 2011. This 
[percentage] is expected to more than double by 2015, but by then, the 
absolute gap with higher income countries is likely to grow even 
larger." And Susan Crawford makes a very strong case for the 
universalization of bidirectional high-speed broadband (for both upload 
and download) in every home and office, in her recent book "Captive 
Audience."

True bidirectional high-speed, this is true broadband, with the 
guarantee of net neutrality and protection of other basic human rights 
for the end user.

As I said in the opening ceremony at the IGF in Baku, the absence of 
gatekeepers and the open, global communication enabled by the Internet 
is crucial to carry out the promise of Article 19 of the UN Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights.

To impose restrictions to the free flow of information is and has always 
been contrary to the individual human right to freedom of expression. We 
ought to preserve and enhance fundamental communication rights as 
synthesized in the Final Statement of the First WSIS+10 Review event 
held last February at Unesco Headquarters in Paris.

As the Brazilian experience in pluralist governance exemplifies, any 
upcoming institutional arrangement for the governance of the Internet 
should never be restricted to just multilateral structures -- we may 
need new governance mechanisms, but these must emphasize full 
participation of all sectors from policy conception to decision-making. 
Let us hope that the current CSTD Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation 
sheds a brilliant light on the path to the proper ways of effective 
international collaboration.

Let the Internet continue to flourish freely to the benefit of those who 
live at its edges, which are all of us. Thank you.

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