[bestbits] Re: [governance] Proposal by the Government of India to the WGEC

Mon Nov 18 16:34:46 EST 2013

Many governments experience internal tensions in those issues. Between
foreign Affairs ministries and Justice/interior/home affairs or
communications ministries, etc...

Which is normal given their diverse points of views and responsibilities.

B.

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Anriette Esterhuysen <anriette at apc.org>wrote:

>  Dear Anja
>
> Thank you for this.
>
> I followed the meeting remotely (which was really hard as I could not get
> the webcast but I could follow the transcript) and noticed this similarity
> with the CIRP proposal and the IT For Change proposal.
>
> Could it be differences between ministries?
>
> I have had a sense that in the case of India, similar to South Africa, the
> ministry of foreign affairs agenda has not always been fully cleared with,
> or co-developed with, the ministry of communications.
>
> Ministries of foreign affairs usually try to plug in issue specific
> matters into a broader foreign policy agenda. Sometimes this works will for
> the line ministries, sometimes not.. or sometimes they are just a but left
> out of the loop.
>
> But I think we should also allow for the fact that all governments,
> including some of those most committed to multi-stakeholder participation,
> should be watched carefully, not just those who openly put a multi-lateral
> model on the table. Often governments pay lip service to
> 'multi-stakeholder' models but they are quite comfortable also working in
> multi-lateral frameworks and mashing them up in their speeches and inputs
> without really concretising what they mean by multi-stakeholder IG.
>
> That is why as CS we need to be really vigilant and demand very clear
> commitments and mechanisms that allow us to be integrally part of proposed
> solutions.
>
> Anriette
>
>
>
> On 18/11/2013 10:22, Anja Kovacs wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> As I thought this would be of interest to many people on these lists, I
> wanted to share a short blog post about the proposal for EC India made to
> the WGEC (see below this message and here:
> http://internetdemocracy.in/2013/11/is-india-reviving-its-un-cirp-proposal/)
>
> Over the past year, for various reasons, the earlier UN CIRP proposal
> seemed to be off the table and Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and
> Information Technology, in particular had become increasingly vocal about
> his support for multistakeholder models for Internet governance. However,
> during the meeting of the WGEC earlier this month, the Indian government
> again tabled a proposal for a multilateral Internet policy to be
> established under the UN, very similar to the earlier UN CIRP.
>
> Comments most welcome.
>
>  Best,
> Anja
>
>  Is India reviving its proposal for a multilateral UN body to take over
> the governance of the Internet?  by Anja Kovacs
>
> *Recent events at the UN CSTD Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation give
> the strong impression that this is indeed the case. *
>
> In a submission to the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation (WGEC)<http://unctad.org/en/Pages/CSTD/WGEC.aspx>,
> which met for the second time in Geneva last week, the Indian government
> recommended the following:
>
> The UN General Assembly could embark on creation of a multilateral body
> for formulation of international Internet-related public policies. The
> proposed body should include all stakeholders and relevant
> inter-governmental and international organisations in advisory capacity
> within their respective roles as identified in Tunis agenda and WGIG
> report. Such body should also develop globally applicable principles on
> public policy issues associated with the coordination and management of
> critical Internet resources.
>
> Despite the fact that stakeholders from India already active within the
> field of Internet governance have overwhelmingly disagreed with India’s
> earlier proposal to establish a Committee for Internet-related Policies
> within the UN (UN CIRP), this proposal thus seems to have been revived.
>
> Like the earlier one, the proposal that is currently on the table is
> problematic for a number of reasons. It clearly seeks to endorse
> governments as the primary stakeholders in Internet governance, whose
> dominance needs to be established at the expense of other stakeholders.
> Irrespective of the issue under consideration, other stakeholders will only
> be given an advisory role in Internet governance. Moreover, they will only
> be allowed to play the roles defined in the Tunis Agenda. That these
> definitions - especially where the role of civil society is concerned - are
> outmoded is something that has been recognised widely. During last week’s
> WGEC meeting, India acknowledged the debates around the role definitions of
> the Tunis Agenda, but said nothing about how these debates might affect its
> proposal.
>
> Support for India’s proposal at the meeting of the 42-member WGEC only
> came from the government of Saudi Arabia and from an Indian civil society
> representative. The latter took with this a position quite radically
> different from other Indian members of civil society active in Internet
> governace, or indeed from most of global civil society in this field, who
> believe that a multistakeholder model for Internet governance is the way
> forward.
>
> Many, including the Internet Democracy Project, have argued that there
> might at times be space for multilateralism within this multistakeholder
> model. For example, if a multistakeholder group comes to the conclusion
> that the best way forward to protect the right to privacy of all people in
> the Internet age is a new treaty, then from that point onwards, governments
> would take over as negotiating treaties is their job.
>
> However, a crucial difference between such proposals and the ones
> currently and previously made by the Indian government is that in a
> multistakeholder model, broad agreement among all stakeholders, including
> on the modalities, is a prerequisite for any solution to go forward. The
> India proposals, in contrast, presume the necessity of government dominance
> in the policy process, irrespective of the problem at hand, and thus
> requires agreement only among governments. This not only means that inputs
> by other stakeholders need not necessarily be given due consideration, it
> also leaves the Internet policy making process much more vulnerable to the
> vagaries of global geopolitics.
>
> The proposal by India that the new UN body would be responsible also for
> developing globally applicable principles on public policy issues
> associated with the coordination and management of critical Internet
> resources is particularly surprising in this regard. So far, the
> coordination and management of critical Internet resources lies
> overwhelmingly with bodies such as ICANN that, though not without their
> flaws, are already multistakeholder in their functioning. To think that
> principles that should govern the work of these bodies can be formulated or
> effectively applied without a central involvement of all stakeholders
> already involved in these groups (stakeholders who often have, it should be
> said, conflicting views about the way forward) is obviously deeply flawed.
>
> The multistakeholder WGEC is charged with making recommendations on how to
> fully implement the mandate of enhanced cooperation contained in the Tunis
> Agenda.
>
> India’s renewed proposal, in this context, to establish a UN body that
> would privilege governments in the making of international Internet-related
> public policy was made without any domestic consultation, even if a
> Multistakeholder Advisory Group had been established by the government
> precisely for such purposes in August of this year.
>
> For many observers in India, it therefore came as something of a surprise
> - even more so as Mr. Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and
> Information Technology, has repeatedly stressed over the past year (and as
> recently as 17 October) the importance of multistakeholderism for effective
> Internet policy making, and his own commitment to this model.
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Anja Kovacs
> The Internet Democracy Project
>
> +91 9899028053 | @anjakovacs
> www.internetdemocracy.in
>
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------
> anriette esterhuysen anriette at apc.org
> executive director, association for progressive communicationswww.apc.org
> po box 29755, melville 2109
> south africa
> tel/fax +27 11 726 1692
>
>
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-- 
____________________
Bertrand de La Chapelle
Internet & Jurisdiction Project Director, International Diplomatic Academy (
www.internetjurisdiction.net)
Member, ICANN Board of Directors
Tel : +33 (0)6 11 88 33 32

"Le plus beau métier des hommes, c'est d'unir les hommes" Antoine de Saint
Exupéry
("there is no greater mission for humans than uniting humans")
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