[bestbits] For endorsement: Civil society proposals for amendments to the NETmundial outcome document

[William Drake]

Hi

On Apr 23, 2014, at 8:52 PM, Jeremy Malcolm <jeremy at malcolm.id.au> wrote:

> Apologies again for the short notice and urgency (which seems to be a pattern for NETmundial), and thanks to those who put a lot of hard work into writing it (including Joana, Niels, Matthew, Deborah, Valeria, Danny and others).

Thanks indeed to the folks who had to bang all this out at unpleasant hours of the day.

I suppose it’s too late for additions to this particular statement, but going forward we might want to consider a couple other points regarding Section II. on institutional improvements.  One is strengthening the IGF.  The IGC of course has been recommending this from even before the IGF's creation, i.e. beginning with our mid-2005 response to the WGIG report.  Since then we’ve made numerous written and oral interventions calling for the IGF to have greater institutional capacity, to serve as a platform for ongoing working groups able to make their own non-binding recommendations, and so on.  APC and other CS groupings have repeatedly taken similar positions.  There’s language in the draft outcome doc, paragraphs 17-22, but it could be stronger.  

The other is the creation of mechanisms for monitoring, analysis, knowledge sharing, etc.  This is closely linked but goes even further back; in the CS declaration to the December 2003 WSIS summit, we called for the creation of a multistakeholder “observatory," and in the years to follow also used other terms like a “clearing house” function.  Often this was framed as something the IGF would do, but of course the opponents of the IGF being anything more than an annual meeting vetoed such talk.  There’s now proposals to reconsider this or do things independent of UN DESA control, some of which have been supported by CS groups (e.g. APC + the European Commission’s GIPO), and there’s actually a reasonable chance of some initiatives being funded and launched.  Here too there’s language in the draft outcome document, paragraph 24, but it could be stronger.  To that end I proposed just a lite revision in last night’s session in the hope this could be taken on board as a mere tweak: "Full consideration should be given to establishing multistakeholder mechanisms to promote the ongoing monitoring and anlysis of Internet-governance developments, and the on-demand sharing of the knowledge on policy issues, models and experiences that governments and stakeholders need to help them identify effective solutions.” This could come up in the WGEC meeting in Geneva next week as well, so it’d be good to think about.

BTW, a quick hard drive scan for “clearing house function" turned up the below IGC statement about the proposed IGF from September 2005, which I believe Adam read out at WSIS PrepCom III.  There’s related language in the unfulfilled IGF mandate of the Tunis Agenda.

[snip]

We recommend that the forum provides the following functions:
 
a.     inclusive dialogue, with a differentiated architecture allowing for peer-level interaction;
b.     comparative, cross-sectoral analysis of governance mechanisms, with an eye toward "lessons learned" and best practices that could inform individual and collective institutional improvements;
c.     assessment and monitoring of horizontal issues applicable to all Internet governance arrangements, e.g. the promotion of transparency, accountability, inclusion, and other guidelines for "good governance,” such as the WSIS principles;
d.     identification of weaknesses and gaps in existing governance mechanisms, especially multidimensional issues that do not fall neatly within the scope of any existing body;
e.     efforts to promote enhanced coordination among existing governing bodies;
f.      provide a clearing house for coordination and resource mobilization to supporting meaningful developing country participation and capacity building;
g.     release recommendations, best practices, proposals and other documents on the various Internet governance issues.

Cheers,

Bill
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