[bestbits] Quick Update on WGEC meeting day 3

[Avri Doria]

And then there was the third day.
The last day.

We spent the morning wandering through the wilderness of repeated
arguments.  Reviewing and revising recommendations that had not reached
consensus, and some that had reached rough consensus - what we needed
was to reach full consensus.

As we discussed them, sometimes we got tantalizingly close to full
consensus, but then one or another of us, and sometimes it was me I must
confess, said something that showed the closeness had been a tempting
illusion.

We had tea breaks and coffee breaks where the chair and various groups
discussed the state of discussions to try and figure out what to do next.

We had lunch.
We talked,
and we talked.

After lunch we finally admitted, in a consensual manner, that we were
not going to reach consensus on recommendations in this meeting.

So we talking about the WG report, or rather, the Chair's report.

Yes, we eventually did reach consensus on what to call the report!

We then started to discuss the form and content of the Chair's Reports.

Many of us told the Chair how much we trusted him to write the report
and be fair.

Some of us went on to tell him what he had to avoid saying in order to
be fair. Maybe some trust is only skin deep.

We went back on forth on what to do with the most valuable work done by
the correspondence group.  Some of us wanted it to continue and become a
living artifact, and wanted that point made to the powers-that-be in the
CSTD.  Others said it was just an exercise of the WG and should be
dropped - but i think that for these people the results of that work had
not verified their view that there were huge gaps to be fill

(ok, so I am showing some prejudice in that last statement, please
forgive me. One of the few things that really bothered me during the
meeting was the apparent disrespect shown to the brave and worthy
volunteers who took on this large body of work only to have their
efforts deprecated - and no i did not help them and was not part of the
workforce - it was too hard a job for me and I avoided it like a plague.)

As for the future, there may be further meetings.
There may not be.
If there are, they may occur this year.
Or they may occur next year.

I personally hope that we continue the work.  but I hope we wait until
after all of Internet governance 2014 events are over, and after all
stakeholders have had time to adjust to the new realities that
NETmundial presents.  And after the IGF, which I hope learns something
from NETmundial, and after the ITU PleniPot 2014 does whatever it is
going to do.

I thought the meetings were valuable.  I think the participants, and I
hope their fellow stakeholders - however they define the groups they are
part of, have a better understanding now than they did before.

And while we did not come together in final consensus, I thought some of
the couplings at the meeting where wonderful.  For example the KSA and
Iran, normally not the best of friends, were bosom buddies at this
meeting, united in their arguments on women's rights, treatment of
marginalized groups and a host of other issues.  It is good that there
are still some things that can bring enemies such as this together.  And
to see civil society members working closely with governments and with
business was a good thing too. If we can't work with the people we
disagree with, how are we going to solve anything - we learn to build on
the few things we do disagree with.

Now I sound almost maudlin!

One last thing:

There was a possibility, as I mentioned in another one of these Quick
Updates that we would need to submit _Opinions_.  While we never did, as
we never reached consensus to do so, several groups did arrive at a
possible offering.  Several of us from civil society, though not all by
any means, did develop one.  While I will leave it for the others who
worked on this with me to associate with it or not, and thus to put
themselves on the line to have to explain it, I am including this
compromise proto-document below as I think it includes a fair number of
ideas that are worthy of the light of day and of further discussion.

Signing out from Geneva airport and the WGEC, at least for now
Who knows what the future will bring.

----------------------
The Opinion

This is the draft opinion of a group of Civil society participants
including group members Avri Doria, ...

---
Definitions

Enhanced Cooperation: an ongoing multistakeholder and multilateral
process where all stakeholders contribute according to their expertise
and interests, to enable all other stakeholders to achieve full
participation in order to improve and democratise the governance of the
Internet at all levels.

Multistakeholder process: a form of participatory democracy where any
person, alone or as part of a group, can contribute fully.

Equal  footing: the recognition, enjoyment  or exercise by all
stakeholders, on the basis of equality and without discrimination, of
the freedom to participate in multistakeholder processes.  In Internet
governance this is in line with stakeholders' roles and
responsibilities, which should be interpreted in a flexible manner with
reference to the issue under discussion. As with UN representation by
governments, where all are equal regardless of size or wealth,
contributions should  be judged on their quality, and not by the number
of people that a representative may claim.

Possible outcome:

There is support within civil society for establishing a
multistakeholder mechanism, to promote the ongoing  monitoring and
analysis of Internet-governance developments, and the  on-demand sharing
of knowledge on policy issues, models and experiences  that governments
and stakeholders need to help them identify effective solutions. We view
this as a first step,  building on the work of the Correspondence Group
of the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation. There is also support
within civil society for a second step of a multistakeholder
coordination mechanism that would recommend the most appropriate venue
or venues to develop  further policy as required. This could be
accomplished through existing institutions as appropriate.

This mechanism could attached to an existing multistakeholder body such
the IGF (per paragraph 72 b of the Tunis Agenda), to the UN Commission
on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD), or to any comparable
venue consistent with the guiding principles as established in the
NETmundial Multistakeholder statement.

The discussions of the WGEC take their origin from the Tunis Agenda.
The Tunis Agenda was a remarkable document for its time, that resulted
from government discussions at WSIS. The Tunis Agenda laid a basis for
ongoing discussions. The Tunis Agenda's great value was in giving an
impetus to the development of the multistakeholder model in Internet
governance. Over the intervening years, the variety of multistakeholder
models have progressed beyond what could have been imagined in 2005, in
line with technological evolution. Allowing the Tunis Agenda to remain a
static document, as if it was written in stone, risks it  becoming ever
more irrelevant in today's world; Instead, we recommend that it be
treated as a living document, a solid foundation upon which we can build
our understanding of the enhanced cooperation of all stakeholders in the
area of Internet governance.