[bestbits] Remarks at UNESCO Closing Ceremony of "Connecting the Dots Conference"

Thu Mar 5 05:35:30 EST 2015

Dear all

Just an explanation and some context.

I was on the 'coordinating committee' of the event. Our role was to
review comments on the draft statement and support the chair and
secretariat in compiling drafts.

The final UNESCO outcome document did include the vast majority of
text/proposals submitted by civil society beforehand and onsite.

This includes text submitted by Richard Hill on behalf of JNC (Richard
made several editorial suggestions which improved the text) and text
from Anita Gurumurthy from IT for Change (which greatly improved
weakened language on gender in the pre-final draft).

The text on 'social and economic rights' were not excluded for any
reason other than it came during the final session and the Secretariat
were trying to keep the document short and linked directly to the Study.
It was decided to elaborate on the links to broader rights, and to
UNESCO needing to work with other rights bodies, in the final study
report rather than in the outcome statement.

Again, not ideal from my perspective, but that was the outcome of the
discussion.

It is a pity that 'democratic' was not added, but it was never really an
option. I personally, and APC, support linking democratic to
multistakeholder and we were happy that this happened in the NETmundial
statement. And reading Norbert's text below (thanks for that Norbert) I
would like to find a way to make sure that the meaning of democratic
However, in the UN IG context there is a very particular angle to why
"democratic multistakeholder" is so contentious. In the Tunis Agenda the
word "democratic" is directly linked with the word "multilateral" -
every time it occurs. This means that people/governments who feel that
'multilateral' can be used to diminish the recognition given to the
importance of multistakeholder participation, and take the debate back
intergovernmental oversight of IG, will not agree to having 'democratic'
in front of multistakeholder.

In the context of these UN type negotiations it will be code for
reinserting multilateral (in the meaning of 'among governments') into
the text.

At the NETmundial we had to fight for 'democratic multistakeholder', but
because it is a 'new' text we succeeded.

The thing with documents that come out of the UN system is that they are
full of invisible 'hyperlinks' to previous documents and political
struggles that play themselves out in multiple spaces.

I actually looked for a quote from the Tunis Agenda that we could insert
(at Richard's suggestion) to see if I could find a reference to
democratic that is not linked to 'multilateral' but I could not find
this quote, and I showed this to Richard and warned him that
unfortunately 'democratic' will most likely not be included.

I can confirm that the editing group did consider this seriously, but
that the number of objections to this text were far greater than the
number of requests for putting it in.

This is simply in the nature of consensus texts that are negotiated in
this way.

There was also much stronger text on anonymity and encryption as
fundamental enablers of online privacy and freedom of expression in the
early draft. But it had to be toned down on the insistence of the
government of Brazil as the Brazilian constitution states that anonymity
is illegitimate.

Civil society never succeeds in getting everything it wants in documents
we negotiate with governments. We have to evaluate the gains vs. the losses.

In my view the gains in this document outweighs the losses. Supporting
it means that we have  UN agency who has a presence in the global south
who will put issues that are important to us on its agenda, which will,
I hope, create the opportunity for more people from civil society,
particularly from developing countries, to learn, participate and
influence internet-related debates with policy-makers.

Michael, as for your tone, and your allegations. I don't really know
what to say about them. They are false, they are destructive and they
demean not only the work of the civil society organisations or
individuals you name, but also the work - and what I believe to be the
values - of the Just Net Coalition.

Anriette

On 05/03/2015 11:46, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> On Thu, 5 Mar 2015 02:27:14 +0100
> Jeremy Malcolm <jmalcolm at eff.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Mar 4, 2015, at 7:54 PM, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Perhaps we could have an explanation from Jeremy and others on the
>>> drafting committee as to when and how "democracy" and "social and
>>> economic rights' became unacceptable terms in a document meant to
>>> have global significance?
>>
>>
>> With pleasure.  This is why:
>>
>> http://igfwatch.org/discussion-board/unesco-resists-jncs-attempt-to-turn-democracy-against-ordinary-internet-users
> 
> I would like to hereby state clearly that what Jeremy claims is JNC's
> view of "democratic multi-stakeholderism" is not an actual position of
> JNC.
> 
> For JNC, "democratic" simply means: democratic.
> 
> We insist that just like governance at national levels must be
> democratic (which has been internationally accepted as a human right,
> even if there are countries where this is not currently implemented
> satisfactorily), any and all global governance must also be democratic.
> 
> JNC's foundational document, the Delhi Declaration, states this as
> follows:
> 
>    Globally, there is a severe democratic deficit with regard to
>    Internet governance. It is urgently required to establish
>    appropriate platforms and mechanisms for global governance of the
>    Internet that are democratic and participative.
> 
> We are opposed to any kind of system in which multistakeholderism is
> implemented in a way that is not democratic.
> 
> We are *not* opposed to participative mechanisms for global governance
> of the Internet. In fact we explicitly demand, in our foundational
> document, mechanisms for global governance of the Internet which are
> democratic *and* participative.
> 
> This demand has nothing whatsoever to do with what Jeremy claims is our
> goal, which he describes as “limited type of government-led
> rulemaking”. That would clearly *not* be participative.
> 
> We insist that Internet governance must be democratic *and*
> participative.
> 
> Is that so hard to understand???
> 
> 
> The above-mentioned post of Jeremy also links, twice, to an earlier
> blog post of his, and he claims that he has there "revealed ... the
> agenda of the Just Net Coalition". That post happens to be quite full of
> factually false assertions. I have now published my response (which had
> previously been communicated in a non-public manner) at
> 
> http://justnetcoalition.org/reply-jeremy-malcolm
> 
> Greetings,
> Norbert
> co-convenor, Just Net Coalition
> http://JustNetCoalition.org
> 
> 
> 
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