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

Thu Mar 5 06:03:41 EST 2015

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...and adding to what Anriette said below, we are shocked to see such a
response from veterans and leaders of CSOs on IG. This unfortunately,
completely negates the spirit of working together.

We have to continue to work together and strive for more building upon
and capitalizing on the small successes here an there.

Thanks and best wishes
Shahzad

On 3/5/15 3:35 PM, Anriette Esterhuysen wrote:
> 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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- -- 
Shahzad Ahmad
Country Director, Bytes for All, Pakistan
IM: shahzad at jit.si | Google Talk: bytesforall
Twitter: @bytesforall | @sirkup
Office Direct Landline: +92 51 8437981

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