[bestbits] IGF Retreat Submission from CSCG

Wed Jun 29 01:48:17 EDT 2016

Dear Best Bits member,

I'm sharing with you below the CSCG letter to the IGF Planning Retreat that
focus on improving stakeholder selection and suggestion for coordination
among the other stakeholder groups.

Hoping it will get a listening ear,
Nadira AlAraj
Best Bits liaise to the CSCG

---------- Forwarded message ----------
*From:* Ian Peter <ian.peter at ianpeter.com>
*Sent:* Wednesday, June 29, 2016 3:05 PM
*To:* igfretreat at intgovforum.org
*Subject:* IGF Retreat Submission from CSCG

Dear IGF Secretariat,

I am pleased to submit this contribution for your planning retreat on
behalf of the Internet Governance Civil Society Co-ordination Group (CSCG).
CSCG exists solely to ensure a coordinated civil society response and
conduit when it comes to making civil society appointments to outside
bodies. It comprises representatives of the coalition members of the
Association for Progressive Communications, Best Bits, Internet Governance
Caucus, Just Net Coalition, and Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group of ICANN.
Together the reach of these groups extends to many hundreds of
non-governmental organisations, as well as a much greater number of
individuals.

In line with our mandate, this submission concentrates specifically on
improving the nomination process and make-up of the Multistakeholder
Advisory Group (MAG).

As you know, this has been the subject of s

ome concerns with stakeholder groups, and we believe that these concerns
should be addressed. In order to do this, we recommend the establishment of
a small Multistakeholder Working Group, including representatives of Civil
Society Coordination Group (CSCG), Internet Technical Collaboration Group
(ITCG) and International Chamber of Commerce ( ICC/BASIS),  working with
UNDESA to refine procedures and resolve some of these difficulties.  We
feel sure that by working together we can develop procedures which improve
stakeholder representation – and therefore the overall efficiency of the
IGF. We commend this recommendation to you.

But in the meantime, and additionally, we refer to the recommendations of
the Working Group on Improvements to the IGF, later endorsed by the UN
General Assembly, which include 3 sections of relevance to this process.
Our suggestions relating to these appear below.

*Sect 20(a) The three non-governmental stakeholder groups should propose
lists of candidates that should be balanced, including in terms of gender
distribution and in reflecting the diversity of geographical distribution.
This will enable a wide range of diversity within the MAG, especially those
groups which have been underrepresented in the MAG, and will be
sufficiently large to provide some flexibility when selecting MAG members;*

In finalising representation and providing the flexibility referred to
above, we understand that, in addition to balance within each stakeholder
group, you wish to ensure that you achieve the best possible gender and
geographic balance across stakeholder groups; of course we agree with this
objective.  But your process for doing this in the past has been to make
final selections within UNDESA  without further consultation with
stakeholder groups. This can sometimes be problematic, as you cannot
possibly be aware of the ramifications of some such choices within
stakeholder groups.

The way other organisations have handled this is to arrange a simultaneous
phone hookup with representatives of stakeholder groups to discuss such
final balance issues. You will find that we actually work quite well
together in such circumstances, and we believe that the results will be
more acceptable to stakeholder groups if this quick final consultation is
included.

Additionally, we believe  you need to address the issue that certain
stakeholder groups have a long history of submitting names to you dominated
by male candidates: and that as a result civil society nominations are
often adjusted to include more women and get better gender balance
overall.  That does nothing to address the problem of discrimination
against women in those stakeholder groups where there is discrimination
against women; it only creates a false perception of gender balance which
will, if it has any effect at all, contribute to those problems not getting
addressed. Furthermore, it makes it far more difficult for male candidates
from civil society to be included. We suggest that you insist that each
individual stakeholder group, and particularly governments, must address
gender equality within their constituency.

*Sect 20(b) Stakeholder groups should identify and publicize the process
which works best for their own culture and methods of engagement and which
will ensure their self-management;*

IGF Secretariat should not run duplicative processes for stakeholder
nominations (such as was the case with the nominations for this IGF
Retreat). Either a centralised process (where all candidates submit via
IGF, and all nominations are then provided to stakeholder groups for
assessment at the closing date), or a decentralised process, where
stakeholder groups run their own processes (in accordance with 20(b) above)
should be run, but not both. Duplicative processes are confusing, require
candidates to submit twice, and results in differing sets of candidate
groups for assessment existing.

*Sect  21 a) The process of selection of MAG members should be inclusive,
predictable, transparent and fully documented;*

In respect of this, we submit:

1.  More transparency is needed. We believe that, in the interests of
transparency, names and application details of all candidates for MAG
selection should be publicly known. Whether this should be at the close of
applications, or at the close of assessments, needs to be discussed further
in the light of detailed procedures. Note: This is not a privacy issue as
long as candidates are advised beforehand of this requirement.

This requirement will assist with overall assessment of candidates by
stakeholder groups, as well as in identifying candidates who have applied
via separate organisations.  We suggest this requirement be included when
stakeholder groups provide their own processes, and also if a more
centralised process is run via IGF Secretariat.

2. We also suggest that recommendations from stakeholder groups to IGF
Secretariat should be publicly available.

3. Stakeholder procedures for making selections should also be publicly
available. (CSCG’s current procedures can be found at
http://www.internetgov-cs.org/procedures)

These recommendations are based on the best practice we have observed with
other organisations in selecting multistakeholder representatives. We offer
the above suggestions in the spirit of co-operation with you, as we also
want to see the best possible representation of stakeholders. And again, we
offer our services to work with you and other stakeholder groups to refine
procedures to ensure more acceptable, transparent and representative
results.

Sincerely,

Ian Peter – Independent Chair, Internet Governance Civil Society
Coordination Group (CSCG)

*SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS*

*We recommend the establishment of a small Multistakeholder Working Group,
including representatives of Civil Society Coordination Group (CSCG),
Internet Technical Collaboration Group (ITCG) and International Chamber of
Commerce ( ICC/BASIS),  to work with UNDESA to refine procedures for MAG
nominations and similar processes.   *

*We recommend a simultaneous phone hookup with representatives of
stakeholder groups to discuss final balance issues (including overall
gender and geographical representation).*

*We recommend that you insist that each individual stakeholder group, and
particularly governments, must address gender equality within their
constituency.*

*We recommend that IGF Secretariat should not run duplicative processes for
stakeholder nominations (such as was the case with the nominations for this
IGF Retreat). Either a centralised process (where all candidates submit via
IGF, and all nominations are then provided to stakeholder groups for
assessment at the closing date), or a decentralised process, where
stakeholder groups run their own processes should be run, but not both.*

*We recommend that in the interests of transparency, names and application
details of all candidates for MAG selection should be publicly known. This
requirement should also be included when stakeholder groups provide their
own processes, and also if a more centralised process is run via IGF
Secretariat.*

*Recommendations from stakeholder groups to the IGF Secretariat should be
publicly available, as well as stakeholder procedures for making selections
.*

_______________________________________________
CS-coord mailing list
CS-coord at internetgov-cs.org
http://internetgov-cs.org/mailman/listinfo/cs-coord
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/bestbits/attachments/20160629/a59e890d/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: RecommendationsforIGFPlanningWorkshop.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 139983 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/bestbits/attachments/20160629/a59e890d/attachment.pdf>