[governance] individuals

[Meryem Marzouki]

Le 25 avr. 06 à 23:19, Avri Doria a écrit :

>
> On 25 apr 2006, at 16.48, Meryem Marzouki wrote:
>
>> You said yourself that you "have occasionally looked at NGO's and
>> tried to put their particpation into perspective."
>> Do you think you could ever say that you "have occasionally looked at
>> individuals and tried to put their particpation into perspective." ?
>
> well, in a sense yes.  when looking at NGOs the perspective i was
> trying to find, was vis a vis the individual and in comparison to
> other NGOs.

I meant that you can do (and make public) research and assessment on  
this or that NGO (or group). You cannot do that on this or that  
individual (well, if you do, at best s/he will answer that s/he  
changed his/her mind, and at worst s/he will feel personally attacked  
and do what s/he has to do).

> i have a similar issue when listening to those of us who associate
> with NGOs.  are we speaking as individuals from our personal
> perspectives, as advocates for the NGO and its goals, as
> representatives of the NGO, as representatives of the NGO  
> constituency.

We cannot discuss only by way of official press releases:)
More seriously, when the situation may create confusion, I think  
people should make things clear.

> as members of the IGC and other lists, we belong to many groups and

We belong to many groups but we are not the spokespersons of all  
these groups. When you proposed yourself to act as chair for IGC, you  
have said that you were a member of 4 NGOs (and thanks BTW for this  
much appreciated transparency, specially as regards IGF and GNSO, it  
is not that common!): ISOC, CPSR, ACLU and AI.
But you're not representative of any of them, as far as I know: so,  
this is different.
You also asked many times about universities status, or the status of  
individuals at universities (I hope you at least meant staff, not  
students:). I was surprised that you compared NGOs and universities,  
since this makes no sense to me.
I work for the CNRS (the French public scientific research center).  
It has about 26000 employees, among them approximately 12000  
researchers like me, in all scientifc fields, from physics to social  
sciences: how could I ever think that I represent this structure,  
which purpose, in addition, has nothing to do with the topic. How  
could even the CNRS president, or board, claim he/it has a position  
on Internet governance? This is simply far beyond its mandate.
I understand that many individuals has been accredited to WSIS  
through their universities. But this was only an ad hoc solution to  
get accredited, since there was no accreditation for individuals.  
This doesn't mean this is the university speaking as soon as they say  
a word.

Meryem



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