[governance] need to push a 'development agenda' in IGF

[Parminder]

Milton,

I am sorry I missed your intervention, but now I read it, and support it
wholly. 

>>> For critical internet resources, there is no opposition as far as I
know. How could "internet resources" be outside the mandate of an IGF?>>>

There, in fact, was opposition to this issue on this list, apart from
opposition to access issue. At least two emails clearly expressed
opposition, and Bill, while saying he agrees to inclusion of this issue,
acknowledged differences on the list. 

Some others seem to lean towards the view that IGF need only take up issues
that are not at present dealt elsewhere. 

As for the 'access and affordability' issue, I think it goes beyond simple
infrastructural access. Many IG issues implicate on access and
affordability, of content/information for example. The cost of domain
registration itself could be one, multilingualism is another, and there are
other issues like of network neutrality that lie more in the future could
have great access and affordability implication. As you argued so well in
your intervention, after all IGF is not making any decisions, so why cut off
any issue at all from its ambit. And when we speak of access and
affordability issue we certainly do not mean that IGF become the place for
negotiating telecom treaties. But much of the future regarding internet
issues is indeterminate. It does no one any harm if IGF is clearly mandated
that its discussion should always be informed by access and affordability
perspectives. If IG had an IPR connection I cant see how access and
affordability of information issue can be far behind.  Access to Internet is
of course promoted if there is affordable and useful content on the
internet. 

Too much insistence that these issues be clearly kept out makes one feel
that the issues of socio-economic justice are not being considered
important. The debate regarding socio-economic neutrality of technology or
otherwise is an established one in development discourse. But many seem to
insist on going back and insisting on such neutrality. "Access and
affordability' are the only two words in the IGF part of WSIS docs which
represent such equity issues - why not just let them be. This issue is so
important that we can even do with some redundancy. 

In the present geo-political scenario there is no danger of an
over-discussion of development issues. If anything, global public policy
spaces are only bring constricted in terms of development issues - or the
issue of development is given different spins that are more acceptable to
the dominant interests. 

WIPO is the obvious example - and the attempts to include development
issues/ agenda and resistance to it, are instructive. In this context, it
becomes important that enough spaces are created in public policy body at
their conception itself to accommodate progressive agendas. It is therefore
important that we are less apologetic and more aggressive about a
development agenda in IGF. Whatever structures emerge for IGF (working
groups etc), 'development agenda' should be strongly accounted for. And CS
needs to have an active role in this process. We need also to resist
'capacity building' kinds of spins filling up the 'development' space. 

As I argued earlier, no is no real danger of 'such irrelevant issues' taking
all the spaces. There are powerful players who will ensure this doesn't
happen. We need to realize how different constituencies are situated in the
power matrix - and countries from the North, (without meaning offense) also
CS for the North does and will continue to dominate the agenda more that
south based interests. 

In this context identifying and siding with lesser represented voices and
interests should be the natural thing to do for the CS. But this often
hasn't happened in our representations. 

It may be necessary to form an interest group for pushing 'development
agenda' in IG if the main IG CS group isn't too interested in this issue. In
fact, a good research study that explores and identifies present and
potential 'development issues' including of access and affordability, in IG
would be useful starting point. Will IG Project be interested in such a
thing?


Regards

Parminder 
________________________________________________
Parminder Jeet Singh
IT for Change
Bridging Development Realities and Technological Possibilities 
91-80-26654134
www.ITforChange.net 
-----Original Message-----
From: Milton Mueller [mailto:mueller at syr.edu] 
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2006 6:36 PM
To: parminder at itforchange.net
Cc: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: RE: [governance] intervention draft - why are themoreprogressive
elements of IGF functions ommitte

>>> "Parminder" <parminder at itforchange.net> 2/18/2006 1:14 AM >>>
>But I think you have not followed the discussions on the 
>IG list, which is the established forum for discussions within 
>the caucus.....

True to some extent, I skimmed the first half of the proposed statement and
completely overlooked the second half, and when I did eventually read the
second half (because of your objections) found that part of the statement
irrelevant and supported those (including Jeanette) who said we could just
dump it entirely. 

But more importantly, I don't like these last-minute statements and often
ignore them entirely. It imposes a huge burden on people to negotiate these
things over the list hours before engaging in international travel. For
those of us with very demanding jobs, this is difficult. 

Since IGP had already made a timely and substantive contribution, I lacked
interest in these last-minute efforts. True, the caucus has the potential to
represent a larger number of people than IGP, but if it cannot act in time
that does not represent an advantage.

The most rational thing the caucus did in its physical meeting here was to
back off making any formal statement as a caucus, and letting the members
here speak as individuals! 

>The submission in its part 2 excluded issues of (1) IGF as wider 
>public policy discussion space (2) access and affordability 
>and (3) critical Internet resources. 

I think the intent of the drafters was to paraphrase in order to make things
shorter and in so doing they eliminated language important to you (and
others). But this was done unconsciously and inadvertently, as far as I can
tell. The whole thing was just abortive.

>And then, there has been a series of emails on this list that 
>did express doubts on the need of issues of 'access' and 
>'critical internet resources' to be within IGF mandate.

For critical internet resources, there is no opposition as far as I know.
How could "internet resources" be outside the mandate of an IGF? 

For "access" there is a legitimate debate on whether that is a global
internet governance issue or primarily a domestic telecom policy issue. Some
of us (e.g., me) sincerely believe that access issues must be confronted
primarily in the context of national, local and sometimes regional telecom
and development policies. I have substantial experience with China and a few
other developing countries. Global institutions played a very minor role in
the huge expansion of infrastructure and access there in the past 15 years. 

Global agencies such as UN or a Forum with no money cannot make any
substantial contribution to the expansion of internet access. By insisting
on pushing access issues in these weak global agencies, one can actually
harm progress by diverting attention and resources away from the more
critical policy arenas affecting access. 

>Please judge my assertions in the context in which they 
>have been made, and not in the context of your and Bill's 
>submission (which since they have not
>been shared on this list, I don't know much about). 

Actually my comments were put on the list within an hour of being presented
here, but again, I don't blame anyone for not being able to read all that
stuff. 

>You are only adding to earlier
>instances of impatience on this list to dissent 

Yes, I think it is a fair charge that people are impatient with dissent on
the list. The problem is that everyone is stressed out by the need to
coordinate some kind of response (herding 300 cats) under substantial time
pressure, doing all this work voluntarily. 

It is fair to complain that caucus leaders did not handle this well. But it
is also fair to point out that the current co-chairs asked for volunteers to
replace them months ago. NOT A SINGLE PERSON responded!!! 

So there is frustration all around. I am willing to hear your views, always,
make no mistake about that. Fortunately I do not have to manage the caucus.

>I didn't hear you ask those to back down who have
>argued on this list that they will prefer IGF to not take up all the
>functions that are listed in para 72.  

I guess I have not seen anyone argue that, unless you are talking about the
"access" debate. But I could miss stuff. I read the list selectively, I
confess. 

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