[governance] right to development, the structure of IGC and IG issues for march deadline

[Avri Doria]

Hi,

I have appreciated the discussion on the right of development and it  
has given me a lot to think about.

in thinking about this and was trying to understand a context for  
development rights.  it seemed correct to me that a communinity would  
have such a right yet, i did not find a basis for it in things I had  
already considered.

first, in thinking about it, i don't want to think of community as  
any particular region, like the South, or in terms of some sovereign  
entity, but rather leave community as any undeveloped grouping of  
individuals .

my more naive thoughts see these as derivative from the other rights  
we do hold and have fairly universal agreement on - right to food,  
shelter, medical care and now, the recently declared right of  
information.

the derivative aspect, for me, has to do with the fact that these  
other rights end up empty words without the method to obtain them.   
it is all well to say one has the right to food, but unless one  
provides food, or better yet, the means of growing food (agricultural  
development in a sense) there there is no way for a person to achieve  
what is their right.  likewise with the right to information, without  
an infrastructure to obtain information what does it mean to have the  
right?

for the right of development to see any notion of being satisfied,  
there needs to be a corresponding duty to enable and provide  
development. finding the targets of this duty is somewhat more  
difficult.  what places the duty on another community?  it is easy to  
find the moral necessity, this is what motivates all 'charity'.  and  
one can certainly see a requirement in the notion of compensation for  
colonial exploitation.  but the developed world has shown itself  
relatively immune to the reasons of morality or compensation for the  
crimes of history. so to find other bases is the challenge i am  
struggling with.  certainly treaty agreement that recognizes the  
general benefit of world wide parity, a pragmatism, could serve as a  
basis. but how is this achieved?  and certainly open discussion of  
the problems and solutions implied by such a right would be helpful.

i realize that i don't really have an answer to the question of  
whether there are rights of development and how these can be  
substantiated in an academic sense.  but in some sense it makes sense  
to me that as a caucus we consider advocating for the realization of  
such rights even if the basis is not crystal clear.  so what does it  
mean for such rights to be relevant to internet governance.  i think  
this has to come in the guise of policies that enable development and  
in advocating for agreements that would aid in development, e.g. some  
reasonable response to international connection costs.  i don't know  
if we need to actually claim such rights in what the IGC suggests at  
the end of March as topics (2 weeks now), but i do see this as a  
reasonable caucus motivation for arguing in favor of ICC as a  
reasonable topic.  in other words, even if we can't fully  
substantiate, in the academic sense, the right of development, can  
the IGC be a force in seeing this presumptive right satisfied?

and in the meantime, it is good exercise for the academics among us  
to develop the argumentation that substantiates the reality of such  
rights.

a.

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