[governance] speech on concluding panel in Athens

[Jeanette Hofmann]

Hi, for transparency reasons, you find below the speech I gave on behalf 
of civil society on the concluding panel in Athens.
The selection of the speaker was a last minute action over a lunch 
meeting of Congo and the IG caucus at Thursday. We also had a short 
discussion at that meeting of what should be said. Some of it I 
included. Speech was supposed to be short, 5-7 min.

jeanette




Thank you, Minister
Nitin Desai,
Markus Kummer,
Ladies and Gentlement



I'd like to share with you a little story that I will take home from the 
forum:

It happened on Tuesday while I was moderating a workshop. Although it 
was late, the room was nonetheless packed and all chairs were taken. A 
few minutes after the workshop started, somebody from the German Foreign 
Office walked into the room, and since no chair was left, she chose to 
sit on the floor – on the floor, I should add, of temporary UN territory.

So, what makes this a symbolic incident? It is the striking difference 
to the seating order we are used to from WSIS but also from other 
intergovernmental processes.

The forum has no seating order,
•	there are no tables for delegations with nameplates on it and above all
•	there are no time slots for non-governmental actors. Governments have 
queued jointly with civil society and private sector in order to take 
the floor.

The forum offers the great opportunity to experiment with new formats of 
communication and consensus building crossing all sorts of geographical, 
cultural, sectoral and political boundaries. The secretariat and the 
chair haven taken great effort to maximize the speaking time not only 
for panellists but particularely for the audience.

The great innovation we have been witnessing here is the setting up of a 
global talk shop in the most constructive sense. The fact that the forum 
has no mandate to make binding decisions is the very precondition for 
equity among the stakeholders who attend this meeting.

However, in order to make good use of the forum, it is vital that all 
stakeholders recognize and adopt this new venue as an innovative place 
of policy making.

•	While it is good that governments attend the forum with the intention 
to listen, it is important that they also practically engage with civil 
society and work on concrete solutions.
•	And while it is good that the private sector is present and shows its 
willingness for dialogue, we hope that industry will reach out to other 
corporations and strengthen particularly participation from developing 
countries.
•	And while it is good to meet again so many friends from the WSIS 
process here in Athens, we need to keep in mind that there would be many 
more people attending from civil society if we could provide them with 
funding. In order to make the forum a truly open space for 
participation, it is necessary for all of us to find financial support 
for those who lack the means to come here.

In closing I would like to bring to your attention a few thoughts 
regarding the future Forum meetings that have been considered among 
civil society participants. We have' been wondering about how to 
strengthen the output orientation of the forum and how to ensure that 
the forum will become also practically relevant.

It has been suggested
•	To reduce the number of overarching themes and focus more on specific 
issues such as capacity building and access.
•	Also, the forum should provide sufficient space to get into the 
details of these issues and
•	The forum should encourage the development of practical solutions – 
both in workshops but also in dynamic coalitions
•	Such practical solutions should be put on public records of the forum.
•	In so doing, the bottom process can gain some official recognition, 
which in turn may make it easier for all stakeholders to participate and 
learn, to quote Nitin Desai, "holding hands" also in between annual 
meetings of the forum.

While it seems unlikely that civil society ever embraces the idea of 
arranged marriages, all people I have talked to here in the last days 
see great potential in the forum for developing concrete solutions for 
the challenges we face in the field of Internet Governance.

Personally I am very proud of having being part of this process. On 
behalf of the civil society groups I'd like to thank the host country to 
make this meeting possible, but also the secretariat and the chair for 
their hard work. We are looking forward to fruitful dialogues, both 
online and face to face, in the year to come, and to the next forum 
meeting.

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