[governance] Caucus Statement: another proposal

[William Drake]

Hi,

It's Wednesday and IGF attendees are presumably traveling Saturday-Sunday,
so the time frame is very short.  If the 50 + people who signed the caucus
charter want to agree a caucus statement we'll have to move pretty quickly
to get rough consensus or do a vote.  At present the response level to the
various proposals doesn't seem promising...

If full caucus action is impossible, another option might be to do a sign-on
as "members of the caucus" rather than the caucus per se.  We went this
route with the text on CS inclusion I inserted into the ITU's WSIS follow-up
meeting earlier in the year, which worked well.  Either way, it'd be good to
hear from people what they want to do, if anything.

Two quick replies to the responses that did come in (thanks):

> From: Jeremy Shtern <jeremy.shtern at umontreal.ca>

> Para 73 c of the "Tunis Agenda for the Information Society" reads:
> 
> "... IGF meetings, in principle, may be held in parallel with major
> relevant UN conferences, /inter alia/, to use logistical support."
> 
> Unless there is something UN going on in parallel this year in Athens,
> or next year in Rio that I am unaware of (very possible), this 'may'
> seems to be turning into a 'will not'. I think the absence of the
> ability to draw on existing logistical support ties in to some of the
> stuff we are already raising in this declaration about the problems of
> capacity for participation.

I take your point.  But while the IGF secretariat is a tiny operation and
undoubtedly could use more logistical support, this also ties into the
question of the IGF's independence.  You may recall that at Tunis, Russia
unilaterally held up agreement on the TA until the last minute by
successfully demanding that lots of references to the ITU's competence and
potentially leading contributions to the IGF be inserted into the text (the
Russian rep being the head of the ITU WSIS WG etc).  The nominally anodyne
language on UN logistical support can be viewed in this context.  Before and
after the agreement, there was a lot of public and private discussion about
whether the IGF might simply fall into that orbit, inter alia due to lack of
the political and financial support needed to stay up independently.  This
is part of why the caucus made statements in PrepCom 3 and at Tunis to the
effect that the IGF should have the institutional capacity to function
independently and should not be tied to any existing agency.  It is arguably
preferable that we are not holding the IGF as an addendum to the ITU
Plenipotentiary in Antalya with all the same participants etc.  If ITU
members want to create an ITU-I division that's their business, but IGF is
an alternative and more open space.  (Conversely, if the IGF doesn't work
out, even more governmental action will default to the ITU---a point to
which some early opponents of an IGF seemed oblivious.  As it is, you should
see some of the proposals for Antalya...).

> From: Jeremy Malcolm <Jeremy at Malcolm.id.au>

> Just two points.  First, I have an issue with the whole "dynamic
> coalitions" idea, because it is easy for a powerful oligopoly to exclude
> other willing stakeholders from a dynamic coalition, and difficult to
> ensure that it is in any way accountable or transparent in its
> functioning.  I much prefer the idea of relatively formal working groups
> which can be required to report to the IGF, to adhere to consensus
> principles, and to be inclusive of any willing participants.
> So I would simply delete the words "any dynamic coalitions or
> informal"; it may be just a change of nomenclature, but I think no less
> powerful for that.
> 
'Dynamic coalitions' is ugly but the semi-official formulation because some
governments get crazy at the idea of working groups.  When I used the latter
term at the last IGF consultation your government in particular said in no
uncertain terms that they could not accept formal WGs (nobody in CS ever
argued for formalized groups, but such distinctions get lost amidst tooth
gnashing about 'slippery slopes' etc).  Not clear there'd be much to gain by
restarting a nomenclature battle here when we're already pushing on more
important and sensitive spots...?

> Second, in lieu of it being a petition, perhaps you could include in
> there a reference to how many members of the IGC there are?  Though that
> is an open question, I realise.

What would be the strategic benefit of publicly announcing how small we are?

> Either way, don't let these small niggles hold this up being
> finalised/formalised if others seriously disagree.
> 
> Finally, can we stick this up at igcaucus.org (even if it has a "DRAFT"
> label on it)?

Well, Vittorio hasn't indicated that he's withdrawn the language he's
proposed, so you can't replace that with this.  You could post them both as
options a and b or something if you like.

Best,

Bill




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