[governance] Caucus Statement: another proposal

[Jeremy Shtern]

Hi Bill,

Bellow your comments which are below my comments with a +++ in front of 
my new comments.

William Drake wrote:
> 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...).
>   
++++ As there has been no support expressed for making this point and a 
compelling reason not to outlined above, I'll withdraw it as a 
suggestion with the following last words- The independence of the 
secretariat and associated functions is one part of this issue, but the 
idea that, by piggy-backing the IGF onto other UN events, the travel 
costs would be easier to bear for developing country delegations and 
diplomatic cores was, I had the impression, also closely associated with 
this idea as a capacity building function.

Anyway, consider the proposal withdrawn.

Thanks again Bill and eveyone.

Jeremy


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