[governance] Statement for the Feb 13 meeting

[Adam Peake]

At 5:21 PM +0100 2/1/07, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
>All,
>
>this is the draft I've been working upon in the 
>last couple of days. I was offline, so I had no 
>way to go back and read the entire discussion we 
>had in the last couple of months, neither I 
>could read the latest submissions... I'll try to 
>do so in the next few days, but in the meantime 
>I thought it better to post the draft as it is 
>now, so that specific editing suggestions can be 
>made as soon as possible.
>
>I'm attaching it in the ODT format since we'd 
>better start to practice what we preach -


Could you post as RTF?

And use simple plain text when trying to use 
text, no high ascii (curly quotes etc.)

Thanks,

Adam



>however, I'm pasting a text-only version below 
>for those of you who are still stuck with 
>Microsoft-only readers :)
>
>Regards,
>
>=====
>Consultations on the Internet Governance Forum, Geneva, 13 February 2007
>Statement of the Internet Governance Caucus
>
>
>The Internet Governance Caucus, as the main 
>coordination framework for civil society 
>participation in Internet governance discussions 
>at the WSIS and then at the IGF, would like to 
>provide feedback and opinions on the subjects of 
>this meeting.
>
>The first IGF meeting in Athens was without 
>doubt a great success. It was interesting and 
>well organized, and many important matters were 
>discussed. Specifically, we express our 
>satisfaction for the widespread embracing of the 
>multi-stakeholder principle in the structuring 
>of panels and workshops and in the definition of 
>themes. We would then like to provide some 
>practical suggestions for an even better meeting 
>in Rio.
>
>We think that the plenary sessions as designed 
>in Athens were interesting, especially for the 
>general public, but that adequate attention 
>should be put to all the issues pertaining to 
>one main theme, rather than focusing on just a 
>few. This could be obtained by shortening the 
>plenary sessions, which should be kept as a 
>³special focus² event on certain ³hot² issues, 
>designed in a journalistic style. At the same 
>time, separate, more traditional plenary 
>sessions (though always in a fully 
>multistakeholder style) should host the general 
>summarization of the discussions, including 
>those from the workshops.
>
>Workshops were usually interesting, though some 
>effort should be made to better integrate them 
>with the overall themes and flow of discussions 
>of the IGF. Specifically, it should be ensured 
>that all workshops meet the multi-stakeholder 
>criteria, and that at least half of their 
>duration is allocated to open floor discussion 
>rather than to panel presentations, to prevent 
>some workshops from becoming just a showcase for 
>the organizers, or a lobbying event for a single 
>group of stakeholders. Clear guidelines should 
>be given to workshop moderators to this effect; 
>also, the Advisory Group, after collecting all 
>workshop proposals, should consider fostering 
>the organization of workshops on issues not 
>addressed anywhere, or requesting organizers to 
>merge their workshops if too similar. Finally, 
>workshop results should be collected and 
>presented with more evidence as outputs of the 
>IGF meeting, for example in a final ³Acts² book.
>
>From a practical standpoint, it would be 
>important to ensure that sufficient time is 
>allocated for a lunch break, and that adequate 
>³quick food² options are offered to delegates. 
>Also, it should be kept in mind that many 
>participants, especially from developing 
>countries and civil society, are on a tight 
>budget; adequate accommodation and meal options 
>should be provided.
>
>About the Advisory Group, while supporting the 
>concept, we express our dissatisfaction for the 
>very limited representation of civil society in 
>its first instance, which amounted to five or 
>less members over about forty. We think that the 
>significant participation of civil society and 
>individual users, as proved by the WGIG, is key 
>to making Internet governance events a success 
>both in practical and in political terms; thus 
>we would like to see such participation expanded 
>to at least one fourth of the group, if not one 
>third, and to the same levels of the private 
>sector and of the Internet technical community. 
>We confirm our support to the civil society 
>members of the incumbent group, and stand ready 
>to provide suggestions for additional members.
>
>We also reiterate the need for the IGF to be 
>considered as a process, rather than as an 
>event. We support the concept of ³dynamic 
>coalitions² and their activities; however, there 
>needs to be a way to ³bless² their work and give 
>some recognition, even if not binding, to their 
>products. The IGF was created to help solving 
>global problems that could not be addressed 
>anywhere else; simple discussion is not enough, 
>and would betray what was agreed in Tunis and is 
>clearly stated in the mandate of the IGF itself. 
>We stand ready to provide more detailed 
>procedural suggestions on how this could work in 
>practice, or to participate in any 
>multi-stakeholder working process to define it.
>
>About the themes for Rio, we are generally 
>satisfied with the areas of work as defined for 
>Athens, but note that some of them are much 
>bigger than others, and thus many issues falling 
>into them failed to get adequate attention. We 
>would like to propose to break the ³Openness² 
>group of items in two, one about human rights 
>and freedom of expression, and the other one 
>about intellectual property rights and access to 
>knowledge. We raise the attention on the 
>importance of access not just in terms of 
>physical connections for developing countries, 
>but also in terms of accessibility of 
>technologies to the disabled and other 
>disadvantaged groups; this could also become 
>another group of issues per se.
>
>We are aware of the complex discussion on 
>whether the ³narrow² Internet governance themes, 
>such as the oversight of the Internet addressing 
>and naming system, should be part of the agenda 
>in Rio. Inside civil society, there are 
>different points of view about this matter; 
>however, we all agree in the deep 
>dissatisfaction for the lack of transparency and 
>inclusion in the so-called ³enhanced 
>cooperation² process, which, as agreed in Tunis, 
>should discuss these matters in a 
>multi-stakeholder fashion. We ask that prompt 
>communication is given to all stakeholders about 
>the status and nature of this process, and that, 
>independently from the venue chosen to host it, 
>steps are taken to ensure the full inclusion of 
>all stakeholders in this process.
>
>We would like to close our statement by thanking 
>Mr. Desai, Mr. Kummer and all the members of the 
>Advisory Group for their hard work in favour of 
>this process. We look forward to another 
>fruitful and successful meeting in Rio.
>--
>vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
>-------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------
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>Attachment converted: Macintosh HD:20070213 - 
>Statement#254995.odt (NO%F/›j›¤) (00254995)

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