[governance] RE: ITU and ICANN - a loveless forced marriage

[jlfullsack]

RE: ITU and ICANN - a loveless forced marriageThis statement of the ITU Secretary general is by far less questionable than a lot of other statements made in this long speach at the Cairo ICANN meeting. But unfortunately it is'nt complete. He forgot to mention ITU's responsibilities in that issue. At least in the time-wasting way of leading the whole post-WSISI process, of which IGF is just one part.

As for me, I took my time for reading the whole stuff and found a lot of other, even more questionable statements : 
- Mr Touré was confusing the respective role of ITU and ICANN, and what's more, their statutes !
- "It (the ITU) is the most inclusive organization of the UN family". May I recall that I was waiting on the door before the beginning of the ITU-Unesco chaired WSIS facilitators meeting last september in Genva. I asked both chairs (Mr Khan and Mr Touré) for being allowed -as a WSIS accredited membrer of CS- to only sit in the room for listening. Whereas the Unesco chair agreed with a smile, the ITU refused firmly ! Unless to say I was angry, having been for more than twenty years an ITU senior expert (in both development and standardisation sectors). Moreover, nowhere we find a clear explanation on this "CS inclusiveness" of the ITU : who are the these "CS members" ? How much do they pay, and on which criteria are they selected ? 
- "But it (WSIS) was the most inclusive Summit ever". That's not true Mr Touré : the Jo'burg Earth Summit (and the following Stockholm Summit) was far more and really CS inclusicve, and the whole press, national, regional and international papers, regularly reported on it. This wasn't the case of the WSIS, despite desperate attempts of its "communicators" the fist of which the ITU.  
-" Our members need to be informed about those things" (Internet of things, IPv6) "And we are doing that. The resolution from the WTSA last week, taken by our 191 member states and 700 companies, private companies , is to study and encourage the implementation of IPv6. I believe this is a concern for all of us." OK but, Please, where is the CS in this process ? We need social and economic impacts to be studied in relation to new technologies as soon as at the early stage of their design and their actual impact is is to be assesed preferably before they are deployed. This applies for both developed and developing countries (even more stringently in the latter). We need a more serious and profound job to be done in this field and this isn't the scope of ITU mandate !  Where are we, the WSIS CS, in this field ? IGF is just one of these paramount issues and is therefore relevant in the open and urgent debate.  

Wolgang raised the question of CS inclusion in the ITU after this speach. That was fine. But once Hamadoun Touré had delivered his biased (and partly false) response, our CS fellow didn't question the ITU Head. It was Ambassador Karklins who answered him : "It was very interesting to listen to you. You are on the record, and I believe that many member states who are listening to you will bring what you have said to the council in ITU". Thank you, Janis Karklins ! This is the point the CS participating member(s) had just missed !   

All the best
Jean-Louis Fullsack 

(----- Original Message ----- 
  From: David Allen 
  To: governance at lists.cpsr.org 
  Cc: gov at wsis-gov.org 
  Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2008 4:57 AM
  Subject: [governance] RE: ITU and ICANN - a loveless forced marriage


  At 4:32 PM +1100 11/9/08, Ian Peter wrote:
    The telling statement from ITU being "I am personally of the opinion that the IGF is continuously going round in circles and avoiding issues - it is becoming more and more a waste of time."

    Interested in analysis of how we can avoid this.

  One suggestion:
  http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/Contributions-Sept_2008/IGF%20multi-stakeholderism%20-%20D%20Allen.pdf

  <snip>


    My fear here is that the outcomes if IGF doesn't succeed in addressing the real issues are worse than those ...

  <snip>

    Ian Peter


  Sorry for the delay in responding,
  David


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