[governance] Nitin Desai's two groups

[Jeremy Malcolm]

I just touched on this at igfwatch.org, but I felt it was worth  
highlighting here too in view of the debate at last night's IGC  
meeting about whether we should on the one hand push the IGF to  
achieve more, or on the other hand stay quiet to avoid giving  
ammunition to the IGF's enemies.

As you will guess it is my view that we would be doing civil society a  
disservice to stay quiet for fear of damaging what we have in the IGF  
as it already exists.  But what is more interesting than what I think  
is that Nitin Desai said during the opening ceremony.  In his view the  
contention over the appropriate role of the IGF is very much a live  
issue.  He stated:

> essentially, this is a dialogue between two groups of people ... and  
> we must face up to that reality. On the one hand, we have a group of  
> people who feel that the present modalities of management of the  
> Internet are working, will work, even in the future, who are afraid  
> that any major change in the way in which these arrangements are set  
> up would compromise the Internet in some form. And on the other  
> hand, we have a lot of people who are dependent on the Internet for  
> their activities, for the economic, social, political, whatever, who  
> feel that they have to have a say in the public policy issues which  
> affect how the Net runs in this manner. These are essentially the  
> two groups who are in dialogue here.

So if we were to leave this campaign half-finished and concede it to  
the group who are satisfied with the status quo of Internet  
governance, in some sense that would be the end of the dialogue that  
Nitin Desai describes, leaving it as a self-satisfied monologue of  
powerful governments and private sector actors.  In that case, what  
purpose does the IGC see itself as serving?

-- 
JEREMY MALCOLM
Project Coordinator
CONSUMERS INTERNATIONAL-KL OFFICE
for Asia Pacific and the Middle East	

Consumers International (CI) is the only independent global  
campaigning voice for consumers. With over 220 member organisations in  
115 countries, we are building a powerful international consumer  
movement to help protect and empower consumers everywhere. For more  
information, visit www.consumersinternational.org.

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