AW: [governance] communicating with our peers

Thu Feb 7 08:07:24 EST 2008

Dear list,

Jeanette is right. There is no conspiracy or a dislinkage from MAG members and its constituencies. 

I also argued during the IGF consultations in Febeurary 2007 in Geneva in favour of more openess and transparency. My proposal was to allow "silent onlookers" as we had in some sessions of WGIG. Under such a regime only members would have a right to talk in the discussion, but non-members can always individually talk to members so that their position can be transported directly to the debate. This allows to work in a smaller group. Otherwise you blockade any progress. There will be no free and creative discussions within groups of more than 100 members. This is a practical and not a political question. Human wisdom tells this. One condition for such a regime would have been also that the silent onlookers should follow the Chatham House rules. In WGIG this worked. After the second meeting to number of "silent onlookers" went down but more trust was created. 

A majority of MAG members (mainly from governments) rejected my proposal in February. However as far as I remember, it was the CS reps in the MAG who supported it and agreed finally under the conditions that the issue should come back at an appropriate time. So again, no conspiracy. 

This is the CS position under the At Large label in ICANN since 1999 when CS/ALM people critisized the closed sessions of the GAC and under WSIS since PrepCom I. In Geneva in June 2002 - after the opening ceremony of WSIS I - CS (and PS) people were removed from the conference hall in the GICC and chaos emerged with people knocking loudly on the closed doors while the security was blocking access and governmental representatives were starting a discussion among themselves behind closed doors. It was a big step from Geneva 2002 to the Geneva 2008 (from turmoils to trust, from input to impact). This is an evaluation with some ups and downs, but the directions is clear. And its an innovation in global diplomacy not welcomed by many governments. 

To be frank neither China nor Russia had been on the forefront fighting for transparency and openeess (as Jeanette remembers correctly). The Russia delegate asked in the closed May 2007 consultations, why all these non-governmental people are sitting here in the room and where they are coming from. He was a newbie and talked about his excellent experiences in the ITU. I was a special target of his intervention because I asked the Russian delegate whether he wants to bring IG under a telecommunication oversight regime as excersiced by the ITU or whether he supports the end-to-end principle, bottom up policy development processes and multistakhoderism for IG. 

One cirtical point of the debate is obviously that MAG CS members should report back more regularily (within the Chatham House rules). But there was only litle to report in 2007 (a renewal of the mandate came only in August 2007) and since Rio there was a lot of silence. 

But thanks for the discussion. CS members should taske this seriously and report back as much as possible. It is good to see, that the list becomes active again as it was during the WSIS time. 

Wolfgang

________________________________

Von: Jeanette Hofmann [mailto:jeanette at wzb.eu]
Gesendet: Do 07.02.2008 13:32
An: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Parminder
Cc: Adam Peake
Betreff: Re: [governance] communicating with our peers

> In continuation of the email on CS activity inside MAG, what worries me is
> that this has happened without any significant (or any at all) role of the
> CS members in the MAG. At least I do not know of it, and will be very happy
> to be proved wrong.
>
> It has happened almost entirely due to UN SG's instructions. And we are so
> keen on calling UN names and celebrating the virtues of CS. Why weren't the
> CS group so keen active and aggressive in pushing for this change. In fact,
> I remember during September face to face consultations China, yes, China,
> wanted these meetings to be open to observers.  And CS doesn't seem to have
> any views on it. In fact I sometime hear views more in favor of what would
> amount to less transparency.

Comparing civil society and Chinese positions in the MAG beats really
everything!
A few governments did indeed opt for a complete opening of the MAG. My
comment (if I still count as civil society in your eyes) on this
proposal was that a complete blurring of the MAG with its environment
can be regarded as an elegant way of killing it altogether. It is not by
accident that MAG members like China who are most opposed to the idea of
a multi-stakeholder group were also the ones most eager to open it up
without any reservation. If I remember correctly, Russia took the same
stance as China in that meeting.

What China and Russia both saw is that transparency and openness involve
trade-offs. It can enhance the legitimacy of an organization but it can
also render it dysfunctional. Such decisions need care. And I think its
good if the cs members in the MAG use their individual brains instead of
simply operating on the assumption that only a request for a maximum of
openness and transparency is compatible with an uncompromising civil
society position.
jeanette
>
> Parminder
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeremy Malcolm [mailto:Jeremy at Malcolm.id.au]
> Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 7:01 AM
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Subject: Re: [governance] communicating with our peers
>
> This has just appeared on the IGF's front page (unless it was there 
> before and I missed it):
>
> "Digests of the discussion held within the Advisory Group are 
> available on the Forum Section on a regular basis."  I like it how 
> this is stated as if it had always been the case, whereas in fact it 
> is now 2008 and the Advisory Group was established in 2006.
>
> Anyway, the upshot is that the selection of comments on rotation that 
> were posted last month are intended as the first of a series.  This is 
> good, except for the fact that  most of the critical decisions on the 
> IGF's structure and processes have already been made, and will be much 
> more difficult to change now than if we had had a window into the 
> MAG's veiled world two years ago.
>
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