[governance] IGF consultations - extending IGF's mandate

[Adam Peake]

>Roland Perry wrote:
>>In message <49717897.4060801 at itforchange.net>, at 11:50:07 on Sat, 
>>17 Jan 2009, Parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> writes
>>>Now, it is not entirely clear if 'IGF participants' are only those 
>>>who gather for the annual IGF, or the open consultations also in 
>>>some form comprises of IGF participants.
>>
>>Plus there are many who contribute to the process (either the main 
>>IGF or the consultations) without ever attending a physical 
>>meeting. Isn't that what we should be encouraging, anyway?
>
>Ronald
>
>The above was not about what we should promote under the notion of 
>'IGF participants'. It is an attempt to build an understanding of 
>what those in charge of driving the process of consultations over 
>the issue of extending the mandate of the IGF are likely to consider 
>as 'IGF participants',  in fulfillment of the relevant requirement 
>laid by the World Summit on the Information Society documents. 
>Parminder


It's worth reading Markus Kummer's comment about the review in the 
transcript of the Taking Stock and the Way Forward

<http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/hyderabad_prog/TSAWF.html>

Note the second to last paragraph (emphasis added). We can't spend 
the year debating the meaning of words.

There will be consultations throughout the year as always, and you 
can be sure there will be another synthesis paper to contribute to 
and opportunities for remote comments during the forum, but the 
mandate has been interpreted!

Adam



>>MARKUS KUMMER:   Yes.  Thank you, Nitin.

The mandate is, shall we say, relatively clear.  It has to be -- it 
has to take place within five years of its creation.  And this 
generally assumed that the creation dates back to Tunis 2005.  So the 
Secretary-General will have to make a recommendation to member 
states, as it is stated in the Tunis agenda, and make recommendations 
so that a decision can be taken within these five years.

This brings us to the General Assembly of 2009 -- 2010.  Sorry.  That 
is two years from now.

And in order to get there, we will have to get started soon.  In 
order for the General Assembly to take a decision, the report from 
the Secretary-General needs to be ready in early 2010.  It will then 
go to the CSTD in May 2010, from there to ECOSOC in July 2010, and 
from ECOSOC to the General Assembly, which then has the last word on 
whether or not to continue the forum in December 2010.

In other words, we will have to get started early next year, and we 
will prepare that with a day set aside at the meetings in February. 
We have the dates already for the open consultations.  That is 23rd 
and 24th of February.  And one day of these two days will be set 
aside for the discussion on how to prepare this review process.

And, of course, we invite all stakeholders to post their ideas and 
comments.  And we'll post it on our Web site.  And we will, as usual, 
prepare a paper as an input into the discussions.

The process will then be conducted on the basis of these discussions 
in February and brought to fruition at the meeting in Egypt sometime 
in late fall.  And I am given to understand that our Egyptian hosts 
may be able to announce us the dates later today.

But it is also, I think, understood and also not the desire of our 
Egyptian hosts to turn the meeting in Egypt into an inward-looking 
meeting where we discuss the future of the IGF.  This will be one 
item on the agenda of the meeting, like we have today, the taking 
stock and the way forward.  We would then discuss the review.

**But the actual review will have to take place at the meeting 
itself.  The mandate says the Secretary-General will have to consult 
-- informal consultations with forum participants.  And that can only 
be the annual meeting of the IGF.**

So we will have to come to consensus in this area.  We do say the IGF 
is not a decision-making body.  But we will have to find some way of 
reaching a consensus on what will then go into the report of the 
Secretary-General.  But the final decision will be with the member 
states in the various instances, CSTD, ECOSOC, and, finally, General 
Assembly.

END



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