[governance] Should IGF negotiate recommendations? (Re: IGC

[William Drake]

Hi Bertrand

On Jul 16, 2009, at 1:22 PM, Bertrand de La Chapelle wrote:

>
> 1) The title of the thread (should the IGF negotiate  
> recommendations ?) goes beyond what the Tunis Agenda says ("make"  
> recommendations). I do not think anybody in the IGC wants to go  
> backwards on the Tunis document : the capacity of IGF to produce  
> recommendations is in the text and it is important. What the  
> reluctant people mean is that "negotiations" as a way to produce  
> recommendations is the wrong way to go. The experience of those of  
> us who participated this year in meetings like CSTD and ITU WTPF  
> shows the danger of reverting to traditional ways of  
> intergovernmental negotiations.

Right, CSTD and WTPF really make the point.  So I said negotiate for a  
reason.  It is extremely difficult to imagine how the IGF per se could  
"make" recs without it becoming a negotiation, that's just how  
governments operate, it's in their DNA.  I can't think of a single IGO- 
based process in which governments sit as peers with other actors and  
collaborate on texts without clear differentiations in "respective  
roles and responsibilities," i.e. nongovernmentals can weigh in but  
then the governments agree the text.  Can you?  (Even in ICANN this  
doesn't happen; Milton's proposed disbanding GAC and having  
governmentals just blend into supporting orgs, but I'd be shocked if  
they went for that.)

Which is not to say it is absolutely impossible.  In some standards  
and security groups there's peer-level MS cooperation.  So, as I said  
before, it would depend very much on the modalities etc, which are  
unknowns, and dialogue would be needed to see whether a palatable  
model could be arrived at.  But insofar as most of the governments  
that have been calling for recs are hardly friends of CS, and indeed  
would like to go back to WSIS procedures if anything, it's hard to be  
optimistic.

>
> 2) During the Hyderabad meeting last year, an interesting  
> distinction was made between "recommendations by the IGF" and  
> "recommendations at the IGF". This would mean that groups of actors,  
> including Dynamic Coalitions for instance but also ad hoc gatherings  
> after a workshop, could take the opportunity of an IGF meeting to  
> prepare recommendations that they would make public at the IGF and  
> invite other actors to join. This is a truly multi-stakeholder and  
> bottom-up approach.

Right, and a number of us supported that.  And there was Wolfgang's  
related proposal for "messages from the IGF."  But do you think the  
governments calling for recs would be satisfied with that, really?   
I'd be rather surprised, to put it mildly.
>
> Q6 Tunis Agenda 72g mandates the IGF to make recommendations "where  
> appropriate". This dimension of the IGF mandate should not be  
> forgotten, but this does not necessarily mean traditional resolution  
> drafting. The IGC believes that it is important in that respect for  
> the outcomes of workshops and main sessions, and of the IGFs in  
> general, to be presented in more tangible, concise and result- 
> oriented formats. IGF participants should also be encouraged to  
> engage in concrete cooperations as a result of their interaction in  
> the IGF or in the Dynamic Coalitions and to present their concrete  
> recommendations at the IGF, that would be posted on the IGF web site.

I would be fine with that.  Or with a formulation that combines this  
with my suggestion of a call for open, inclusive, and probing  
multistakeholder dialogue on whether adopting recommendations at the  
IGF level could be appropriate.

Finally, just for the record,

> On Jul 16, 2009, at 11:17 AM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
>>
>> Also, it's not even accurate to say that "IGF stakeholders have  
>> been divided as to whether the requirement of appropriateness ever  
>> has been or could be met".  In fact they haven't addressed their  
>> minds to this point at all.  I don't recall anyone ever saying,  
>> "Well yes the IGF could make recommendations, except for this  
>> requirement of appropriateness".  They haven't even gotten to that  
>> point - rather they have harped on the fact that the IGF has no  
>> mechanism to produce recommendations, and implying that no such  
>> mechanism is possible without destroying the IGF as we know it.

I don't know who you talked to in Tunis or during the preparatory  
process Jeremy, but there were definitely governments and major  
nongovernmental stakeholders that absolutely did not want a commitment  
to do recommendations, period.  "Where appropriate" provided a way out  
that could be presented as consistent with the mandate.   If they had  
read the TA as you do, they would not have agreed to it in Tunis, and  
there might not be an IGF.

Bill
  
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