[governance] open consultations and MAG meeting

[Milton L Mueller]

For those of us who were not in Geneva, it would help to have a more objective recounting of the debate on "internationalization" of CIR. What issues and proposals were raised and what were the responses? Substance please, not conclusory judgments. There is not much benefit from an emotional assessment of something as "confusing" or "annoying". 

I can, however, see rampant confusion in these comments:

> -----Original Message-----
> 
> I'm not sure (without the benefit
> of an official report from the MAG meeting, not yet available) what an
> internationalised "number" is - although I am aware that RIRs receive
> applications (which they successfully deal with) in multiple languages
> and scripts.

What is or might be internationalized is the governance process or authority, not the numbers themselves. 

> I was under the impression that the IGF was supposed to be
> "non-duplicative", and Nitin re-emphasised that last week.

FYI, the people who want the IGF to be "non-duplicative" are the people who want it to go away. In other words, "non-duplication" becomes a clever way of saying, "leave the status quo alone, if any existing institution deals with any internet governance issue in any way, then IGF can't touch it." Since there is NO Internet governance issue that isn't already dealt with in some fashion by some other existing international or national entity, this is an attempt to neutralize the IGF. 

Most people who take the IGF seriously think that it should be able to assess and evaluate all existing IG institutions and processes. Of course this does not mean it attempts to "take over" those responsibilities or to duplicate their work, it simply means that the Forum is an independent deliberative capacity that can provide perspective and evaluation of other IG processes. If IGF can't do that, what can it do? If no one should do that, how do we get a holistic view of how IG is working? 


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