MAG meeting summary report -Re: [governance] open consultations

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 03/03/2009, at 6:21 PM, Parminder wrote:

> 2) Another very important development is that concerned dynamic  
> coalition are likely to be associated from the very start with the  
> development of round tables. This first time gives DCs an  
> (important) official role in the IGF process. Significantly, this  
> role is in an area which may soon become the most important and  
> looked-forward-to part of the IGF.


History has shown that there is an inevitable pulling back from the  
developments apparently made following the annual February open  
consultation meeting, however.  This time last year it was "debates".   
The year before that it was "speed dialogues".  So I'm not too  
confident that the round tables will see the light of day after ICC/ 
BASIS et al begin to sow the seeds of fear at the May consultations.

If I'm wrong, then yes it would be a positive development - but let's  
not over-estimate how far it would take us.  The outputs being  
proposed from these round tables are initiatives to which only those  
around the table would agree to independently pursue.  They would be,  
to adopt a phrase that found favour during the open consultations,  
recommendations *at* the IGF, not recommendations *of* the IGF.

Certainly, that is valuable in itself and fulfills part of the IGF's  
mandate - it's what I've called a network-building role, within its  
larger mandate of coordination of Internet governance activities.  But  
the normative weight behind an initiative that has been proposed and  
adopted by a round table group is more limited than that it would  
would carry if it had been adopted by the IGF as a whole.

So in my view, that remains the next step: to fill the missing link  
that inhibits the IGF from collectively adopting an initiative for  
action, or indeed from developing and collectively adopting a policy  
recommendation.  The round tables proposal skirts around that problem  
by limiting itself to cases where a consensus already exists - and is  
therefore pretty much limited to the single case of child pornography.

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

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Consumers International (CI) is the only independent global  
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