[governance] China: "we don't agree that the IGF should continue"

[Fouad Bajwa]

Being in the open consultation, I would like to elaborate just for the
sake of it that there is a political process behind the understanding
of an IGF and the countries do take the final decision at the UN
general assembly and I doubt that any of these statements reflect the
final decision of the general assembly that takes the vote of all its
member countries.

The political nature of the final agreement to continue the IGF cannot
be denied but that is way far down the road. The continuation for the
IGF with respect to the review of the IGF will depend on what the UN
secretary general shares on the subject in his report.

In terms of the general assembly decision sometime in the future,
though I feel that some countries might go the negative decision
avenue in terms of their voting power but the majority might and
especially the OECD countries including the EU/G12 will want the IGF
to be continued though this stands as an assumption.

One thing I sometimes think is the bashing that starts with such a
comment. I feel that as CS we should also be open to negative feedback
and that actually is the ground to even work more together.

..............


On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Jeremy Malcolm <jeremy at ciroap.org> wrote:
> For those who didn't follow the open consultation meeting yesterday, China
> became the first to openly oppose the continuation of the IGF:
>
> "Firstly, we very much appreciate the secretariat for their excellent work.
>  We agree in principle with what has been said by previous speakers on the
> specific aims of the IGF.  We feel that the IGF has contributed a great deal
> in light of its historic mandate ... establishing dialogue, exchanging
> points of view.  But this is not enough to solve the problems.  The real
> problem is that in the field of the Internet, there is a monopoly that
> exists.  And we need to solve that problem. It's not by talking about
> principles merely that we can solve this problem.
>
> But it's not enough for developing countries who don't have enough resources
> and don't have the capacities to participate in this kind of dialogue
> without further commitments being made, which is why the points of view of
> developing countries, especially when it comes to Internet governance, their
> points of view are not sufficiently reflected in our discussions, which is
> why we don't agree that the IGF should continue its mandate after the five
> years are up.
>
> So we repeat that the delegation of China does not agree with extending the
> mission of the IGF beyond the five years.  We feel that after the five years
> are up, we would need to look at the results that have been achieved.  And
> we need, then, to launch into an intergovernmental discussion."
>
> I have blogged about this today (comments welcome, there or here):
>
> http://igfwatch.org/discussion-board/china-seeks-to-end-the-igf
>
> --
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-- 

Regards.
--------------------------
Fouad Bajwa
@skBajwa
Answering all your technology questions
http://www.askbajwa.com
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