[governance] Fw: APC's assessment of the fourth Internet Governance Forum

[Shahzad Ahmad]

APC's Assessment of IGF. Forwarded for your kind information.

best wishes
Shahzad

---- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karen Higgs" <khiggs at apc.org>

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APC's assessment of the fourth Internet Governance Forum, Sharm
El-Sheikh, 15-18 November 2009

November 26 2009, Johannesburg, South Africa -- The Association for
Progressive Communications, the world's oldest online network of civil
society organisations working on ICTs and social justice, recognises the
importance of the Internet Governance Forum as a unique opportunity to
promote debate and dialogue between all stakeholders, and supports its
continuation. Here we assess the fourth forum concluded on 18 November
2009 and make a number of recommendations moving forward.

Increased recognition of the importance of human rights in internet
governance

Human rights were far more prominent in this year's IGF as reflected in
workshops and main sessions. Most significant was the consensus among
panelists from all stakeholder groups in the main session on 'Security,
Openness and Privacy' that privacy and security are not to be traded off
against one another or seen as opposing priorities which need to be
balanced. Both are equally important.

Workshops focusing on social media, freedom of expression, freedom of
information and sexuality rights all concluded that technical, legal and
other interventions aiming to regulate use of the internet should be
based firmly on internationally recognised human rights instruments, and
leave people with ultimate control over their own being, actions,
interactions, expressions and data online.

Broad consensus was reached that the development of the internet should
take into account existing human rights frameworks (e.g. the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights) that can help  ensure the enhancement of
individual and collective rights related with online communications.
Many agreed that the IGF should identify  concrete mechanisms to defend,
ensure and uphold internet rights in practice and contribute to
challenges expressed at national and international levels for the
development of regulations and/or guidelines that support the
application of already agreed upon rights frameworks.

At the content regulation and sexuality rights workshop organised by the
APC women's programme (APC WNSP) and the Alternative Law Forum workshop
participants argued that user education intended to address potential
harm in an increasingly networked world must integrate a positive sexual
rights approach to adequately respond to both the positive and negative
potential of the internet, especially in relation to children.
Over-emphasis of the “dangers” of the internet could prejudice its
comprehensive use by all users, young and old. As recommended by Wieke
Vink from the Youth Coalition on Sexual and Sexual Reproductive Health
Rights, "What we could do – what we should do, is think creatively about
age-appropriate access to pornography and about developing content which
is more gender-just and open, and about encouraging people to protect
their sexual health, e.g. by using condoms – both in the online and
offline world."

APC is with the many civil society groups who felt that a fresh attempt
should be made to propose that human rights be one of the main themes in
the fifth IGF to be held in Lithuania in 2010.
Social networking, media and privacy rights
'Social media' was the subject of the 'emerging issues' final session
and various workshops which directed attention to  the concerns of
individual users.  These concerns included privacy rights, the right to
anonymity online, the 'right to delete and forget', the impact of data
being used for purposes other than which the user intended, data being
collected without the user's knowledge, and users not knowing what
others know about them .

APC is extremely pleased that this area is gaining prominence in the
IGF. The power of the internet today is felt through user-generated
content, content sharing, and the use of social networking tools in
mobilising people against oppression and repression. It is vital that
policy and regulation enable this while also protecting individuals
against abuse.

An interesting thread in these discussions was the role of
user-education. Some people felt that educating children from a very
early age to be aware of their rights to privacy and safe internet use
should become priority. Others felt that children and young people are
increasingly using the internet on their own terms, and that efforts to
guide them are very unlikely to be successful.

APC believes that privacy advocates need to find a way to articulate
their concerns in a way that makes sense to internet users, and as an
internet community we should consider establishing norms that can be
used to better inform users when they register for social networking
sites. In the use of social networking services, users must be able to
retain control over their data and privacy, and as far as possible, to
develop both technical and legal instruments that enables this in the
simplest way. This requires the owners and operators of social
networking sites to be transparent and accountable to their users what
their privacy policies are and enable users to have control. It was
evident that research and dialogue on policy and regulation and the
behaviour of users and commercial entities is needed and the IGF is the
ideal space for continuing this exploration.

Access1

At the first three IGFs 'access' was a priority issue for APC. We
published an issue paper in 20082 on the consensus that was reached with
regard to the roles of different stakeholders (government, civil
society, business, etc.) and the importance of coherence between ICT and
development policies and public interest regulation. For IGF4, the
challenge was to build on this consensus and to showcase and share
innovative practices by operators and regulators that have successfully
advanced people's access to the internet. Unfortunately, the opportunity
to share workable strategies was not maximised and the proposal
expressed in the 2008 IGF stocktaking session to have smaller roundtable
discussions on issues where there is consensus was dropped, and the
potential for groundbreaking engagement was lost.

A major concern for APC was an observation that many actors felt that
extensive mobile penetration has resolved the access challenge. Many
parts of the world still need large scale deployment of optic fibre to
facilitate affordable access for people for whom last mile or last metre
connectivity is or will be wireless. In this light we emphasised the
importance of broadband backbone, internationally, regionally and
nationally.

Very few people can - as yet - speak coherently about mobile broadband.
Where mobile devices were spoken of, it was mainly in relation to smart
phones and their facility for social networking. Mobile internet is
immensely powerful and will resolve access issues for billions of
individual users, particularly if 'budget telecom' models are used that
make cheap 'pay as you use' internet access available. National
broadband strategies that set out the key players and their
responsibilities as well as targets for broadband roll-out that will
benefit the majority of our populations are also needed.

Cost and affordability remains at the centre of the access challenge.
Regulators are still not effectively preventing practices by powerful
operators such as inflated pricing and anti-competitive behaviour. Yet,
the debate around curtailing monopolies over international gateways and
extortionate interconnection fees - especially in Africa and Latin
America - is lacking in the IGF. This is an issue area where dialogue
and greater transparency is sorely needed and the IGF is an ideal space
for kick-starting such discussions.

These concerns were only partially addressed during this IGF, however,
access is now well established as a critical component of the governance
of the internet. The successful promotion of broadband strategies that
address the above issues are critical for the next stage of the
internet's evolution as a space for greater exchange of information,
education  and culture and as a platform for user-generated content and
participatory democracy.

A Development Agenda for the IGF

Development including measuring the impact of sustainable development,
was highlighted in many workshops and in the main session on internet
governance in the light of the WSIS principles. There was a strong
feeling that with the exception of 'access', development issues have not
received adequate attention in the IGF.

Developing country participation was noticeably low and increasing it
has to be a priority for the next IGF. The responsibility lies not just
with the secretariat and workshop organisers, but with developing
country stakeholders themselves. However, the issue of financial
resources will have to be addressed, particularly to support
participation from civil society, researchers, and small to medium
businesses in developing countries.

One way in which this can be done is to make support available for
speakers and session moderators from developing countries. During the
IGF it was very noticeable that more questions and comments were
received from the floor when session chairs, moderators and speakers
were from developing countries.

Articulating a  development agenda in internet governance would help the
IGF address a range of issues such as capacity building, developing
country participation in internet governance and in the IGF, and
substantive policy issues of concern to developing country stakeholders.

Regional perspectives

National and regional IGFs continue to grow from strength to strength
and is a very clear indicator of the impact of the IGF. A panel on
regional perspectives was included in this year's agenda. We feel these
spaces have an important role to play in linking national, regional and
global dimensions of internet governance within the IGF as a complex
policy system. The IGF should find ways to reflect regional inputs in
the global IGF agenda in a more systematic way. In addition, the
regional and national processes have to be strengthened in their own
right and the nature and character of those processes should be defined
by the regional, national and local actors.

One concern that APC has is that in the absence of more widespread
regional IGFs taking place the issues of certain regions are not being
addressed at the IGF. We urge the participants from regions such as
Central Asia, island states and Southern Africa where regional events
are not currently being convened to endeavour to do so in the next year.

Critical internet resources (CIR)

The CIR main session discussed the new Affirmation of Commitments (AoC)3
between the US government and ICANN and was seen as an important step
forward in internet governance. The AoC has generated a new mood within
the IGF in which the old stand-off regarding US control of ICANN is no
longer a central issue. Stakeholders are visibly more relaxed about
engaging on the critical issues in managing the internet. Nevertheless,
the continued US control over the root zone file remains contentious and
APC proposed  that responsibility for the root zone file be transferred
to ICANN as soon as possible.4

Application of the WSIS Principles: Towards a code of good practice on
access to information, transparency and participation5

This joint initiative between the Council of Europe, the UNECE and APC
took further steps forward in consulting stakeholders on a draft code of
good practice which was well received and a number of internet
governance institutions participated in reviewing the code and expressed
willingness to make use of the code to assess their processes as soon as
the next iteration becomes available6.

The draft document recommends
that:
The development and administration of Internet policy and standards
should be open, transparent and inclusive
Organisations active on Internet governance should disseminate
information about their work in diverse languages
Opportunities to participate in the work of Internet governance entities
should be widely publicised
Internet governance entities should actively foster participation in
their work by all those who are affected by the decisions they make, and
independently of their physical location and financial resources
All information which is relevant to Internet governance and
decision-making should be publically available
Organisations should regularly review their policy and practice with
regard to information, participation and decision making processes.

The Code of Good Practice is an instrument that can play a role in the
practicial implementation of the WSIS principles of multilateralism,
transparency, democracy and multi-stakeholder participation in internet
governance. APC's Anriette Esterhuysen co-moderated the main session on
Internet Governance in the light of the WSIS principles7. The session
explored the extent to which the IGF had fulfilled its mandate in
paragraph 72.i of the Tunis Agenda on the Information Society to
'promote and assess, on an ongoing basis, the embodiment of WSIS
principles in Internet governance processes'. In this session it became
apparent that the WSIS principles have certain lacunae when it comes to
promoting human rights and development in internet governance.

Participation

The lack of sufficient developing country participation was already
mentioned above. Also important is the participation of women. If the
IGF is to be a real multi-stakeholder platform, then serious attention
needs to be paid to the still very visible gender gap at all levels of
access and participation to this forum, including agenda shaping,
representation and diversity within each stakeholder groups.

Of a positive note was the participation of young people and more
effective remote participation. There appeared to be distinct drop in
the average age of IGF participants this year. This is a great
achievement and is particularly important as we address emerging issues
such as the public policy challenges posed by social networking.

Nevertheless, many of the workshops and main sessions that addressed
issues related to the youth, did not have young people as speakers.
Remote participation, while still challenging at times, worked far
better than in previous IGFs. We want to commend all who worked to make
this happen and thank the remote participants for the effort they made
to join.

Worrying events at the 2009 IGF

ONI poster incident

On the first day of the IGF, at a lunch-time event organised by the Open
Net Initiative, a poster promoting a new book called "Access Controlled"
was removed by security personnel on the grounds that contained a
sentence that violated UN policy. The sentence in question read “The
first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building
firewalls at key Internet gateways; China’s famous “Great Firewall of
China” is one of the first national Internet filtering systems.”
Apparently, the motivation of the United Nations Security office actions
was that the poster displeased Chinese government officials attending
the IGF. APC understands that the IGF has to adhere to UN protocols and
policies. However, it is unfortunate that some governments, by virtue of
their power and position, use protocols to stifle debate and discussion
on issues relevant to internet governance, the very objective of the IGF.

Host Country Honorary Session

On the final day of the IGF,  Mrs Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of the
president of Egypt, hosted a session. The event and resulting shifts in
the programme was only made known to workshop and main session
organisers two days before the Forum commenced. The insertion of an
unscheduled event on the last day of the Forum by the host-country
disrupted the work of the Forum. The intense security required, which
included participants being prohibited from bringing their mobile phones
and cameras into the venue, undermined  the atmosphere of open and
constructive engagement among stake-holders which is a key attribute of
the IGF.  It marred the otherwise exemplary efforts of the Egyptian
Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in hosting the IGF.

The future of the IGF

APC made a statement to support the continuation of the IGF beyond the
expiry of its five-year mandate in 2010 in the “taking stock session”8.
http://www.apc.org/en/node/9601 We highlighted the value of national and
regional IGFs and proposed that thematic IGFs be adopted as a way of
exploring issues in more depth in between the annual meetings.

Conclusion and recommendations

The fourth IGF was a little cautious with regard to making any new
innovations or including new controversial subjects for discussion.
This caution can be partly attributed to the IGF review process and a
desire not to offend any constituency when the IGF’s future is at stake.
The US government’s Affirmation of Commitments which gives ICANN greater
independence from US control also took the sting out of the contentious
debates of the past IGFs on critical internet resources management and
enhanced cooperation on public policy principles affecting such
management. The issue of linguistic diversity has been emerging strongly
albeit primarily  through the focus on Internationalised Domain Names).

The consensus on privacy and security being equally important aspects of
internet governance rather than critical issues that need to be balanced
or traded off against one another is significant and paves the way for
the discussion of a global privacy standard. Perhaps these are signs of
maturity – that the IGF has reached a certain equilibrium and acceptance
of itself as an open space for constructive, forward-looking policy
dialogue.

Going forward APC would like to recommend the following:

1. Regional and national IGFs

APC as a co-convenor of the Latin American and Caribbean and East
African IGFs supports the idea of regional IGFs that can serve the
purpose of defining regional priorities and enabling greater
participation from multiple stakeholders at regional level. We believe
that national IGFs are a powerful mechanism for learning, problem
solving, collective action and building partnership among different
stakeholders at national level. We can commit to participating in
convening regional IGFs in Southern Africa, Southern Europe and South
East Asia - all regions which we feel are not adequately participating
in the global IGF.

2. Thematic IGFs

To address the need  for more in-depth discussion of certain issues in a
maturing IGF APC recommends the introduction of thematic IGFs between
global IGFs. Thematic IGFs can provide forums for individuals with the
necessary expertise from different stakeholder groups to engage specific
issues in greater depth and then communicate the outcomes of their
discussions to the internet community at large, or to specific institutions.

Issues which require more in-depth multi-stakeholder engagement that
emerged at the 2009 IGF include the development of global privacy
standards, user literacy and education, the future of the root zone
file, and a Development Agenda on internet governance.

3. Main sessions on development and on human rights

As stated above we believe that a main session on human rights in
internet governance and a development agenda for internet governance
should be included in the next IGF. We propose that a draft outline of
issues that can form a development agenda in the IGF be developed and
discussed just before the February 2010 open consultation. It can then
be presented for feedback at regional IGFs.

4. Effective resourcing of the IGF secretariat

Over the years of its existence the IGF has developed an adaptive
ecosystem in which all stakeholders can interact on the basis of
equality of input. This is an important dimension which depends on the
adroit and careful shepherding of the IGF performed by the IGF
secretariat under the effective and diplomatic leadership of Nitin Desai
and Markus Kummer. The vital role of the IGF secretariat in its current
form to the success of the IGF should not be under-estimated. We have
heard a lot of corridor talk that the status of the secretariat should
be changed in some way and located more firmly in the UN system. We feel
that the IGF should continue to operate under the auspices of the UN
while continually aiming to enhance its multi-stakeholder nature. If the
IGF is to continue to succeed and make further strides in fulfilling its
mandate, the secretariat needs to be properly resourced.

Some stakeholders think that those countries who provide financial
support to the IGF have more say over its annual programme as a
consequence of their funding of the IGF secretariat. We have not found
this assertion to be true. The IGF secretariat needs independence from
any form of undue influence. We propose that a terms of reference for
donations could be put in place to protect the IGF secretariat’s
independence. In addition, there should be a travel fund for speakers
from developing countries that is accessible and transparently managed
by a multi-stakeholder group, in order to prevent a single stakeholder
exerting undue influence over the selection of funded participants in
the IGF.

5. Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Group meetings and open consultations

We propose that the open consultation be extended to two days and the
MAG meeting reduced to one day. This would maximise the openness of the
process by which input is received and discussed.

6. Innovative and creative meeting formats

We recommend that the IGF continue to develop innovative and creative
meeting formats. The suggestions made earlier in the year at the open
consultations on the IGF programme to have round-table discussions aimed
at building consensus on issues like accessibility, access or child
protection were not taken forward. The super sessions were a step
forward and because they were three hours long it was easier for
faciltators to involve remote participants in the workshops. We feel
that a fresh attempt should be made at IGF5 to experiment with
round-table discussions.

7. Learning from experience in taking stock and going forward

We encourage the secretariat and the hosts of the first four IGFs,
Greece, Brazil, India and Egypt to convene to share lessons learned from
hosting the IGFs and to submit a report to the UN Secretary General and
the Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) as part
of the input into the continuation of the IGF.

Finally, we would like to thank all who contributed to the fourth IGF:
the government of Egypt, the IGF secretariat, the Multi-Stakeholder
Advisory Group, dynamic coalitions and workshop organisers, those who
provided financial support, speakers and moderators, the Egyptian
volunteers who provided technical and logistical support, and all the
IGF participants who help make this such a unique event.



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