[governance] Future of IGF

[Parminder]

Hi All

Enclosed is a spoken statement that IT for Change made in the stock 
taking session at the IGF meeting. I met the Under Secretary General as 
part of a civil society (CS) delegation the previous day and made the 
same comments to him. He seemed very interested in the concrete 
suggestions on improving the IGF and encouraged me to mention the same 
during the formal stock taking session, which I did.

In speaking with knowledgeable people at the IGF I am confirmed in my 
belief that non-continuation of the IGF is not  a serious option. It is 
only being used by some to raise the stakes on seeking some real changes 
to the IGF.

In so far as the IGC has consistently asked for strong reforms in the 
IGF, it is an urgent imperative that we propose some specific changes 
which can both further our advocacy goals and possibly be  a middle 
ground between those who prefer abolition of the IGF and those who want 
more or less the exact status quo. CS actors are perhaps the best-placed 
ones to propose completely new possibilities and try and work with 
important actors to fine-tune a solution mutually acceptable to both 
sides (status quoists and abolitionists), and which also serves our 
purpose best.

At WSIS, in my opinion, much of the involved CS almost exclusively 
'reacted' to the danger of UN and inter-governmental takeover of the 
Internet and took mostly defensive postures. Post WSIS too it has mostly 
not become alive to the other issue that is at least as important - the 
fact that Internet as a global phenomenon needs global policies to 
protect and further global public interest, and there is no system, 
neither any efforts towards evolution of one, for this purpose. Unless 
we address this crucial issue we would not win friends among developing 
countries, including the political civil society of these countries.

After some very muted response to the 'enhanced cooperation' debate - 
which is the WSIS designated space for such public policy development - 
CS now once again seems content to see the whole IGF review issue from a 
status quo-ist lens - 'somehow block an ITU take over'  (we have, in 
very early parts of our statement, spoken strongly against making any 
such move). In such a reactive stance, any openness towards seeking 
genuine structural reform in the IGF for the purpose of achieving the 
real purpose of the IGF seems largely absent.

Instead of just seeing red in everything China and Saudi Arabia says it 
is better to address issues on which they are right - that there is 
little meaning of public policy related deliberations when there are 
hardly any real Internet public policy making institutional mechanism at 
the global level. (No, OECD, EU, CoE and such do not constitute global 
systems, though often try to be so in their impact but not 
participation) We am absolutely convinced that they are very right on 
this count - and the  foot-dragging of the developed countries and, I 
dare say, most of civil society involved in IG arena, is wrong and 
unjustified. We seem to be very one-sided in choosing to villainize  
countries. 

We also think that MAG has to take on more substantial role/ power, of  
distilling from the work of committed issue-based working groups as well 
proceedings of the wider IGF, and come out with non-binging advices and 
recommendations, or at least meaningful compilation of plausible views 
and options on important IG issues. The WGIG model ,which for some 
unknown reasons (the hegemony of dominant discourse, of course) has 
become untouchable, gives us good leads of what can be achieved if a 
mutlistakeholder group is given a definite task, where some kind of 
outcomes just have to be produced in a time bound manner. Why should 
that model not be used for important IG issues within the IGF framework? 

In fact it is ironical that many CS actors at the same time hold that 
purely inter-governmental systems should not make global Internet policy 
while they are also against expanding the role and power of MAG (maybe 
with a different name) when this is the only really multi-stakeholder 
body in this space. If a purely inter-gov system should not make 
policies who should ? I am not saying IGF should make policies, but can 
they not even do preparatory work? And if a mutltistakeholder system 
cannot even do purposive preparatory work, how can it ever make 
policies? No one seems to be ready  to even propose a model. In such 
circumstances, it may justifiably be concluded that many of these actors 
really do not have much faith in global policy processes at all. They 
are of the self-regulation, market supremacy kind... That is a problem.

Anyway, the burden of the argument here is that a model of structural 
changes to the IGF is what is most required urgently. Much of the 
negotiations in the next few months will take place around that. Does 
the IGC want to hammer out a concrete proposal on this, and its members 
try to advocate it with other actors? If we plan to do it, we need to do 
it in the next month or so. I propose that the co-coordinators take up 
this responsibility in the coming weeks.

Parminder


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