[governance] multistakeholderism

Tue Aug 17 12:05:29 EDT 2010

Hi all

Just a quick note in relation to Wolfgang's final point below about the Internet Rights and Principles coalition...

We're currently finalizing the first draft of a "Charter of Human Rights and Principles for the Internet".  The aim is to translate human rights standards to apply to the Internet, so the focus of the main section of the Charter is on the rights of individuals in relation to the Internet (whether online, connected or not currently using it).

In the second section of the Charter we've started to break down overarching rights down into specific principles, and also to define who has responsibility for upholding them.  This is relevant to Wolfgang's suggestion about creating guidelines for different stakeholders/actors/entities.

We haven't however started doing this for participation in internet governance, although that is included as a right in the first section of the Charter in the current version.  It would be great if people are interested in working on that as we move forwards. Might the APC/UNECE/CoE guidelines on participation serve as a starting point for this work?

Just a small aside related to the language we're using: We've had quite a lot of discussion on the IRP list about how we refer to different stakeholders and who actually has "rights".  In the coalition we're working firmly within the human rights framework which means that we're talking about the human rights of individuals. We're therefore not trying to explore or define legal rights for any other entities (e.g. states, companies), but rather focusing on their roles and responsibilities in upholding and advancing human rights.

We'll be consulting on the Charter during the dynamic coalition meeting at the IGF - it would be great to have people's participation in that.

All the best,
Lisa
___________________________________________________________
Lisa Horner
Head of Research & Policy  Global Partners and Associates
338 City Road, London, EC1V 2PY, UK
Office: + 44 207 239 8251     Mobile: +44 7867 795859
LisaH at global-partners.co.uk  www.global-partners.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" [mailto:wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de]
Sent: 16 August 2010 19:45
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Milton L Mueller; IGC; Avri Doria
Subject: AW: [governance] multistakeholderism

Milton
Let's not confuse the transitional form with the end state.

Wolfgang:
Good point, Milton. The MS principle/process/dialogue is still in its infant stage. There is a long road to go. It emerged as the result of political process where governments (and private sector) realized that they can not manage the Internet alone. And it needs to be further enhanced. We moved from A to B but Z is still far away. What would be the alternative to MS? The right of the jungle?

Do not forget that the IG definition of the WGIG - which calls for an inclusion of all stakeholders in IG PDP - was a compromise between the Chinese position for "governmental leadership" and the US position for "private sector leadership". The "new beast" which emerged in the WSIS process and neutralized to a certain degree this black and white-conflict was the "civil society" which matured in the WSIS process ands produced a workable policy structures (Pleanry, Content&Theme Group, WGs, Buro etc.) and demonstrated its capacity for policy making with its Civil Society WSIS Declaration from 2003. I invite everzbody to go bacxk to this document and read it and remember how it emerged.

The weak point - both in the WSIS process, in the WGIG definition and also in ICANN - is that there are no procedures in place for a reasonable interaction among the stakeholders. Everything remains vague. If ALAC gives "advice" to the ICANN Board, what is the legal nature of such an ALAC advise?

Insofar, Daniel makes a good point by articulating the warning, that the @inclusion@ in a dialogue with more powerful partners can be counterproductive and justify one sided  power or profit oriented decisions by governments or corporations by refering to the "participation" (and consent?) of civil society in the dialogue. We know this from corrupt trade unions. But this does not speak against trade unions in general and against the usefulnees of dialogue among all involved parties, this calls for better procedures how the dialogue can be translated into policy decisions.

To enhance the system there is a need to draft such procedures for interaction. The IGF Dynamic Coalition on Rights and Principles can make a good contribution by propoising a set of rights and duties for governments, private corporations and civil society in Internet Governance. Such a MS IG Declaration could become a reference for cases where one stakeholder tries to misuse the presence of another stakeholder in the dialogue to justify illegitimate actions.

Wolfgang
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