[governance] On opening and closing statements (Bill and Paul's comments)

[William Drake]

Hi

On Aug 24, 2010, at 12:15 AM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:

> On 24-Aug-2010, at 12:51 AM, Bertrand de La Chapelle <bdelachapelle at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> What Bill was alluding to is that irrespective of who speaks, the message is the most important and it has : a) to fully take into account the issues that are being discussed (and will be in other fora like the UN GA and the CSTD), which means a strategic approach; and b) that if the IGC proposes a name, there is agreement that the speech is not up to the speaker to draft entirely on its own but should reflect the various sensitivities present in the IGC itself. This should be our understanding (and practice) of democracy.
> 
> I agree up until now, but...
> 
>> This clearly calls for draft speeches to be elaborated on the list, as has successfully been done in the past, with sufficient opportunities for people to input and sufficient respect to the diversity of viewpoints.
> 
> This I think would be a new practice for us. Yes we have done as you describe with IGC statements many times, but not with opening and closing civil society statements, which have not been treated as IGC statements and have been left to the reasonable discretion of those nominated.

What I said was "we should be somewhat strategic about how we use these opportunities and perhaps even coordinate a bit on the message."  I didn't mean this to imply group cooperation on writing text; speakers should of course be trusted and free to say what they want.  I just meant a bit of coordination might be helpful to them, e.g. the caucus could discuss a little what sort of message people think would be useful, and the speakers could consider taking on board anything they think particularly important or reflective of consensus.  The important point is to be cognizant of what's going on with the politics around renewal and use the opportunity to intervene effectively in the debate; to me at least, a general run-down of known CS positions on various IG issues wouldn't be sufficient, it's not 2007 or whatever.  It'd be better to give certain governments and especially UN NY reasons to think carefully about the desirability and sustainability of the "improvements" they're considering.

Best,

Bill
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