[governance] 2nd Draft IGC statements for today - CSTD WG consultation meeting

[Izumi AIZU]

Dear list,

Thank you for all the comments made and I tried to take them as much
as possible.

So, here are actually 5 blocks, or, depending on how the meeting goes,
5 statements
prepared. I may add or subtract some of these, to fit with the context
of discussion.

Still more comments and suggestions are all welcome.

I have printed the Joint statement with ICC, ISOC et all, and also
IGC solo Letter, and will distribute them in the room.

many thanks,

izumi


-------
2nd Draft


IGC additional statement on IGF improvement
Dec 17 2010


1.
Why it should be MSH

My name is Izumi Aizu, I am from Tokyo, am a newly elected
co-coordinator of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus.

In the beginning, Civil Society and business were not allowed to enter
the room where governments were negotiating. Gradually, we were given
five minutes slot per day for two-week long negotiation. Then some
government representatives started to realize that maybe it’s good
idea to listen to these experts on the IP address and Domain names
systems that government friends have very little clue of the very
subject they are talking about. Or the field experts using the
Internet for agricultural development in Africa. We were given more
time, more weight, towards the Tunis Agenda, and then IGF.

Why multistakeholder so important?
The Tunis Declaration made it very clear that Internet Governance
should be dealt with the full involvement of all stakeholders – and
created IGF, The Forum for Dialogue, not a decision making mechanism.
ECOSOC resolutions clearly support this multistakeholder principle.

We have put the details of these into the joint statement with
Business community and technical community and sent it to the Chair on
Dec 9. The copies are distributed here today.

So making Working Group on the improvement of IGF by giving advantage
to only one stakeholder group over other stakeholder groups is clearly
a violation of the principle that more than 180 head of states agreed
in 2005 and all the resolutions that follow.

Civil Society IGC cannot and will not accept the current proposal.
We have also made an additional statement for today’s meeting and also
distributed there today.

Now, more specifically
- This Working Group is not a group OF the CSTD, but a group convened
by the Chair of the CSTD; this was a voluntary choice, made in
reference to the creation of the WGIG to provide as much flexibility
as possible in terms of format;

- The meeting of the representatives of CSTD members on December 6 not
only was an inappropriate format for deciding the composition of the
group, but the decision was taken in spite of the strong objection of
at least two countries, therefore not consensus-based (unlike the
ECOSOC resolution)

-The consultations in Vilnius and Geneva clearly called for a group
composed like the WGIG, which is written in the Chair’s summary:
 “that the multi-stakelodr charchter and inclusive sprit and princples
of the IGF should continue to guide the composition, modailiteis and
working methods of the CSTD WG.”
“Thus, it was emphasised by a large number of interventions that it
was essential that the working Group be composed of a balanced number
of representatives from all stakeholders - governments, civil society
and the private sector.
A majority of stakeholders welcomed the Chair’s suggestion to use the
model of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG)

- Therefore, the consultations today should be, first and foremost,
about reconsidering the composition of the group to make it
multi-stakeholder

- The IGC considers that any decision on the group format that is not
even based on consensus among the CSTD member states reduces the
legitimacy of whatever group is composed.

Because it is what 180 countries solemnly declared should be the
approach regarding Internet Governance. Period. Reverting to a purely
intergovernmental group is a betrayal of the WSIS principles and the
difficult but good faith negotiations that took place in Geneva in
May.

-----------------

2
Why we should keep MSH and how to improve it?

It is because of the nature of the Internet. This may sound obvious to
many of you here, but I also notice some new players now under the new
environment with CSTD community here in Geneva. So let me explain a
little more.

Internet being the very new, innovative transnational or global shared
network of networks, is different from the traditional state-based,
inter-national, and hierarchically managed and inter-connected,
telecommunication networks.

Internet brings power to the end-users, whether you like it or not
it’s a simple fact. It empowers the users to create, send, receive,
store, share the information the way they like, not telecom operators
or state regulators like. With very very affordable cost. That’s the
benefit for people in both developing and developed world. That’s how
small business comes out and become very large within a few years or
shorter.
That’s why how email got popular and became the essential tool for our
daily life say in China as much as in South Africa. How World-Wide Web
became most powerful service, which was originally born here in
Geneva. Think why Yahoo, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Skype,
YouTube and many more came to flourish.  Empowering the end users.

All of these services are transnational, or global. Yes, it may create
headaches for those who want put full control by governments as
indicated with the recent Wikileaks case. But as Guardian recently put
it, “Live with the WikiLeakable world or shut down the net. It's your
choice”.

So the question now is how to manage, or govern the Internet that has
this nature of empowering the end-users, businesses, activists, NGOs
in the field, but also teachers, medical professionals and also you,
the government people.

The shared, distributed network of networks requires management or
governance in that manner. And that’s why and how IGF is designed and
implemented. Mr. Kofi Annan said in the opening remarks at the onset
of the first IGF in Athens:
“we need to be no less creative than those who invented it. Clearly,
there is a need for governance, but that does not necessarily mean
that it has to be done in the traditional way, for something that is
so very different.”
This indicates the spirit and the challenges of IGF we still stand today.

Please remember, the IGF is the place for dialogue. NOT the place for
decision-making, not the place for negotiation, not the place for
taking votes. It’s the place to foster mutual understanding. Mutual
respect. And also create consensus based on these understandings and
respects.

And that is the most important character as well as the achievement of
the first 5 years of the IGF.

By promoting these somewhat unprecedented way of dialogue, among
different stakeholders from different social, cultural, geographical,
economical, political backgrounds, IGF has become a very unique,
effective place for the decision makers -- not only political
decisions, but business decisions, social decisions, and technical
decisions -- with much broader consideration and understanding - North
and South, East and West – that is the actual workings and advantages
of the multistakeholder approach.

--------------
3
The work of WG – to make it effective

You may think that the Working Group on the improvement of IGF can be
composed only by governments, provided that this WG takes all the
views from all non-governmental stakeholders. In the traditional UN
culture, that is the way it worked.

But you are wrong now. You are wrong because that is NOT the way how
the Internet works. Engineers did not come to ISO to discuss how to
connect computers and share services. Managers of IP addresses, Domain
Name systems, and the Root server system operators did not have to
come to ITU. Business entrepreneurs did not have to come to WIPO or
WTO to discuss how to manage their global services including managing
the digital rights and cross-border transactions.
Civil society actors, including social scientists, field service NGOs,
Churches, educational institutions, political parties, MPs, did not
come to discuss with state bureaucrats on how to best use the Internet
to promote the rights of the users. These are the mere facts, but
telling some truth.

Risks of Exclusion
Then what are the specific risks or problems of excluding
non-governmental actors?
You will deny the very nature of IGF - the place for open dialogue
among different stakeholders. You will miss to see and understand what
is going on and what are the real issues that we all need to
collaborate to solve. We are say cats and dogs and monkeys and
rabbits. We need to solve the problems in the field where all of cats
and dogs and monkeys and rabbits live. Cats alone cannot solve the
problems in the forest. The forest is the eco-system. Cats have not
created it.

WG work effectiveness – 10+10+5
We understand that you fear by opening the door to the Civil Society
and private sector, the Working group will become chaotic, in addition
to the different political positions of the governments, it will add
more complexity and may not meet the deadline for the report.

No. The experience of the WGIG between Geneva and Tunis Summits, as
well as that of Multistakeholder Advisory Group shows that is the
contrary. To solve complex, inter-twined issues around the Internet
Governance, you need experts from all different fields and make
synergy in the WG. That will be far more efficient and effective than
trying to solve the problem by only one sector of expertise to decide.

We promise you – by adding 10 members from global civil society pool
and 10 members from global entrepreneurial business and also a few
more from technical experts will increase the understanding of issues
and make better IGF improvement proposal within shorter time-frame
than separating governments against other stakeholders, organizing
“consultations” and then negotiate among governments inside the
closed-door.

We promise you - we will work very hard to reach consensus with our
friends in the governments – developing and developed. Civil society
members come from all different backgrounds – we have members from all
over the world and we ourselves have very diverse views.

So I hope our respected members from the governments here do have
better understanding of what IGF has achieved and then where we need
to improve them. We are very much willing to improve IGF, but not
backwards to degrade and backwards to the 20th century political
framework. Again, it’s the Open Forum for Dialogue.

-------------
4.
Areas of improvement
Participation

For the improvement, there are several areas we can identify.
First, more participation. We all agree that.

One thing we want to emphasise is the improve the remote participation

All IGF meetings and related consultation meetings have had some form
of remote participation so far. It is important to continue and
improve this practice including that of CSTD consultation meetings
itself on both IGF and EC. It is not the one way webcast streaming, it
is to listen and interact with participants remotely using the
state-of-the-art technologies.

This allows many interested parties, including governments, but others
as well who have decent interests and reasons and willingness to
participate but prohibited from doing so by cost of travel or amount
of time to come to Geneva.

Remote participation costs little but works great – we call for
support from private sector – technology companies to offer the
facility and technology, and also we, IGC are willing to offer remote
hub coordination – like we did at Vilnius IGF – to cover different
parts of the globe.

To increase participation, we also need to loosening the accreditation.

ECOSOC accreditation is difficult and time-consuming to obtain.
Besides, for IGF participation, it should not require general
accreditation to all ECOSOC issues.

Yes there is WSIS accreditation, but it is 6 years old. Think how many
new people and institutions got interested in the Internet Governance
issues since 2005 when the last WSIS accreditation was given.

We should keep the good practice already exercised at the IGF main
meetings and all consultation meetings for the participation, not to
narrow the participation, but make it wider. The host government of
Greece knows this, Brazil, India and Egypt all know this.

Otherwise we will limit our own work to the “usual suspects” only and
leaving vast new people who have strong interests and who are strongly
influenced by the outcome of IGF.

Same goes true for Enhanced Cooperation process and also largely to
WSIS follow up process which leads to the WSIS 2015


-------------
5.
Improve the Outcome

We can also consider making somewhat more visible outcomes. In
addition to the contributions and synthesis of them and Dynamic
Coalitions, and Chair’s summary, we might consider producing some form
of Reports. Maybe some form of Recommendations, with plural ones if
there are diverging views. These are all possibilities so long as they
remain the place for dialogue, but not decision making.
Here, we still need to discuss more.


Again, the original UN GA resolution for WSIS called for full and
active participation of all stakeholders – that is the source of MSH.

I hope we keep that in mind and improve IGF not in the wrong and
backward direction.
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