[governance] REVISION 5 Draft statement to UNSG on bypassing CSTD

[Jeremy Malcolm]

I am planning to open a 48 hours consensus call on this (or something very like it) later in the week.  At this point, most of the changes being suggested seem to be just changing the order or emphasis of points on which we are already agreed.  I am omitting the address and such from the top of the letter, but they will be included when it is sent.  Also to avoid doubt, the subject line of this thread will not be part of our message to the UNSG.

AN OPEN LETTER FROM THE INTERNET GOVERNANCE CAUCUS TO THE UNITED NATIONS SECRETARY-GENERAL, BAN KI-MOON

Your Excellency,

The Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus (IGC) congratulates you on the completion and imminent delivery of your report and recommendations on the desirability of the continuation of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), based on formal consultations at IGF Sharm.

We request that in the interest of an open and transparent process, and in accordance with established practice, these recommendations be made available to the annual session of the Committee on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) in May 2010.

Our request is in line with the views expressed by several government delegates at the open consultations on the IGF held in February 2010, to the effect that your report and recommendations should be presented to the CSTD before being considered by the ECOSOC and then by the UN Assembly.

The CSTD is formally mandated to engage with all issues of WSIS follow up, and its specialized knowledge and history of engagement with WSIS issues, including the IGF, will provide the best basis for an informed consideration of the issue by the ECOSOC and the UN Assembly.

The CSTD also provides relatively greater multistakeholder involvement than its parent body, ECOSOC, following its "strengthening ... taking into account the multistakeholder approach"  (Tunis Agenda, para 105) pursuant to ECOSOC decisions 2007/215, 2007/216, 2008/217 and 2008/218.

We also respectfully remind you that your report on "enhanced cooperation" which was presented to the ECOSOC has been referred by the ECOSOC to the CSTD for its prior consideration.  This suggests that ECOSOC would normally prefer CSTD's views on issues of WSIS follow up before it considers them.

Absent any reason for a departure from established practice, we therefore believe that your report and recommendations should be presented to the CSTD to enable widest possible discussion
and engagement of all actors with this very important issue.

Thank you for your consideration of this suggestion, for your leadership, and for your ongoing support of civil society's participation at the Internet Governance Forum.

-- 
Jeremy Malcolm
Project Coordinator
Consumers International
Kuala Lumpur Office for Asia Pacific and the Middle East
Lot 5-1 Wisma WIM, 7 Jalan Abang Haji Openg, TTDI, 60000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Tel: +60 3 7726 1599

CI is 50
Consumers International marks 50 years of the global consumer movement in 2010.
Celebrate with us as we continue to support, promote and protect consumer rights around the world. 
http://www.consumersinternational.org/50

Read our email confidentiality notice. Don't print this email unless necessary.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20100223/47a1aeae/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t