[governance] CSTD

[parminder]

Hi Bill

A couple of comments inline, in a spirit of debate on this important issue.

William Drake wrote:
> Hi
>
> While I agree that the mandate is not exhausted by the performance reports and that a meeting could be useful,
merely 'useful' or necessary and important and urgent... there is a huge 
swathe of political space between these different articulations, and I 
strongly tend towards the later.
>  I had a different concern in this meeting, about the very restrictive way some governments and orgs and choosing to read the TAIS.  They kept citing para 69 alone as the definition and saying that moves like establishing the ITU dedicated group on IG implement the mandate, but para 71 makes clear that EC is suppose to be multistakeholder, which the dedicated group is not.  Purely intergovernmental processes from which non-state actors are excluded are not EC, in my view, and I wish this point had been raised forcefully.
>   
We resisted any conflation of the process of 'enhanced cooperation' EC 
with the ITU dedicated group on IG, which move admittedly appears aimed 
at appropriating the 'global public policies on Internet' or the EC process.

But it is our view, the reason ITU is able to increasingly appropriate 
it is only because a more legitimate and appropriate process of EC has 
not started. and all those who stay quiet and non-comittal on EC, in 
fact not actively promote movement towards such a process, strengthen 
the hand of ITU kind of process.

Politics abhor vacuum, and to the extent that there are some very 
important, urgent and pressing Internet-related global public policy 
issues, with no legitimate place for the less-powerful groups/ countries 
to resolve them, either we help develop a more participative, 
legitimate, appropriate etc global political space - which is our 
purpose in pursuing the EC agenda - or we have ITU kind of processes 
take over. There is no point in keeping on making statements that we 
want more multistakeholderism without supporting and coming out with 
meaningful alternatives.

And the attitude of dominant actors, but also, much more regretfully, a 
lot of civil society actors, to the express WSIS mandate to pursue a 
process of EC is rather regrettable. It perhaps speaks of a political 
economy of the existing regimes and structures of power around the 
Internet - and the respective comfort or lack of it of different actors.

SO, when you seek the 'multistakeholder' aspect to be raised any more 
forcefully that it already has been - it is, IMHO, best rather only 
meaningful if, done by positing real alternatives that can meet the 
political need of a legitimate, participative, appropriate etc global 
political space/ forum to address urgent existing and emergent public 
policy issues at the global level.

Politics of silence can be politics of submission to the extant power 
structures. As dominant players rule the roost - global digital 
cooperations making their own globally applicable laws and policies, and 
countries of the North taking the unilateral or plurilateral (ACTA) 
route to make policies and rules which due to the inherently global 
nature of the Internet will in default become global policies, 
developing countires need to get their act together fast. That is what 
for us EC is all about.

Also, let me say that for us this is the principle element of 
devleopment agenda in IG. Without an appropriate political space there 
is no meaning of political agendas.

Regards

Parminder
> Cheers,
>
> Bill
>
>
>
> On May 22, 2010, at 10:34 AM, parminder wrote:
>
>   
>> Enclosed is a statement made by IT for Change to the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development, on the first day of its 5 day sitting. More on this later. 
>>     
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> 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
>   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20100523/929f423f/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