[governance] SECOND DRAFT statement on enhanced cooperation

[Lee W McKnight]

Jeremy,

Some suggested further tweaking/tightening of language in 1st 2 paragraphs....for your 3rd draft

Lee
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The Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus (CS-IGC) is pleased to present its views on the process towards enhanced cooperation on international public policy issues relating to the Internet.  We take this opportunity to make three points.

First, enhanced cooperation should encompass all Internet-related public policy issues, second the existing arrangements of relevant organisations (including the Internet Governance Forum) do not fully implement enhanced cooperation, and thirdly whatever new arrangements may be put in place, civil society will play an integral part in them.

These points will be explained in turn:

1. Although much of the discussion of enhanced cooperation at WSIS turned around the narrow issue of internationalising the oversight of Internet naming and numbering functions, the Tunis Agenda expresses this principle far more broadly.  It also reminds us that the ultimate objective of our cooperation is to advance a people-centred, inclusive, development-oriented and non-discriminatory Information Society.

2. The IGF in its present form is a very important part of the enhanced cooperation process, in that ideally its multi-stakeholder process can help to shape decisions taken on Internet related public policy issues in other fora.  However the full realisation of enhanced cooperation will require a multi-stakeholder process to extend to other Internet governance organisations that do not already follow this model.

There are various options for enhancing multi-stakeholder cooperation within and amongst all relevant organisations.  These may include:

* making no institutional changes but encouraging organisations to enhance their own cooperation with other stakeholders and to report to the CSTD on their progress;

* establishing a lightweight multi-stakeholder observatory process perhaps hosted under the auspices of the IGF (pursuant to its mandate in paragraph 72(i));

* utilising a virtual and voluntary global social community or "social grid", linking together all Internet governance organisations, in which all stakeholders would participate; or

* establishing a new umbrella governance institution for Internet policy development, with space for the participation of each stakeholder group in its respective role.

3. Paragraph 71 of the Tunis Agenda makes very clear that civil society is an integral participant in the development of any process towards enhanced cooperation.  Therefore the IGC, in our capacity as members of civil society, looks forward to contributing constructively in transparent, accountable and democratic multi-stakeholder consultations towards this end.

--
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

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