AW: [governance] Consensus Call for CSTD IGF Questionnaire -
Katitza Rodriguez
katitza at eff.org
Fri Nov 19 14:03:48 EST 2010
Hi Parminder,
I am less concern about recommendations within the IGF, and provide
those comments through the CSTD working group. However, I prefer as of
now to observe. I do believe the IGF has provide a practical venue for
advocacy purposes. If recommendations are accepted, the nature of the
IGF venue will definitely change. Therefore, I need to make sure that
the "process" is clear on how to get our concerted civil rights inputs
on the text. We rely a lot on the good work that the staff of the IGF does.
Regarding your overall comments:
I also sympathetic with the fact of the problem that you have described.
I do agree that the decisions of those inter-governmental organization
or norm-setting venues like WIPO do affect all of us (Latin
America/Africa/Asia). The Budapest Convention, 1980 OECD Privacy
Guidelines, ACTA, etc for the good or for the bad,
I truly think developing countries should being able to have a strong
participation and be able to table their own regional priorities
including civil society developing countries priorities. I see a big
problem on the lack of regional spaces for policy research where civil
society can table priorities and discuss emerging policy issues that are
high priority at the national level. Does ELAC is an open space? Does
they do serious policy research work? Does civil society has meaningful
ways to provide policy advice to influence the policy outcomes? We hope
that those spaces has a strong human rights background environment.
Regarding the support of inter-gov. organizations. I do not give any
blanket support to any organization. Though it is very clear that an
organization that support the European Convention of Human Rights (a
very good human rights framework) might be in a better place than APEC
(www.apec.org). But as I explained, those organization can also have bad
outcomes. Nothing is white and black. A general assessment about
supporting one organization over the other one is a simplification of
the problem. Most of the time, we will be having a reacting agenda.
Fight ACTA, etc. Sometimes, the political environment allows us to move
a positive agenda (exceptions and limitation to copyright law, strong
legal safeguards against gov. access to citizen's data), sometimes, we
will try to provide policy recommendations to avoid damage than without
our contributions. Even in those cases, we evaluate any single detail of
what our contribution means or might not mean, and take decision
accordingly. etc
In the past, the public voice coalition work hard to open OECD-ICCP
Committee. The Business Sector and the Trade Union for years were able
to get access to all draft documents versions, seat on the table and
talk to all government officials, comment on revised version of a policy
paper without almost none civil society inputs unless
one or another civil society person was invited as an expert.
In any case, I do not disagree with the discussions we are having within
the CSTD framework. I prefer to see and react, see how things will move
during the meeting, and what are the others proposals being table.
On 11/19/10 3:45 AM, parminder wrote:
> What I cant understand is the position of those who both oppose the EC
> process (in whichever evolutionary form) as well as oppose
> possibilities of the IGF making recommendations (I see Wolfgang,
> Katitza, Bill, Jeanette among others state that position). Moreover,
> they all seem to closely associate with OECD/ CoE policy making
> processes, which are in fact much less open, transparent,
> multistakeholder etc than even the 'enhanced cooperation' model which,
> for instance, I proposed and they strongly resisted. I am unable to
> understand why a comity of powerful nations needs specific
> well-structured systems of making inter-country policies (which then
> become default global ones) and all countires as a global group, which
> (unfortunately?) include developing countries, should not aspire to
> any such structures. So, it appears, that while (global?) CS should
> enthusiastically support the former (CoE / OECD kind of process) it is
> presented as its bounden duty to strongly oppose any such - or in fact
> structurally even much better - institutional developments at the
> global level.And I also do hope that the IGC members form developing
> countries both increase their participation in IGC kind of groups, and
> become more vocal in articulating their interests.
>
> parminder
>
>
>
>>
>> 2. 6a: I thin SOC has an IGF Fellowship Programm.
>>
>> 3. Under nine we could say that we ould like to see that the IGF enhances its function and could become, inter alia, an observatory, a clearinghouse, an early warning system and a watchdog.
>>
>> Sorry for the late reply. If it is too late then ignore it.
>>
>> Best wishes
>>
>> wolfgang
>> ________________________________
>>
>> Von:izumiaizu at gmail.com im Auftrag von Izumi AIZU
>> Gesendet: Do 18.11.2010 03:13
>> An:governance at lists.cpsr.org
>> Betreff: [governance] Consensus Call for CSTD IGF Questionnaire - Clean version
>>
>>
>>
>> Here follows are the Clean version of the Final Draft for the CSTD IGF
>> questionnaire answer
>> in full text. Sorry for the confusion.
>>
>> Please respond if you agree or disagree as soon as possible. Friday, Nov 19
>> is the deadline for submission. More comments are also very much appreciated
>> as we can further feed them into the Consultation meetings next week in Geneva.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> izumi
>>
>> ------------
>>
>> FINAL Draft for Questionnaire on improvements to the IGF
>>
>> 1. What do you consider the most important achievements of the first
>> five IGF meetings?
>>
>> IGF created the space for dialogue by all stakeholders in an open,
>> inclusive manner. These emergence and development of the
>> multistakeholder principle and practice are perhaps the biggest
>> contribution IGF has achieved so far. It helped many participants to
>> understand the issues of their interest, as well as to understand how
>> other actors understand, act and accept their issues. Emergence of
>> Regional and National IGF with multistakeholder approach is another
>> achievement.
>>
>> 2. How satisfied are you with the delivery of the results of
>> discussions at the IGF and the impact they have had on developments in
>> national, regional or international Internet governance?
>>
>> IGF has made a reasonable advancement of the understanding of the
>> issues. Yet, at national, regional and international levels, we have
>> mixed assessment for the impact it brought.
>>
>> 3. Which, if any, new mechanisms would you propose to improve the
>> impact of the IGF discussions, in particular as regards the
>> interaction between the IGF and other stakeholders? Please specify the
>> kind of mechanism (e.g. reporting, exchanges, recommendations,
>> concrete advice, etc.) and the stakeholders (e.g. intergovernmental
>> bodies, other fora dealing with Internet Governance, etc.).
>>
>> a) One mechanism we can suggest is to come up with some form of
>> recommendations where all stakeholders have [rough] consensus. They
>> will not be binding, but could still function as model, reference or
>> common framework. Working process towards achieving these rough
>> consensus will create better and deeper understandings amongst
>> different stakeholders.
>>
>> b) The Secretariat and MAG should be strongly encouraged to directly
>> foster discussion and debate of difficult issues in main sessions,
>> instead of avoiding them.
>>
>> 4. In your view, what important new issues or themes concerning
>> Internet governance have emerged or become important since the Tunis
>> phase of the Summit, which deserve more attention in the next five
>> years?
>>
>> IGC feels that attention to the development agenda, issues concerning
>> the marginalized groups or actors, have yet gained sufficient level of
>> work at IGF and its outcome. These may not be the "new" issues, but we
>> strongly feel they are very important.
>>
>> Besides them, emergence of new technologies, tools and services, such
>> as cloud computing; user-generated, SNS and online sharing services
>> such as wiki, YouTube, Ustream, twitter and Facebook; DPI and
>> behavioral targeting advertisements; wide deployment of mobile
>> services including smart phones and tablet computers pose all kind of
>> new challenges for governance.
>>
>>
>> 5. What do you think should be the priority themes and areas of work
>> of the IGF during the next five years?
>>
>> Followings will be the areas of themes and works that have priorities we think.
>> a) Enhancing multi-stakeholder framework within IGF.
>> b) Promote capacity building for developmental agenda of governance
>> c) Balancing the interests - to empower those of marginalized and
>> under-developed in all organizations and fora dealing with Internet
>> governance - such as ICANN, W3C, IETF, RIRs, ITU, WIPO, CoE, OECD,
>> UNCTAD/CSTD and United Nations itself.
>>
>> 6. How can the capacity of those groups that are not yet well
>> represented at the IGF be improved? In particular, what could be done
>> to improve the capacity of representatives from developing countries?
>>
>> a) Establish special funding mechanism by IGF itself to help actors
>> from developing countries to continuously engage in IGF and related
>> organizations and meetings. Fellowship works carried out by
>> DiploFoundation, dotAsia organization [other reference, please] and
>> other institutions offer good reference for this, but they should be
>> expanded in larger scale. Targeting youth groups or younger generation
>> in profession, will have, in the long run, effective impact.
>>
>> b) Providing technical training to policy makers and policy training
>> to engineers will also help close the gap(s) within the
>> under-represented and also even well-represented.
>>
>> 7. How do you think more awareness of Internet governance issues and
>> the IGF process can be raised amongst groups whose lives are affected
>> by Internet governance but who are not yet part of the IGF process?
>>
>> a) Giving more weight to regional and national IGF meetings, making
>> more direct "links" to the main IGF meeting will help outreach to
>> those who have not yet involved in IGF process. Securing the same
>> level of working framework of IGF, such as multi-stakeholder
>> composition and inclusion of civil society groups (where such practice
>> is relatively new or scarce) should be maintained.
>>
>> b) Ensuring a plurality of civil society voices be heard in Internet
>> governance processes will also be effective in reaching out to those
>> yet to participate.
>>
>> c) Online meetings are most effective when provision is made for
>> participation both synchronously (ie. in real time) and
>> asynchronously. The remote hubs and moderators at the Vilnius IGF made
>> good progress towards this direction. Using such tools as blogs,
>> Twitter, mailing lists, Facebook and so on over an extended period may
>> also increase the awareness.
>>
>> d) Organizing some sessions completely online will create "level
>> playing field" among all participants, and may also demonstrate the
>> effectiveness of these tools/technologies, and may also improve the
>> quality of services in turn.
>>
>> e) Increase linguistic diversity. Using UN major languages other than
>> English at certain meetings and occasions as main working language
>> (translated into other UN languages) will increase the outreach to
>> non-English speaking population of the globe and will give more sense
>> of ownership. Currently, English is the only default working language,
>> but we think it does not have to be so.
>>
>> 8. How, if at all, do you think that the IGF process needs to change
>> to meet changing circumstances and priorities?
>>
>> As we replied to the MAG questionnaire, the organizing work of IGF
>> primarily by MAG should be improved. More outcome oriented direction
>> might improve the quality and value of IGF, but this should be
>> carefully exercised so as not to lose the open and free spirit of IGF
>> which contributed a great deal.
>>
>> 9. Do you have any other comments?
>>
>> No.
>>
>> END
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--
Katitza Rodriguez
International Rights Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
katitza at eff.org
katitza at datos-personales.org (personal email)
Please support EFF - Working to protect your digital rights and freedom of speech since 1990
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