[governance] consultations on enhanced cooperation

[Milton L Mueller]

Agree that this is a farce.
Do we refuse to comment at all and take it to the public sphere, or inundate them with written comments criticizing the approach?
--MM

From: parminder [mailto:parminder at itforchange.net]
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 1:08 AM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: [governance] consultations on enhanced cooperation

Hi All

Find as enclosed an open letter to all stakeholders to participate in what is supposed to be an open consultation on 'enhanced cooperation' in NY on 14th December.

However, the process is hardly open. It does not seem to be even as open as many traditional UN activities are. Both the Tunis Agenda, and the CSTD/ ECOSOC resolution (quoted in the letter) speaks of 'enhanced cooperation' itself as involving ' a balanced participation of all stakeholders '.

It should be obvious that a consultation on 'enhanced cooperation', EC, (which is different from the process of enhanced cooperation ) should be even more open and participative that even EC itself. In fact it should be more or less, within limits of logistics constraints, completely open, though probably also structured enough that all governments, for instance, do get to speak all they want to (that is what they normally like to ensure/protect, UN style)

However, the letter says that non -governmental stakeholders will only be allowed to give written contribution, plus a very tokenistic gesture of allowing just one representative (?? whose rep) to speak during the consultations to summarize the contributions of all non governmental stakeholders (whew!) (in maybe about 5 minutes?). So basically they are calling for an inter-governmental consultation. This is not at all an open consultation, and i think we should not give it legitimacy as such.

In fact, the letter clearly speaks of a "consultation with UN member states, Permanent Observers and other inter-governmental organizations to be held on....."

So, it is simply not the "open and inclusive consultations involving all member states and other stakeholders....." that the recent ECOSOC resolution called for, which resolution has been quoted in the letter itself.

I think all non-governmental stakeholders should refuse to accept it as an open consultation, and write to the SG/ USG immediately about it. If no changes in the format are forthcoming they may all together even agree not to participate in the consultations at all - not even submitting written contributions, and forgoing the 'one rep speaks for all nongov stakeholders' offer.

On the other hand, if there are any genuine concerns of governments that the format should allow enough speak and discussion time for gov reps, which they may feel does not happen in fully open spaces, we can discuss and take them on board to devise a mutually acceptable format.

Parminder
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