[governance] WSIS Forum 2011, 16 to 20 May Geneva

[William Drake]

Hi

On Oct 19, 2010, at 11:47 AM, parminder wrote:

> 
> On Tuesday 19 October 2010 03:01 PM, William Drake wrote:
>> 
>> Hi
>> 
>> On Oct 19, 2010, at 9:02 AM, parminder wrote:
>> 
>>> It is significant that the WSIS forum will not be shifted to New York as was mooted. Could have implications for negotiations around improvement/ changes to the IGF, likely to take place in a few days at th UN Gen Assembly. This has further reduced the chances of the IGF secretariat shifting to New York, as is feared by some. Parminder
>> 
>> I'm pretty surprised by this shift, as there have been statements at the Plenipot in Guadalajara by governments with presumably good access to the ITU secretariat that referred to the forum being held in New York.  One has to wonder about the coordination and who is really in which loop, but as it's all non-transparent wondering is all we can do.  Would be interesting to know though if the concerns expressed by non-state actors actually had some impact.
>> 
>> How this may relate to the IGF issue is also hard to judge, but it doesn't hurt.
> 
> One of the suggestion was to roll IGF up into the general WSIS forum, which would still be very bad even if WSIS forum stays in Geneva, but if WSIS forum had moved to  NY, the pulls for IGF sect. to move to NY would have been stronger.

Right there could have been some negative synergies with any near-term discussions on the secretariat, which was my concern when the locations were being discussed here in terms of their relative travel convenience.  On the other hand, the ITU wasn't saying it wanted to move all future WSIS forums to NYC and certainly wasn't offering to give up the secretariat role to DESA; the Russian proposal got no traction in Guadalajara; and if there are actors working behind the scenes for a change, it's not clear they'd be deterred by the WSIS Forum being in Geneva. So it doesn't hurt, but it's hard to know whether it helps. 

Relatedly, the ICC and ISOC with the support of France will hold an information session today in New York October to brief governments' UN mission representatives.  No webcast alas, or mention of CS involvement.  The background note for the meeting http://www.iccwbo.org/uploadedFiles/BASIS/Documents/ICC_ISOC_IGF_briefing_note_19Oct10.pdf  directly addresses the point we've been cautiously dancing around and endorses an IGF "Led by an independent secretariat based in Geneva where the Internet policy networks and the history of the WSIS lie: it is important for stakeholders to feel they can trust the secretariat to be unbiased and not unduly influenced by any one interest."

Now that they've put the issue on the table, wouldn't it make sense for IGC to say something similar?

Best,

Bill

PS: The ICC says "Deliberations start on 26 October and the final decision will be taken by early December."  Just looked at the UN GA webcast site http://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/webcast/c/general-assembly.html and it looks like yesterday they talked about "the culture of peace," which is item 15 on the agenda.  IGF renewal is part of item 17, "Information and communications technologies for development"  to be considered by the second committee.  So unless they're proceeding at a real snail's pace or out of sequence, one would think they might get to this sooner than next Tuesday.  Does anyone have current info?



***********************************************************
William J. Drake
Senior Associate
Centre for International Governance
Graduate Institute of International and
 Development Studies
Geneva, Switzerland
william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch
www.williamdrake.org
***********************************************************


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