[governance] IGF Leadership?

Thu Apr 14 12:57:27 EDT 2011

Dear all,

Wolfgang wrote :

*Nairobi is much more than another IGF.*

+1

The May preparatory meeting will offer an opportunity to prove that
self-organization can work and actually improve the IGF on its own.

And Nairobi (with the slightly improved format decided during the february
MAG discussions) could actually mark a new milestone if we all are convinced
that it is the opportunity to really become serious about what this format
can produce.

Bertrand

2011/4/14 "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" <
wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de>

> Milton:
>
> One reason IGF is losing relevance, is that IGF's leadership seems to be
> utterly blind when it comes to distinguishing between issues where it can be
> entrepreneurial and fill gaps in the current institutional environment, and
> issues where it has no real capacity to contribute anything.
>
> Wolfgang:
> The problem is, that there is NO IGF leadership at the moment. The dilemma
> is that the two key individuals who steered IGF - Nitin and Markus - are
> gone, the MAG is in a limbo and the "overseeing body", the UN CSTD, is
> unable to find a consensus beyond the simple decision to continue until
> 2015. However, there is not only bad news. The opportunity is that a new
> bottom up emerging self-organized leadership could constitute itself during
> the forthcoming MAG meeting in May 2011 as a driving force which both
> understands the issues and has a vision what to do (step by step) in the
> coming years. A bottom up self organized successful IGF in Nairobi (this
> would be before the 2nd Committee of the UNGA will start negotiations on
> "IGF improvement") would demonstrate that there is no need to wait for
> CSTD/ECOSOC/UNGA recommendations to "improve" the IGF. The people themselves
> (the "stakeholders") will understand what they have to do and they will
> hopefully do it (without waiting for "permission").
>
> The general problem is that the multistakeholder approach was accepted by
> the heads of states in 2005 as a "theoretical" concept, but there was no
> common understanding what it means in practice. Five years later we still
> see more lip service than real implementation if ot comes to new forms of
> (global) policy development and decision making. Nobody really knows what
> the "respective roles" of the main stakeholders are and how the interaction
> among the stakeholders should be organized and implemented. What we need is
> indeed a set of (multistakeholder) guiding principles and formal procedures
> for stakeholder interaction. A good subject for an IGF workshop. A great
> challenge for a new "Framework of Commitments" (FoC).
>
> The risk is that the whole new MS approach could fail and could fall back
> into traditional intergovernmental powerplay with opposing non-governmental
> global mechanisms outside the (state) power structure. This is what you can
> see now within the G 8 under the French Presidency and the Russian efforts
> to get the issue into the 1st Committee of the UNGA, which deals with
> security issues (and where non-governmental stakeholders have nothing to
> say).
>
> As Thomas Schneider has recently put it nicely in a panel on
> multistakeholderism (during the IGF-D), there is not yet a real
> multistakeholder model in the world.  ICANN and IGF as the two main
> playgrounds for the new global governance model are still in their infant
> stage and do not really offer opportunities "on equal footing". ICANN has
> multistakeholder participation but it is under private sector leadership.
> IGF has multistakeholder participation but it is (as we can see now) under
> governmental (UN) leadership. We see the Board/GAC battle and we see the
> CSTD WG composition battle between governments and non-governmental
> stakeholder (with an deep dissens among the governments themselves in the
> background).
>
> But the good news here is that the "patt", this "inter-governmental
>  agony", offers a "window of opportunity" for the further development of the
> IGF and a new MAG which should move from "giving advice" to "steer the
> process". Such a new (open) IGF Multistakeholder Steering Group for an IGF
> 2.0 could become the first real model of an multistakeholder process which
> offers equal opportunities to each stakeholders.
>
> With other words, workshop proposers and MAGgers should think big. Nairobi
> is much more than another IGF.
>
> Wolfgang
>
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-- 
____________________
Bertrand de La Chapelle
Tel : +33 (0)6 11 88 33 32

"Le plus beau métier des hommes, c'est d'unir les hommes" Antoine de Saint
Exupéry
("there is no greater mission for humans than uniting humans")
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