[governance] IGF Leadership?

Sat Apr 16 09:49:51 EDT 2011

Hello All,

The analysis made by Wolgang and Milton are really pertinent, I fully
agree with that.

Pascal

2011/4/14, Bertrand de La Chapelle <bdelachapelle at gmail.com>:
> 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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