[governance] Fwd: Appeal for secure funding for Civil Society members to the CSTD IGF WG

[Izumi AIZU]

Dear list,

Here follows is the letter of appeal I sent last night.

The situation is quite bad, that Mongi wrote back that
there is no funding, as two former sponsoring countries,
Finland and Switzerland, specified that they can only
sponsor people from Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

IF this so happens, we will only have Wolfgang and myself
in the next CSTD WG meeting in January.

izumi



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Izumi AIZU <iza at anr.org>
Date: 2011/12/21
Subject: Appeal for secure funding for Civil Society members to the CSTD IGF WG
To: UN CSTD Working Group on Improvement to the IGF <WGIGF at list.unicc.org>
Cc: "peter.major" <peter.major at ties.itu.int>, Mongi Hamdi
<Mongi.Hamdi at unctad.org>, Stephanie Burel <Stephanie.Burel at unctad.org>


Dear members of the CSTD Working Group on Improvements to the IGF,

As you know, it was after much discussions and debate that the
composition of our working group was agreed to be multistakeholder,
which we consider as a significant step forward in UN's participative
processes.  However, de facto multistakeholderism requires not only
'allowing' but 'ensuring' full participation of all stakeholders. It
is for this reason that civil society participation from developing
countries in the WG was funded by CSTD.

However, we were told that it will no longer be possible to fund such
participation from developing countries. We asked the Chair and
Secretariat to reconsider such decision and the Secretariat replied
that they would try, but so far we have not heard the positive decision.

If this is the case, it will not enable the three WG civil society
members from developing
countries to attend the crucial last leg of the WG's work. Such
exclusion strikes at the very base of participative practices, and of
multistakeholderism. Improving participation in UN and other
governance processes has primarily to be aimed at bringing in voices
that get otherwise excluded and marginalised. But if civil society
participation has to be paid for, that really defeats the purpose of
opening us participation. If even the official members of committees
and working groups etc cannot be funded by the concerned governance
systems, there is little meaning in speaking about
multistakeholderism.

We therefore appeal to the WG, and to the Chair and the Secretariat of
the CSTD, to urgently reconsider its decision in this regard and
secure the funding for participation. With the holiday season so
close, there is not much time left to make preparations for the
concerned civil society members to attend the forthcoming meeting.

Thank you very much for your full consideration, support and positive outcome.

Izumi Aizu, together with
Anriette Esterhuysen
Marilia Maciel
Parminder Jeet Singh
Wolfgang Kleinwaechter
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