[governance] Montreux
Anriette Esterhuysen
anriette at apc.org
Mon Feb 28 03:12:28 EST 2011
Hi all
Back in sane Johannesburg :)
In response to Adam, I also liked Brazil's proposal to begin to discuss
public policy principles of IG and progressively over time, capturing
where there is agreement, and differences on these principles . This
can be captured in the IGF's outcome 'documents'.
The Brazilian's are drawing on their national experience of thrashing
out key principles among all stakeholders. It has worked really well for
them, and I do think the IGF should try something similar.
While there was a lot of discussion about capturing the discussion that
takes place at the IGF more effectively, there is still need for much
more detailed thinking on how this will work, and how it will not
produce an unsustainable workload.
Some important points that I think were mostly agreed on aside from what
was already posted by Wolfgang and Izumi:
- we need an IGF 'report' that is shorted and easier to digest than the
current one. This is particularly important for newcomers to the
process, and also to enable those of use who care about it and who want
to communicate it to the media and to our networks.
- the IGF needs to reach out more effectively to other IG bodies
- outcomes/messages should capture convergence and divergence
I think these documents should be separate from the chair's summary
which has a certain status and value of its own.
I agree with Avri that the channeling through the CSTD is very problematic.
If it is simply a case of the IGF 'messages document' being tabled at a
CSTD meeting for information, and then being referred to in the CSTD
resolution to ECOSOC as an important document perhaps that is not so
problematic.
But if CSTD was to consider the contents of the messages, and decide to
pick out some that they feel should be brought to ECOSOC's attention, it
could end up in:
- a huge amount of negotiation about what to pick out which will be time
consuming and lead to a lot of disagreement among governments
- very selective messages being highlighted to ECOSOC which will not
provide it with a balanced or holistic view of what was discussed.
However, a very general resolution by the CSTD encouraging ECOSOC to
reflect on IGF outcome documents related to issues that ECOSOC will be
discussing in the future will be useful. But I feel strongly that such a
resolution should not select specific messages, or point to them in a
specific manner. Something like: "... bring to ECOSOC's attention IGF
discussion and key messages that relate to child protection and which
can be found in XXXX document" would be acceptable. But nothing more.
I agree that the key role for the IGF is to get is messages to other IG
bodies, not to 'report to' the CSTD.
Sometimes these IG decision-making bodies are national governmental
agencies, like regulators, or particular ministries, so we need to find
effective ways of reaching them too, through National and Regional IGFs,
but also through other means, such as regional regulatory agencies, IGOs
such as the ITU, or the regional economic commissions. This would be
much more effective, and appropriate, than channeling these messages
through ECOSOC.
This does not preclude the IGF coming out with messages directed at
ECOSOC or the GA. Suggestions for how those can be most effectively
channeled?
Anriette
On 26/02/11 22:48, Adam Peake wrote:
> Wolfgang, thanks for the report.
>
> In relation to outcomes you mention in 3. below, was the Chair's summary
> mentioned?
>
> I also liked Brazil's suggestion during the open consultation on
> Wednesday to try and develop principles from discussions at the IGF, not
> as something to be produced as a specific outcome of each meeting, but
> develop/emerge overtime .
>
> Adam
>
>
>
>
>> Hi everybody
>>
>> here are some observations from the IGF Improvement meeting in Montreux.
>>
>> 1. The first and most important point is that nobody challenged the
>> participation of civil society and other non-governmental stakeholders
>> as equals in the discussion and in the future drafting of the final
>> report. After the two December meetings of the UNCSTD this was not so
>> obviously expected. Even the government of Iran said that it values
>> the contribution of non-governmental stakeholders in the process since
>> 2003. There was no hostile climate. In contrary, contributions from
>> all five CS reps in the WG were taken as very helpful and reasonable
>> input.
>>
>> 2. A lot of time was wasted with the discussion on procedureal issues.
>> The discussion on substantial issues circeled for hours around the
>> questions of the "linkage" of the IGF. India, Egypt but also Brazil
>> used the languge of the UNGA resolution which says that the IGF should
>> be linked to the "broader dialogue on Internet Governance". Some
>> pepole in the room had the impression that this is not a good language
>> because the broadest dialogue is the IGF itself. And there was some
>> mistrust that this could become a formula to put the IGF under the
>> "enhanced cooperation" discussion in the UNGA. Alternative proposed
>> language was to link the IGF to "other dialogues" but India and Egypt
>> insisted in the "accepted language" which, BTW, was introduced by the
>> US government during the negotiations in the 2nd Committee of the UNGA
>> in New York in November 2010. However both Egypt and India accepted an
>> interpretiaton that one of the functions of the IGF is to bring
>> information to other dialogues and that this formulation (in the
>> headline of Chapter 2 of the forthcoming report) will not include any
>> formal sub-ordination of the IGF under "another dialogue". My comment
>> here is that it is rather obvious that on the one hand IGF and EC are
>> two different processes which are not formally interlinked but there
>> are some trade offs on the other hand. The IBSA was not discussed in
>> detail. This will remain an open question. Russia proposed again to
>> link the IGF with the WSIS Forum but produced protest against any form
>> of "merger". In a second interventon Russia clarified that they did
>> not propose "merger" but wanted to use "synergies" to avoid the waste
>> of resources. There was no support for a closer linkage between the
>> two fora.
>>
>> 3. The debate about outcome did not create any new ideas. There was a
>> broad consensus that the IGF should not become a "negotiation body",
>> should not produce any "negotiated language" or "binding
>> recommendations", but should produce something which people can take
>> home and read within "ten minutes" and show their constituencies as
>> "outcome". My impression was that more and more stakeholders,
>> including governments, can live with "messages". The proposed
>> procedure to generate the messages was not discussed in detail but the
>> proposal to have nominated rapporteurs for each workshop and plenary
>> who have to produce one to three "short messages" from the discussion
>> was seen as a reasonable approach. This would guaratee that there is a
>> distributed system of messages production which would reduce the risk
>> of capture of the drafting by one single group. 50 workshops would
>> mean 50 - 150 messages from 50 rapporteurs.
>>
>> 4. Another key issues was the role and function of the MAG. The idea
>> to have the MAG (or the secretariat) like a bureau was mentioned but
>> got no suprport. The majority was in favour of a more open MAG, more
>> open consultations and a right mixture between continuation and
>> rotation in the membership. A related question was the financing of
>> the secretariat. India and Egypt called for a stable public funding
>> (to become independen from voluntary contributions) but they did not
>> say where the money should come from.
>>
>> 5. The broader involvement of developing countries was discussed at
>> length. There was a broad consensus among all participants that the
>> participation of developing countries - both governments and
>> non-govenrmental stakeholders - has to be broadend. There was an
>> outspoken wish to strengthen in particular civil society organisations
>> and small and medium enterprises in developing countries and to enable
>> them to participate more actively in IGF activities.
>>
>> 6. There was a clear support for a stronger linkage between the global
>> IGF and national and regional IGFs. On the other hand, dynamic
>> coalitions were not really discussed. There was a proposal to have in
>> between the global IGFs also "thematic IGFs" but also here no concrete
>> step was planned.
>>
>> 7. The meeting decided not to go into the details of how to organize
>> workshops, plenaries, feeder workshops etc. Some proposals were made
>> how to improve the planning and the linkage between the various
>> sessions within an IGF, but this has to be further discussed.
>>
>> 8. The only thing (but this is not bad) the group could agree after
>> two days is the structure of the planned report to the UNCSTD meeting
>> in May 2011. There is now an informal drafting group which will work
>> together with the Secretariat to draft the report for the next
>> meeting, scheduled for March 24/25, 2011 in Geneva.
>>
>> I want to thank all friends of the IGC and the civil society for their
>> input. CS played and active and recognized role and made very valuable
>> contributions to the process. At the end Anriette, Parminder and other
>> raised even the issue to increase the number of CS people in the
>> various forthcoming groups because CS is different from the other
>> non-governmentwl stakeholders (broader, more diverse etc.). Nobody
>> really objetced this but there was no time left for a discussion, Lets
>> wait and see where we will go from here.
>>
>> Best wishes
>>
>> wolfgang
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--
------------------------------------------------------
anriette esterhuysen anriette at apc.org
executive director
association for progressive communications
www.apc.org
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