[governance] Montreux
Anriette Esterhuysen
anriette at apc.org
Mon Feb 28 04:37:58 EST 2011
Dear all
Thanks to Wolfgang, Izumi and Marilia for their reports on the meeting.
Having different perspectives is extremely useful. Below are some more
reactions from me, and information, in response to Marilia's report.
Anriette
On 28/02/11 03:53, Marilia Maciel wrote:
[snip]
>
> *1 - General impressions*
> >
> Multistakeholder participation and equal chance to intervene on this
> space seems to be something widely accepted now. India, Iran and others
> welcomed the participation of other stakeholders, which was very
> positive. Non-gov actors could speak on equal footing.
>
> The mood was not very good at the beginning of the meeting. The
> Secretariat’s lack of responsiveness, the fact that they conevened the
> meeting in Montreux during Saturday and the fact that the questions that
> would supposedly structure report were not discussed in advance all gave
> place to criticism, which the Chair did not take well. Saying it short,
> we are dealing with an unskilled Chair/Secretariat and this is something
> to worry, given the huge amount of work ahead and the lack of time.
I agree that the Chair and Secretariat could, and should, have handled
procedural issues better.
At the same time I think that the procedural issues were a bit
over-politicised.
Some of the governments felt that the working group should have met
earlier (when most of us non-governmental stakeholders would not have
been able to be there), and some said that 'no work had been done for 2
months) when many people worked hard on their submissions to the list of
topics posted in January.
Sala, you asked what the procedural issues were. They were, in summary:
a) Format of the list of topics for input going out to working group
members without working group members being able to first comment ON THE
FORMAT.
I agree that it would have been better to first ask for input on the
structure. The structure of topics had several big gaps in it.
At the same time, one could have added your comments on the structure in
your submission for the sake of progress, or raise them as additional
points on the first day of the working group meeting, rather than halt
the process.
But again, more skilled management would have helped.
b) Duration, and venue of the meeting. Several governments felt the
meeting should have been in Geneva, and longer. If it is in Geneva they
can keep in touch with other important negotiations, e.g. the Human
Rights Council and WIPO.
They also need special permissions from their missions to go and stay at
a hotel in Montreux.
My opinion is that the first point is legitimate for small missions. The
second is not really, it is just an hour by train and easy to commute
from Geneva to Montreux.
c) Overall process of how the report is to be drafted not discussed
before the gathering of inputs started.
My opinion is again that this is a valid point, but there was no need to
overstate it, or politicise it to such an extent as people did.
So what? Let's discuss the core content issues, and then get back to it.
My feeling is that it is only once you have all the content in front of
you that you can come up with a really good structure for the document,
and that, once everyone has given their inputs, that you will get a
sense of what kind of drafting process will be best.
I was reminded of my political naivety repeatedly during the meeting :)
Being practical does not have much room in a process where so much is
intensely political. And, the structure of the document is extremely
political. This I do agree on.
In the defense of the chair I want to say that he is not an experienced
UN bureaucrat, and felt he was taking on a convening role, rather than a
negotiating role. I understand that he got fedup.
At one point he said that if the room wanted to continue to discuss
procedures they could get another chair. I was very pleased that the
Iranian delegated responded with a very clear expression of support for
him, and a call that he should stay on as chair.
As for the CSTD secretariat.. I agree.. they need to put much more
effort into managing this process and giving the chair the support he
needs. Their capacity is very limited though... essentially one staff
member and a bundle of interns (who are all really excellent by the way).
>> *2- Structure of the report (jump this topic if you don't want to hear
> about procedure)*
>
> The meeting begun with a procedural clarification asked by India and
> Egypt. They asked if the questions of the draft structure were the ones
> that would guide the writing of the report and asked who would actually
> take the task of writing it. Some people argued the draft structure was
> an agenda for the WG meeting only, not the actual structure of the
> report. Personally, I found this approach a bit nonsense.
I did not really find this 'nonsense'. To me it made sense to have those
topics as a starting point. The agenda was open for discussion. I agreed
with India and Egypt that key topics were missing. But, why not just
propose that they were added to the agenda, rather than open up the
entire process and waste a day?
One of these 'missing' topics were: key characteristics of the IGF as
contained in the Tunis Agenda. I also felt we should start discussion
with this topic. But really!! The way in which they expressed their
concerns was unnecessarily confrontational.
> The chair said that we would only discuss that at the end of the
> meeting, but suggested that maybe an ad hoc group could be created to
> write the report.
>
> India made a point that we could not go into substantive matters if we
> were not sure that we were actually discussing points that would table
> the report. In my opinion, the points made by India were very pertinent,
> but unfortunately lead us to be caught in procedural matters again on
> the first day.
> Suggestions were made about new questions that should be introduced if
> the points were going to guide the writing of the report. Ex: the first
> question should be an evaluation of the fullfillment of te IGF mandate
> vis-a-vis the Tunis Agenda, so we would know and document exactly which
> are the key-areas for improvement.
>
> India distributed a proposal that changed a bit the structure from the
> questionnaire proposed by the secretariat. The business sector also
> presented a proposal.
> Both proposals were successfully merged during
> coffee brake.
The business sector did not really present a proposal. One individual
from business and one from ISOC tried to help by working with the
secretariat to do a merger of the Indian proposal and the original
agenda, using 'track changes' and brackets and they bamed it 'Room
Document'.
This unfortunately did not address some of Indian's primary concerns,
such as the sequence of the discussion (they wanted to start with Tunis
Agenda, and with the link of the IGF to agreed development goals).
I was personally quite annoyed :) I had just got India to agree to the
original agenda, but with their key points inserted in the sequence
where they felt they should belong.
The creating of the agenda as a 'room document' with bracketed text
resulted, unintentionally, in the meeting starting to negotiate the text
of the agenda! Which some people saw as the draft structure of the
report, and others just as an agenda.
For me this was the most frustrating part of the meeting. Again, not
having clear direction from the chair on 'what' we were doing did not
help to make things simpler. Although, I am not sure anything could have
helped at that point :)
After new disgreements, the draft structure was approved
> on the beginning of day 2, being called as” key elements for the
> report”, which give us room to believe that new issues can be included
> if the relevant (I dont think any of the issues can be removed, though).
After the session on day 1 a few of us stayed behind and I talked with
the three different groups that were discussion the agenda. Moving from
one to the other, I managed to get them to agree to a merger, without
hierachy, of the India/Egypt proposal and the original, in a new sequence.
Basically this was the 'room document' but in a new order. I made it
clear to all the parties it would not be a structure, and it was with
that understanding that they agreed on the list of topics.
India said, in fairness I thought, that they would accept this
compromise but if it was opened for discussion the next day they would
insist on their 'day one proposal' being accepted.
Here I made a mistake. When working with the secretariat on typing this,
myself, someone from the Indian delegation and someone from the US
delegation and a business representative tried to come up with a
non-contentious title for the document. I proposed: Schedule of topics
for discussion on 26 Feb' thinking it was sufficiently neutral :)
The document was emailed to all working group members by the secretariat.
To my surprise when it was tabled the next morning, Egypt objected to
the title, saying it should also be the structure. This took up another
hour.. but in the end, India, Brazil, Pakistan presented compromise
proposals and a very constructive phase of the meeting started.
>
> *3 – Outcomes of the IGF*
>
> As I said, I did not manage to take many notes on day 2, while speaking
> and listening, but my impression was that there was general support that
> the IGF would have as outcome something that would cover convergence and
> divergence on policy matters and be apt to feed into the process of
> police making taking place in other relevant bodies. The actual ways to
> do it were not consensus, the approach mentioned by Wolfgang (a lot of
> messages emerged from workshops) was one of the possibilities on the
> table, some others were advanced as well.
Yes, consensus on the idea, but work to be done on how to do this. The
detail might well be delegated to the MAG and the secretariat.
>
> *4- Remote participation*
>
> Huge support about it. It was really important to talk about RP in the
> CSTD WG environment, since some representatives did not know it in
> details. RP was recognized as key element for inclusion, a key
> innovation from the IGF that deserved more support and joint efforts to
> enhancement. Workshops conducted completely online during the IGF
> (including from hubs) were suggestd. Some meetings of the MAG and OC
> could take place online as well.
Agree.. lots of support for remote participation. I think to some extent
more support from developed countries, than developing countries. I
think this is not so much because they don't think it is important, but
because they are not convinced that an IGF where developing country
participants participate mostly remotely, while those physically present
are mostly from developed countries, will be an IGF that really reflects
developing country interests.
Agenda setting is a big thing here.. and we did not talk about it enough.
Marilia made it clear to everyone present that the remote participation
successes result from voluntary work, and she mentioned the names of the
members of the working group.
> *5- How to write the report*
>
> As said before, at the beginning of the meeting, the chair suggested the
> creation of a smaller drafting group for the report, that seemed to have
> been generally accpeted. Many people spoke for it, no one spoke against it
> On the second day a proposal circulated that the drafting group would
> have the role to compile the points raised in all consultations and
> write a first version of the report, then circulate online for comments.
> In depth discussions would take place in the next meeting of the WG.
> Everybody agreed and then we discussed the composition during lunch.
>
> The proposal advanced by Brazil was that there should be 1 country per
> region (total of 5) plus 1 from the business sector plus 1 from
> technical and academic community and 2 from civil society. The reason of
> the 2 reps from CS, according to them, was that CS represented many
> diferent views that are difficult to capture. India supported.
The background to this was a morning coffee break discussion where I
proposed that civil society has more than one rep in the drafting group,
as we have to represent more diversity. Brazil accepted this and
continued to lobby for this during the rest of the day, but the private
sector strongly opposed this idea, as it would diverge from the formula
used to convene the CSTD working group.
I found this quite bloody minded and procedural :)
As civil society we need to keep in mind that if we want more influence
in the IGF we will need to take on not just governments, but also some
of our fellow non-governmental stakeholder groups.
We have much in common with them, but we will not always agree with
them. This is inevitable, if we are acting in civil society interests.
But it should also not harm our generally constructive relationship with
business.
>
> This proposal seems to have disagreed very much the business sector, but
> instead of discussing and making a conter-proposal they took a step back
> and decided to be against the draft group.
I am not sure that is exactly what happened. They had supported the idea
of an open voluntary drafting group from the outset. So for them a
drafting group was always going to be a compromise. Same for some
governments (led by the US) and for the technical community.
They argued that we should
> leave for the secretariat to come with a report and our role should be
> to discuss it. Developed countries (Finland, US, Portugal) and Russia
> backed the proposal. I think it is a pitty and a dangerous political
> move in face of the faults commited by the secretariat and the chair. In
> addition, Brazil raised a good point about the incoherence to preach
> that multistakeholders can take issues and do things collaboratively and
> then leave this important matter in the hands of the secretariat.
I practice I don't think these are such mutually exclusive options. The
secretariat will have to compile input anyway... so the first draft
which will be made up of compiled input cannot be produced by anyone
other than the secretariat.
But then they need to work with others to give the process legitimacy,
and to give the working group ownership.
I think a smaller group is necessary... it will save time. So I do
support the formation of a drafting group that people feel comfortable with.
I believe that this drafting group should:
- not include people who did not attend the Feb 25 and 26 meetings
- not have the right to introduce new text - they should work with text
from compiled inputs, and the proceedings of the first working group meeting
- I support the Brazil proposal on composition of the working group, but
would add to it the condition that it does not include people who were
not at the meeting.
>
> DESA asked the WG to also portrait the lessons learned. highlight more
> in the report things such as the multistakeholder carachteristic and
> remote participation
>
This is an important point. DESA was proposing that multi-stakeholder
participation, and remote participation, be added as 'headings' or key
elements to the structure of the report. No one really supported them in
a very explicit manner. But we should bring this up again before the
questionnaire goes out to the community.
I think the other key element that was missing is 'capacity building'.
How the IGF can improve its capacity building role needs to be profiled
in the working group report.
>
> *6 – Next steps* (please someone correct me if I am wrong, it was
> mentioned fast):
>
> - The new structure of the questionnaire will be placed online, comments
> will be open until March 15
I would propose we add to the structure the following topics (we can
draw on text in the Tunis Agenda to frame these more effectively):
IGF's contribution to capacity building in IG
Multi-stakeholder participation in the IGF
Enhancing remote participation in the IGF
>
> - The Secretariat will compile older contributions, new contributions
> and the points raised in this WG meeting and write a draft report
>
> - The report will be sent to WG members. They can offer comments
>
> - The text will be discussed on 24 and 25 March in Geneva.
>
I left before the closing. At the time I left I thought that the Chair
said he would decide on the drafting process, and whether, and how, a
drafting group would be convened.
But things might have changed after Izumi and I left.
>
> *7- Submission of the report*
>
> DESA said they had contacted the office in NY and postponed the delivery
> of the report to April 1st. Still tight!
>
> The report should have 17 pages maximum
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 5:23 PM, Izumi AIZU <aizu at anr.org
> <mailto:aizu at anr.org>> wrote:
>
> Thank you Wolfgang for your quite precise and concise summary.
>
> Since I had to leave earlier than the meeting's closure, I could not
> capture what was the closing, especially with
> regard to the "drafting group" since several members including USG and
> business were not supporting the
> creation of such drafting group consist of WG members,
> but rather to task it to the secretariat, to me that is not
> the right path.
>
> I would like to underscore what Wolfgang mentioned here
> about the good acceptance and recognition of Civil society
> members and our inputs - compared with December where
> it was very different. I spoke with India, Egypt, and some
> other gov members informally during brakes and they are
> really trying to accommodate us as peer members, and
> valuing our input (and other stakeholders input).
>
> No one questioned the composition of drafting group
> include non-gov stakeholders - yes, we had some difference
> between CS and business for the number of members to the
> drafting group. CS wanted to have more numbers than other
> stakeholders since we are much more diverse than, say business or
> academic/tech community. They disagreed and tried to keep equal
> number.
>
> This does not mean, please, that CS members were supporting G77
> position on outcome. As far as I can tell, no
> CS members took that position per se.
>
> izumi
>
> 2011/2/27 "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang"
> <wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de
> <mailto:wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de>>:
> > 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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>
>
>
> --
> >> Izumi Aizu <<
>
> Institute for InfoSocionomics, Tama University, Tokyo
>
> Institute for HyperNetwork Society, Oita,
> Japan
> * * * * *
> << Writing the Future of the History >>
> www.anr.org <http://www.anr.org>
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> --
> Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade
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>
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> Getulio Vargas Foundation
> Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
--
------------------------------------------------------
anriette esterhuysen anriette at apc.org
executive director
association for progressive communications
www.apc.org
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