[governance] some notes on the CSTD inter-sessional on 17th Dec

[Baudouin SCHOMBE]

"One was Egypt's proposal of multistakeholder task forces around specific
sub-issues that would input their report/ recommendations to the WG proper
which was to be inter-gov. Second was Brazil's proposal of each meeting of
WG having speaker/ participants from stakeholder groups, leaving it to the
stakeholders to decide the speakers/ participants. (This later proposal has
the problem that only a continuous participation of the same non-gov
participants throughout the WG's life is really meaningful.)".


the proposals of Egypt has a certain logic in which it agrees in the
participation
of non-governmental actors, but while leaving flexibility to governments the
possibility of early decision on the recommendations. For Brazil, it is
given latitude to stakeholders to decide on the choice of speakers or
participants.
In both cases, this requires an ongoing involvement of non-governmental
participants in all meetings of the WG.
It would even be wise to think also a good geographical representation
of non-state
actors in Africa. All this provision also requires that local and sub
regional issues are discussed deeply in national and sub-regional IGF
platforms.
It is through this mechanism we can also know the members of
government and other
stakeholders who are competent, really active and controlling the process.
I am referring to the African participants in any sector. And I believe we
must also take into account the non gov actors who have remained constant,
present and active since the process of Phase 1 of the World Summit to this
stage.

" I think that overall it may not be too bad a deal we got. I would much
prefer that we now move on to discussing what substantive changes or
improvements we want to see in the IGF. If we get a good set of 5 people in,
we can use the civil society's greater readiness to come up with new ideas,
develop implementable details around them etc to make some really good
impact."

The figure 5 is not a chance I think. If not, we can think of geographical
representation is the 5 continents? Just a suggestion.


Baudouin

2011/1/5 parminder <parminder at itforchange.net>

>  Hi
>
> A happy new year to all!
>
> Since much has been lamented about what came out of the CSTD
> inter-sessional, let me start my notes by trying to give it a positive spin.
>
>
> My impression is that something very remarkable and perhaps unprecedented
> happened on the 17th in the CSTD inter-sessional meeting which is an
> important step forward in global governance (I have some misgivings too
> about 'this step' forward which I will discuss in another email). I may be
> wrong and those more well versed with UN system may correct me, but this may
> be the very first time that a 'substantive' UN  body,  with  political
> membership  and status and not just  an  expert  group,  will have  some
> specified non-gov permanent  'invited  participants'  who  'will remain
> engaged through-out the process'. Importantly, these participants are not
> just 'outside experts' but 'representatives' of groups other than states.
>
> To the extent that I think this is a big step, in the end, in some ways it
> may even be better that the WG group is not a Chair's WG, which would have
> meant an 'experts group' only giving advise which does not constitute a
> substantive UN body's report, but it is actually a CSTD WG, and thus based
> on political representation and not expertise alone. ( I may be reading too
> much into this, and would be happy for a discussion on this issue.)
>
> In any case, our (my organisation's) initial position was a WGIG kind of a
> group. (The WGIG model for the new WG on IGF improvements, incidentally, was
> opposed by many business and technical community members at Vilnius.) I have
> been a great fan of WGIG model and have suggested a few times that MAG
> should rather try to work more in that model than its typical abdicating
> mode when faced with substantive issues, which alone can make the IGF more
> productive. However there has been little engagement from the IGC to forward
> such a model within the IGF system. Anyway, this is just to affirm my
> support for the WGIG model.
>
> Much of the contestation during ther CSTD meeting, whose real substance and
> motives perhaps lie elsewhere, took place around whether the proposed WG was
> a Chair's WG or a CSTD WG. The former could be formed more or less in
> whichever manner the Chair decides, and would be an expert group advising
> the CSTD, after which the commission could decide to do what it liked in its
> substantive communication to ECOSOC and GA. A CSTD WG on the other hand will
> be  a political body with membership based on political status. The text of
> the UN GA resolution indeed had some amount of ambiguity about it being a
> experts group or an substantive CSTD WG.
>
> 18. Welcomes the decision by the Economic and Social Council in paragraph
> 30 of its resolution 2010/2 to invite the Chair of the Commission on Science
> and Technology for Development to establish, in an open and inclusive
> manner, a working group which would seek, compile and review inputs from all
> Member States and all other stakeholders on improvements to the Internet
> Governance Forum, in line with the mandate set out in the Tunis Agenda,4 and
> which would submit a report to the Commission at its fourteenth session, in
> 2011, with recommendations, as appropriate, that would constitute an input
> by the Commission to the General Assembly, through the Economic and Social
> Council;
>
> While it was the Chair who was invited to form a WG (which could be a
> Chair's WG or as well be a CSTD WG), the last part of the above para is
> significant in saying that the report of the WG will 'constitute an input by
> the Commission to the General Assembly, through the Economic and Social
> Council'. To me,  it really does look very unlikely that an expert group
> assembled by the chair could give a report which will be considered 'an
> input *by *the commission to the GA'.
>
> While I was still rooting for a WGIG model during the meeting, I could see
> that the developing countries group was clear - they were no way going to
> shift from their conviction that it was to be a CSTD WG. (Sure, it served
> their political objective too for it to be a CSTD WG. I dont say they were
> not pressing their politics here as were other actors who were present.)
> This dev countries group pointed to the description 'CSTD WG' that has been
> mentioned in all documents regarding various meetings etc on this issue,
> apart from their interpretation of the text.
>
> If it indeed was to be a substantive CSTD WG with political membership,
> their stand that non-gov participants cannot be equal and full members
> looked difficult to argue against (though I was still trying to argue that
> this is a very new context etc). That would be in violation of all rules and
> precedents, even perhaps of general political sensibilities.
>
> So either this group agreed that it was a Chair's expert group, which I
> realized was not going to happen, or we tried to find  what best could be
> done within the CSTD WG formula. Within this formula there were two options
> being proposed at this point.
>
> One was Egypt's proposal of multistakeholder task forces around specific
> sub-issues that would input their report/ recommendations to the WG proper
> which was to be inter-gov. Second was Brazil's proposal of each meeting of
> WG having speaker/ participants from stakeholder groups, leaving it to the
> stakeholders to decide the speakers/ participants. (This later proposal has
> the problem that only a continuous participation of the same non-gov
> participants throughout the WG's life is really meaningful.)
>
>  To proceed from what looked like a Chair's WG versus CSTD WG stalemate,
> seeing that dev countries were not going to move from their understanding of
> it being a CSTD WG, I proposed a new formula to one of the most active
> developing country participant - that of permanent 'invited participants'
> 'who will remain fully engaged throughout the process'. To me, this appeared
> the best we could get, and still a considerable step forward.
>
> The mentioned dev country rep then suggested the text 'The Chair invites
> the following stakeholders to participate in the Working Group....' which is
> 'the' key part of the agreed document now. I directly suggested to the chair
> to add the part 'will remain fully engaged throughout the process' which she
> graciously did. I thought this statement can be used to assure a fair amount
> of space and rights within the WG. Later, a developed country rep, pursuing
> a similar line of thought, asked for inclusion of the word 'interactively' -
> as in 'interactively participate'. This was very useful. What we were trying
> here was to get some text in to try and guarantee that once the WG is set
> up, more excluding norms may not evolve by practise.
>
> Pushing it further towards greater equality of status of non-gov
> participants, Anriette suggested  that the text be changed to 'chair invites
> to join' rather than participate. This text went up for a while but got
> removed later.
>
> I think that overall it may not be too bad a deal we got. I would much
> prefer that we now move on to discussing what substantive changes or
> improvements we want to see in the IGF. If we get a good set of 5 people in,
> we can use the civil society's greater readiness to come up with new ideas,
> develop implementable details around them etc to make some really good
> impact.
>
> We need to talk and collaborate with the business and technical community
> as we need to with gov reps for pushing what we want to see happen (and to
> figure that out is more important). However, developing any kind of grand
> alliance with a shrill anti dev country govs rhetoric  may not be the best
> thing to do now. Yes, our interests are shared vis a vis greater openness of
> processes, and we will need to huddle together every time new efforts get
> made to demote the level of participation of nongov stakeholders in the WG
> processes. But that is a tactical thing we have always been doing. We may
> have known convergences in a few substantive areas - like our opposition to
> moving the IGF secretariat to NY and the desire for keeping it independent
> etc.... However, there are also a large number of divergences in key areas
> where the idea may be to make IGF as a more valuable institution to be able
> to really contribute to global IG related policies. These areas may be the
> more important ones to focus on in terms of real IGF improvements.
>
> In this regard, apart from mentioning how the IGF should complement, and
> thus contribute to, the proposed process of enhanced cooperation which would
> directly deal with global Internet policy issues, the relevant part of the
> GA resolution also gives a significant pointer of the directions in which it
> would like to see improvements in the IGF .
>
> "....... while recognizing at the same time the need to improve it (IGF),
> with a view to linking it to the broader dialogue on global Internet
> governance".
>
> Parminder
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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