AW: [governance] Internet G8 meeting

parminder parminder at itforchange.net
Thu May 5 02:14:15 EDT 2011


Wolfgang,

Thanks for this very informative historical brief. There are many points 
here that I will like to engage with, but let me just respond to two 
connected ones.

On Wednesday 04 May 2011 08:16 PM, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
> Hi everybody
>
> SNIP
> Later Al Gore presented this to a G 7 summit in Brussels in 1995, where also a so-called "Global Business Round Table" took place in parallel (which led later to the establishmend of the Global Business Dialogue on eCommerce/GBDe). After the Brussels meeting the G 7 (later the G 8) continued to work on this issue which finally produced the G 8 Okinawa Declaration from 2000 when the G 8 established to Digital Opportunity Task Froce (DotForce).
> http://www.undp.sk/uploads/Okinawa%20charter.pdf
>
> The G 8 DotForce Initiative was countered by an ECOSOC ministerial meeting in 2001 (a lot of UN member states felt excluded from the G7/8 process in Okinawa) and the UN established the UN ICT Task Force (UNICTTF).

That is an interesting parallel. Now that G 8 seems to be in a 'global 
agreement (read, among powerful countries, who are the self appointed 
trustees for the whole world) on key Internet issues'  sorts of mood, 
what next. Internet governance is even more political, globally, than 
was ICTD (the latter being more national kind of thing). So do we expect 
a UN backlash. It is already on through the politics around the 
'enhanced cooperation' process. What is our, global civil society's, 
specifically, IGC's, position on this?

Between a G8 led process of the kind underway, and a WSIS mandated 
'enhanced cooperation' process, where do we put our weight? (enough 
burying our collective heads in the sand on the global IG policy issue. 
That will only bring further harm to our cause. At least now we must 
learn our lessons that abdication would do on this issue.)

(SNIP)
>
> We should not forget that the WSIS/WGIG Internet Governance definition, which gives all stakeholder a role and calls for shared policy and rules development and decision making, was adopted by the heads of states of 190+ UN member states in Tunis in November 2005. Governments of the world commited themselves to the multistakeholder approach in Internet Governance. The French government, host of the G 8, obviously ignores this. Somebody should tell this to the president of this republic.
Why not us, the IGC. Who else will? But can we just write to them to 
make the process more multistakeholder, and not write that a closed 
process among the most powerful countries is not acceptable to the 
global civil society, representing marginalised interests, and all 
countires should be brought to the table to discus the issues that the 
G8 Internet meeting is proposing to do, and in this regard using the 
WSIS mandated 'enhanced cooperation' track is the right way to go.

Should IGC make such statement to the G8 meeting organisers?

Parminder

>
> Wolfgang
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