AW: [governance] Formal IGC response to IBSA proposal ahead of 18-19 Summit?

Wed Oct 12 11:18:45 EDT 2011

Hi everybody

it seems to me that the time has come again to have a very basic discussion about what have to be done by whom and where shuld it be done to keep the Internet open, free, stable, accessible for everybody, human rights oriented and to guarantee - as outlined in the Tunis Agenda - that governments have equal rights in determining Internet related public policy issues on a global level.

2011 has seen numerous approaches and initiativeas to answer questions which have raised in the six years since the adoption of the Tunis Agenda, which included IGF and EC as two interelated but distinct processes. A number of the proposals are new, others are old wine in net bottles. A number of issues from 2005 have been settled now. Other issues are still open. 

>From a CS point of view I think time is ripe now to take a more holistic approach, to define more in detail what the "respective role" of CS is in this global power struggle, what WE want to achieve in the discussions with governments and the private sector and how we shuld re-organize ourselves. We should first ask some very concrete questions before we propose general policy recommendations and legal actions. 

The various proposals on the table now (IBSA, COE, G8, OECD, OSCE, NATO, USA, EU, Shanghai-Group plus APC, Brazil, DC IRP plus ACTA and numerous national laws etc.) have something in common but are also rather different and contradict each other. Sometimes one government in one IGO supports a principle which is in contrast to another principle in a document adopted by another IGO where the same government is a member state. Look at Russia: As member of the G 8 it supports the principle of multistakeholder policy, but in the joint proposal with the Shanghai Group, it ignores it. Or Germany: It supports the more economic approach in the OECD and the more human rights aproach in the Council of Europe (which can lead to conflicts in concrete cases where you have to balance conflicting interests). The US supports freedom of expression but is critical with regard to Wikileaks, which is in the eyes of a lot of stakeholders a good example for freedom of expression. UK supports in the G8 a free Internet, but works at home to introduce drastic limitations, as France does it with HADOPI. 

And there are differences in approaches. Council of Europe has included civil society in drafting its declaration and was lstening to it until the very end. OECD included also civil society but ignored the voice in the last minute. Both OECD and COE were open for discussion in Nairobi. ISBA (in particular the Brazilian and Indian government) were also not afraid to face a multistakeholder discussion in Nairobi and they accepted critical interventions. But Russia and China rejected any form of multistakeholder debate on their proposal in Nairob. They just announced their plan of the Code of Conduct and did not answer any question. So we have also different discussion cultures on the governmental level.

What I propose for our discussiomn is to seperate the issues for a more systematic structured discussion. I see three big issues:

1. the need to work towards a general (and global) "Framework of Commitments" (FoC) in form of a set of general principles as guidelines for "good behaviour" in the Internet (the so-called "constitutional moment", as it was discussed in Nairobi). Here one question is whether such a Declaration, code of conduct, compact or FoC should be elaborated by governments only or should it be a multistakeholder task. And the second question is who shoud do this: one of the existing bodies? the UN? the IGF? a new multistakeholder body (like the WGIG)? 

2. the need to identify gaps in the existing institutional framework. The question here is which issues can NOT be settled within the existing governmental and non-governmental organisations. In case we can clear define what the missing link is what would be the right answer: tzo improve existing organisaitons by a reform process? To create a new body? What such a new body would do better and why? What would be the concrete mandate, the membership, the budget, the oversight? 

3. the need to specify global public policies on specific issues like social networks, search engines, cloud computing, CIR management, IOT, intermediaries etc. with regard to privacy, freedom of expression, security, crime prevention, IPR etc. Here we have to identify the specific nature of the problem and to look for a concrete answer how to deal with this specific problem, whether a best practice guideline, a general political recommendation or a legally binding norm is necassary. And again: who should do this? We have to be very carefully that we first identify the issue before we start to develop policies and move to instruments. Here we need a case by case approach. There will be different solutions for different issues and at the end there will be a very diversified and distributed system of policies and mechanisms to implement (and to oversee/review) those policies. 

4. the need to develop further a multistakeholder oversight mechanism. There new AoC review mechanism is conceptually a good starter to rethink the traditional approach to oversight. We need oversight to strengthen transparency, legitimacy and accountability, but there is no need to have ONE oversight body for all Internet related public policy issues. Each issue probably needs a specifically designed oversight mechanism. And such a mechanism has to be designed on a multistakeholder basis. Unfortunately the first review under the AoC (ATRT) was done in a hurry and was not so impressive. But the proposed design is an interesting step into a new territory how oversight can be organized issue based, decentralized and on a multistakeholder basis. And BTW, who oversees bodies like ITU, WIPO and the UN?

Part of this issue will be discussed in the IGF Imrpovment working group but CS and the Caucus should trs to find its own mechanisms to move foreward to make proposals to the various bodies. The letter to the UNGA (the Shanghai project) was a good starter. More has to be done.

Wolfgang

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