[governance] IGF improvements: Forwards or Backwards?

[Hakikur Rahman]

Prof. Kleinwächter:

Very good pointers to move ahead towards 2020, 
realizing the outcome which started in 2002 and 
back the idea of ´WITHIN´ the WSIS process as an inclusive agenda.

Hakik


At 10:44 30-10-2011, Kleinwächter, Wolfgang wrote:
>Hi everybody
>
>I will give my specific and detailed analysis of 
>the Indian proposal a little bit later but for 
>now it seems to be that it is important to 
>clarify what the final objective is when we 
>enter into a new round of interlinked and 
>interrelated global discussion and negotiations 
>and meet next week for the IGF Improvement WG CSTD meeting in Geneva.
>
>Do we want to move towards an improved 
>multistakeholder PROCESS or do we plan to build 
>a new multigovernmental STRUCTURE.
>
>The debate about multilateralism vs. 
>multistakeholderism in Nairobi was very 
>enlightening. My argument was that the 
>multilateral intergovernmental treaty system 
>will be more and more embedded into a 
>multistakeholder environment where the 
>interactive dialog among the stakeholders leads 
>to a common understanding which can produce a 
>(multistakeholder) "Framework of Commitments" 
>instead of a (intergovermental) "Framework Convention".
>
>The question for the future of the IGF is 
>whether it will provide a space also for 
>governments to give their input into a 
>multistakeholder process or whether the IGF 
>itself should become a place which produces 
>input into an intergovernmental process.
>
>If the role of the IGF would be reduced to give 
>input into an intergovernmental body we would be 
>back in 2002 when the WSIS started with exactly 
>the same structure. We had an "Intergovernmental 
>WSIS Bureau" and two "Non-governmental 
>Stakeholder WSIS Bureaus" which were invited to 
>give "input" into the intergovernmental negotiations.
>
>The result is known. When the "Civil Society 
>WSIS Bureau" gave 96 recommendations to the 1st 
>draft tabled by the "Intergovernmental WSIS 
>Bureau" in September 2003, only three Civil 
>Society proposals were reflected in the 2nd 
>draft of the intergovernmental declaration in 
>October 2003. When CS protested and labeled the 
>governmental behaviour as "ignorant" and 
>"arrogant", WSIS president Sammassekou, who told 
>civil society in early September 2003 that we 
>should move from "input" to "impcat" and from 
>"turmoil" to "trust" in the relationship between 
>governments and civil society, maneuvered and 
>explained to the WSIS Civil Society Bureau that 
>this is the nature of the intergovernmental 
>process. Nobody would get everything.
>
>However, the feeling of "ignorance" of civil 
>society input into an intergovernmental process 
>could not be wished away. This pushed civil 
>society into a position to consider to leave the 
>whole WSIS and to organize an alternative 
>process. I remember the meeting with the Swiss 
>President where he tried to convince civil 
>society that it would make sense to "stay within 
>the process" and not to march through the 
>streets of Geneva. He signaled understanding for 
>the frustration of the civil society and refered 
>to the fact that such an innovation in global 
>policy making as the multistakeholder approach 
>would need some times for all stakeholders to 
>get a better understanding what this means in 
>reality. I remember also the press conference in 
>Geneva in October 2003 with hundreds of 
>journalists who wanted to see the walk our of 
>civil society and the collapse of WSIS.
>
>The "alternative process" which was finally 
>accepted by the 500+ civil society organisations 
>after several night sessions was to stay  and to 
>organize the alternative "WITHIN" the WSIS 
>process. The result was the "Civil Society WSIS 
>Declaration" which was handed over to the 
>President of the WSIS (intergovernmental) 
>summit. The comments in December 2003 were that 
>the intergovernmental document formulated what 
>"could be done" while the CS Declaration said 
>what "should be done". It is worth to re-read 
>the civil society Geneva Declaration from December 2003.
>
>As an outcome of this "parallel process" the 
>WGIG, which was established after the Geneva 
>Summit as a truly multistakeholder body where 
>governmental and non-governmental members had 
>the same speaking and drafting rights. WGIG 
>produced the "Internet Governance  definition" 
>where it linked the stakeholders into a common 
>process with no stakeholder in the "leadership 
>position" ("shared decison making procedures" 
>and "respective roles".) This definition was 
>adopted by the heads of states of 160+ 
>governments, including the governments of Brazil, India, China and Russia.
>
>To go back to 2002 for an IGF, which is now 
>confronted with the challenges of the year 2020, 
>would be the wrong u-turn. I hope that the civil 
>society members of the IGF working group will 
>remember history, can make this clear to 
>governments and other members of the group and 
>come with better "improvement proposals" into 
>the meeting next Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday.
>
>Wolfgang
>
>
>________________________________
>
>Von: governance at lists.cpsr.org im Auftrag von William Drake
>Gesendet: So 30.10.2011 10:16
>An: Marilia Maciel
>Cc: Governance List
>Betreff: [governance] Indian proposal => "IGF improvements"
>
>
>Hi Marilia
>
>Since you and our other reps will soon be in 
>Geneva for the WGIGF meeting, it seems timely to circle back to this thread.
>
>
>On Oct 21, 2011, at 4:18 PM, Marilia Maciel wrote:
>
>
>         I would like to focus on what Bill has 
> mentioned. I believe it is a very important 
> topic, given the fact that we are close to the 
> CSTD WG meeting and "outcomes" will be an important topic:
>
>
>
>                 This is a barrier I wish we 
> could somehow overcome.  As long as developing 
> country intergovernmental efforts on EC and in 
> the ITU appear to have intergovernmental 
> control as their end game and the IGF is 
> getting tactically linked to this as you noted, 
> one imagines the TC, business, and a lot of 
> governments will remain wedded to the fear that 
> an IGF that does more than meet and chat once a 
> year would necessarily get leveraged to advance 
> that agenda.  And CS proponents of more 
> intensive, structured and "outcome" oriented 
> dialogues will remain isolated and 
> frustrated.  If intergovernmental control could 
> be taken off the table, at least outside the 
> ITU, that might help to make "IGF improvements" a less divisive topic.
>
>
>
>         I think we should separate the two 
> topics, IGF improvements and enhanced 
> cooperation. They are related, but they are 
> different topics. And I personally think that a 
> more outcome oriented IGF would be beneficial 
> with our without the implementation of enhanced cooperation.
>
>
>
>I wish it were otherwise, but they have been 
>very closely related since CS first started 
>advocating an IGF in 2004 and will be more so 
>going forward. We were told by several people 
>here that nobody should be concerned about the 
>Rio proposal because it was just a draft and of 
>course the 3 governments would be fully taking 
>on board the opposition voiced by virtually 
>everyone who spoke to it in the Nairobi CIR 
>session.   I therefore asked why the Tshwane 
>Declaration didn't just come out and take the UN 
>oversight body concept off the table if that was 
>true.  Now we have the answer-it wasn't.
>
>Irrespective of any stakeholder views, the 
>Indian government has ploughed ahead and 
>formally proposed almost precisely what the 
>"just a draft" said (actually it's worse-the 
>Indian language adds to the list of functions, 
>"Facilitate negotiation of treaties, conventions 
>and agreements on Internet-related public 
>policies"...this to be done by 50 governments 
>that meets for two weeks a year for ten six hour 
>days).  And they did this in a purely 
>intergovernmental setting where stakeholder 
>views are duly ignored.  One might add that I 
>asked the indian representative twice on stage 
>whether/when a proposal might go to the GA and 
>got evasive answers.  Since this was done a 
>couple weeks after Nairobi, one has to assume 
>that they'd already decided and just weren't 
>going to say it in a multistakeholder setting 
>where people might raise questions, which 
>strikes me as rather indicative of how we can 
>expect all this to be handled going forward.
>
>So now we have been allowed to see the Indian 
>proposal, and it says inter alia that "An 
>improved and strengthened lGF that can serve as 
>a purposeful body for policy consultations and 
>provide meaningful policy inputs to the CIRP, 
>will ensure a stronger and more effective 
>complementarity between the CIRP and the 
>IGF."   So let's no longer pretend that the two 
>issues can be viewed separately.  The Indian 
>proposal for IGF improvements that you and some 
>others have championed here has been directly 
>linked to the establishment of a UN body for 
>enhanced cooperation by the Indian 
>government.   To me this is a pity, because the 
>former does have some good ideas that if 
>decoupled from an intergovernmental end game on 
>EC would have made the IGF more useful and 
>closer to what some of us hoped for back in 
>2004.  But the linkage has been spelled out, and 
>I strongly suspect the Indian IGF improvement 
>proposals are now dead on arrival.  Why would 
>all the actors that oppose intergovernmental 
>control support IGF proposals that are designed 
>to enable IGF to feed into an intergovernmental 
>control mechanism?  India has given away the 
>game that these actors always insisted was 
>really being played behind the scenes.
>
>We are probably now in for an unproductive WGIGF 
>process.  I suspect that for the next half year 
>we'll be getting frustrated emails from you and 
>our other reps about how the TC, business, and 
>non-G77/China governments are blocking this or 
>that proposal for more structured dialogues, 
>working groups, outputs, etc.  It is unclear 
>that CS will be able to articulate some sort of 
>third way that would make the IGF more than an 
>annual chat fest without this being viewed as 
>part of a larger and more important battle, 
>especially when some of our representatives are 
>closely identified with the intergovernmental 
>agenda.  At the moment i'm not too hopeful, but 
>would be interested to hear discussion of ways in which this could be done.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Bill
>
>
>
>
>
>
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