AW: [governance] critique of the IBSA proposal

Sun Sep 18 04:42:21 EDT 2011

Hi everybody

the IBSA initiative is a good case to broaden the ongoing discussion about global Internet Governance policy making and the development of frameworks as it has been triggered in 2011 by the G8, OECD, Council of Europe, the US government and the EU (with its neboulos Internet Compact and the confusing six secret ICANN papers). Now the picture gets more comprehensive and the only thing we are missing in this concert is a Chinese proposal. Anybody can explain why China is silent? Do they plan to propose something during the forthcoming G 20 summit in Cannes? Or during the 66th UN General Assembly? Who represents the Chinese government at the forthcoming IGF?

Anyhow, the IBSA approach is interesting and I share Miltons point that it would have been much better to involve the IGF. Unfortunately the IBSA countries used the same approach as the G 8 (which was widely critisized as arrogant and ignorant) and excluded non-governmental stakeholders from the discussion. But it is still in the early stage and there will be - hopefully - chances to correct this.

For me it is unclear how the IBSA countries position themselves to the principle of multistakeholderism (which is singled out as a key principle in similar final documents of G 8, OECD, Council of Europe etc.). It seems that this is at the moment a purely inter-governmental thing. 

However the IBSA Rio Recommendation (September 2, 2011) includes in its 4th paragraph  the formuation that the IBSA meeting stressed "to ensure that Internet Governance is transparent, democratic, multistakeholder and multilateral as mandated by the Tunis Agenda." This is interesting. The original text of the Tunis Agenda (para. 48) is  "The international management of the Internet should be multilateral, transparent and democratic, with the full involvement of governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations." Some people will remember the hot dispute among the words "multilateral" (inter-state) and "multistakeholder" (governments and non-governmental groups). 

If I compare the two formulations than I see that the IBSA countries goe beyond the Tunis agenda by putting "multistakeholder" before "multilateral" and giving "Transparency" and "Democracy" first priority. This is good. And this reflects also a discussion we had during the IGF workshop in San Francisco where I got a question (from a Brazilian friend) how I see the future of the intergovernmental treaty system (under international law) in the future of Internet regulation. My answer was that intergovernmental treaties will not disappear and will play an even greater role, but they will be and has to be "embedded" into a multistakeholder environment. One could conclude form here, that "policies" has to be developed in a multistakeholder transparent bottom up way but if it comes to binding decision, than governments have to take the lead and have to translate policies into law (which are legally binding treaties). 

This seems for me a rational approach. What I miss in the IBSA project is that they do not make clear to distinction between multistakeholder policy development and multilateral treaty (law) making. I hope that the IBSA countries will open the discussuion on this issue on October 18, 2011 in Durban to non-governmental stakeholders (at best from all over the world /as the Council of Europe did in April 2011 in Strasbourg/ and at least from their own countries). 

It remains to be seen how far we can come with Internet treaties, taking into account also the Russian initiative in the 1st Committee of the UN General Assembly. Nevertheless I remain sceptical with regard to intergovernmental treaties (hard law). It will eat away years to reach a very general consensus among 190+ nation states and probably another decade until a relevant number of national parliaments have ratified such a treaty to become binding law. Soft Law in form of policy guidelines are probably more efficient (and flexible, as McTim has pointed out), but such policies should be developed bottom up with the inclusion of all stakeholders (and not top down behind closed doors by one stakeholder group alone).

BTW another point I miss in the IBSA declaration is a reference to human rights. For the 47 member states of the Council of Europe the protection of Human Rights has the first priority in Internet policy making. It would be good if the IBSA countries could fully support the report of the the Human Rights Rapporteur Frank La Reau with regard to Internet Freedoms, as discussed in the UN Human Rights Council.  

Anyhow, interesting phase of Internet Governance Policies.

Wolfgang
________________________________

Von: governance at lists.cpsr.org im Auftrag von Carlos A. Afonso
Gesendet: So 18.09.2011 01:15
An: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Rui Correia
Betreff: Re: [governance] critique of the IBSA proposal

While I wonder if I should delve my spoon into this complicated soup,
here is the official IBAS/IBSA site URL:

http://www.ibsa-trilateral.org/

A Southern Trilateral, how about that? :)

frt rgds

--c.a.

On 09/17/2011 06:59 PM, Rui Correia wrote:
> Hi
>
> Just in case anybody is wondering what IBSA is, it stands for
> India-Brasil-SouthAfrica,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India-Brazil-South_Africa_Dialogue_Forum(English)
> http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%B3rum_de_Di%C3%A1logo_%C3%8Dndia-Brasil-%C3%81frica_do_Sul(Portuguese)
>
> Not to be confused with the better known BRIC - Brasil-Russia-India-China;
> or
> BRICS - Brasil-Russia-India-China-SouthAfrica
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC (English)
> http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC (Portuguese)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS (English)
> http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS (Portuguese)
>
> Regards, great weekend
> Um abraço, bom fim de semana
>
> Rui
>
> 2011/9/17 Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu>
>
>> Some first reactions to the IBSA proposal. You will not be hearing any
>> applause from me. The proposal is unimaginative, backward-looking, and
>> authoritarian. If it were actually implemented, which is highly unlikely,
>> the proposal would be very destructive. ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> One notable and surprising thing: IBSA has bypassed the IGF. By putting
>> forward this proposal in the way it has, IBSA has openly declared that it
>> does not put any credibility or legitimacy in the IGF as a forum for
>> multistakeholder Internet policy development or discussion. This is true
>> because the IBSA proposal was developed outside of IGF in an exclusive club
>> of countries, and will not be put forward formally at the IGF. Rather, it
>> will be developed at the closed IBSA summit, and then taken directly to the
>> UN General Assembly. ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> This is unacceptable to civil society. It excludes us from the entire
>> process. IBSA needs to be asked why it has chosen not to use a MS forum, a
>> forum its members helped to create, to gain agreement for this proposal.**
>> **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> The IBSA report says that "the models proposed by the WGIG provided useful
>> guidelines" for a new global Internet governance body. This is a strange
>> statement. There were four different models proposed in the WGIG report, and
>> most of them were inconsistent with each other. One of the WGIG proposals
>> explicitly stated that no new global body was needed. So perhaps IBSA is
>> trying to pretend that its proposal has some kind of imprimatur from the
>> WGIG or the WSIS. It doesn't. WGIG couldn't agree on any of those models,
>> that was the point of listing 4 of them.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> The specific duties of the new global body make up an interesting list. It
>> will be "tasked to develop and establish international public policies." So
>> it makes the same stupid mistake that governments have been making all
>> along: it is law, i.e. rules, not "policy" that is needed. Policy just means
>> that a gang of governments attempts to dictate outcomes, or alter outcomes
>> whenever something happens that they don't like. Law on the other hand
>> provides a framework of clear rules that allows individual actors guidelines
>> and which also protects freedom. ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> And here's my favorite. IBSA proposes to "integrate and oversee the bodies
>> responsible for technical and operational functioning of the internet,
>> including global standards setting." So IBSA is not only proposing to take
>> over regulation of all the world's internet service providers, hosting
>> providers, mobile networks, and perhaps even equipment suppliers, it
>> proposes to "integrate and oversee" the IETF as well. Presumably ICANN, too.
>> No rationale for such a dramatic change is put forward. ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> This proposal will fail to gain support from most of the internet-using
>> civil society, it will be adamantly opposed by the technical community, and
>> it will have very little support from the academic community. Needless to
>> say, all Internet businesses will oppose it, and so will most governments
>> outside the IBSA orbit.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Milton L. Mueller****
>>
>> Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies****
>>
>> Internet Governance Project****
>>
>> http://blog.internetgovernance.org <http://blog.internetgovernance.org/>  ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> On Saturday 17 September 2011 01:40 AM, Marilia Maciel wrote: ****
>>
>> Hello everybody,
>>
>> I would like to share with you some news about the IBSA seminar on global
>> Internet governance that took place in FGV-Rio de Janeiro in the beginning
>> of this month. Tight schedule and deadlines have prevented me to report the
>> discussions with the depth and length I would like to, but I have written a
>> blog post about it to the site of the Brazilian Observatory of Digital
>> policies, which has been circulating on Twitter recently:
>>
>> http://observatoriodainternet.br/discussions-and-recommendations-from-the-ibsa-seminar-on-internet-governance
>>
>> I will be happy to talk more about it and share impressions here (if time
>> allows) or in Nairobi.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Marília
>>
>> ****
>>
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