[governance] critique of the IBSA proposal

Wed Sep 21 13:08:59 EDT 2011

Hello all

I was at the the IBSA meeting in Brazil along with two other people from
South Africa. Shaun Pather, an academic working on community
informatics, and Mark Weinberg from the Right to Know Campaign.

I have not had time to share my own thoughts.. or even write up the
notes from my inputs at the Rio meeting. APC is having an internal
discussion on the proposals with members but it will take a while for us
to have a position on this.

My own views (not APC's) are that the proposals should be considered as
a really strong signal that current IG arrangements are just not working
for developing country governments, including some that are committed to
multi-stakeholder participation, and to the IGF, and who have been
attending ICANN meetings for a long time.

Some of these governments share a concern with many CSOs that the
internet is increasingly being run by powerful corporations; that policy
is being made by actors who cannot be really be held accountable in any
tangible way.

At the same time I have concerns - based on personal and political
experience - about the implications for human rights, openness and for
the participation of civil society, social entrepreneurs, hackers,
developers etc. of more rigid institutionalisation of intergovernmental
oversight of internet governance.  I also have seen so many times that
when governments argue about multi-stakeholder participation, or human
rights, that even the ones are committed to it, will be willing to
sacrifice it for the sake of other geo-political interests.

I also wanted to respond to Parminder on civil society involvement in
the OECD. My own involvement in CSISAC dates back to its formation at
the Seoul meeting in 2008, but other civil society people have been
working at OECD level for a long, long time, e.g. EDRI, EFF, EPIC,
Privacy International and many others.

My impression of civil society involvement in the OECD is very different
from yours Parminder. I have never understood that it is seen as an
endorsement of any kind. Yes, there is a recognition that the OECD has
had a good track record on certain issues such as, for example,
protection of personal privacy.

To say civil society 'enthusiastically engages with it' does not
describe my experience of it. It is hard work, with little resources,
and requires a great deal of preparation and research. It is also quite
tough because you have to lobby hard for your interests against people
from the business sector that are really good at what they do, and
incredibly well prepared and organised within their constituency.

I have been really impressed by the CSISAC community's voluntary
commitment and hard work to try and keep civil society voices heard in
the OECD. It is not easy.

Others should comment, but my sense was that the reason that CSOs like
EPIC, EDRI, consumer groups and many others worked so hard to get
recognition at OECD level was because they were concerned that the OECD
was not systematically including civil society, resulting the views and
interests of the other nongovernmental stakeholders like the technical
community and businesses influencing OECD directives at the expense of
the public interest and civil society concerns.

In other words, it was a move to prevent bad decisions, rather than an
endorsement of the OECD as the perfect model of international
decision-making on the internet.

The OECD like the UN and other international organisations have some
really excellent people on staff who are generally very progressive and
who do their best to ensure that 'pro-public interest' (for want of a
better phrase) decisions are made. But this is no guarantee that in the
end governments will not make decisions that they, or civil society for
that matter, are not happy with as we have seen with regard to issues
like intermediary liability and IPR protection in the 'internet
governance principles' adopted in June 2011.

The OECD exists, and it makes important decisions that are relevant to
the progressive CSOs that have worked for many years in OECD countries
to protect the public interest. That is why for them the OECD is a site
of struggle.. and.. as OECD guidelines etc. are often picked up in other
parts of the world it has also become an important site of struggle for
civil society from developing countries.

Anriette

On 21/09/11 06:52, parminder wrote:

[snip]
> 
>>  While I don't favor UN-based intergovernmental control,
> 
> When OECD does it, it is 'policy making', and the civil society
> enthusiastically engages with it, when UN seeks to do it, it is
> 'control' . This is amusing!! The power of the discourse!!
> 
>> the idea's been floating in the wind and configuring perceptions and
>> dialogue for so long that it would be useful to finally hear the
>> proponents get up in public and make their case about what problems
>> require such a solution,
> 
> Exactly the same problems that OECD, CoE etc think 'require a solution',
> and are intensively working on; to whose work in this area, there never
> seems to have been an objection. Every of their document speaks of
> urgent need of frameworks of principles, global agreements etc. The same
> problems, and similar sought solutions, just more democratic and
> inclusive.....
> 
> I have thrown this challenge at 'you guys' - to borrow your term - often
> in this list but without response, and I repeat it.
> 
> *On what basis do you oppose, say, if  the EXACT mechanism that OECD follows
> 
>  in policy making, framework development, etc in the area of
> international internet-related public policies, with its exact
> mechanisms of multi-stakeholder participation also thrown in,
> 
> was to instituted in the UN .... which simply means it would be
> democratic, a prime civil society value, i would think......*
> 
> It is by answering clearly such direct questions, and getting into a
> full debate over them that constitutes openness and transparency, not
> just by using the power of the dominant discourse and vocabulary to
> condemn others to evilness of being closed and non-transparent, and
> arrogating to oneself all the corresponding good qualities....
> 
> parminder
>  
> 
> 
>> how it could possibly work, why the benefits would outweigh the costs,
>> how consensus could be achieved and how you'd proceed if it cannot,
>> and so on.  That certainly did not happen within the WGIG with respect
>> to the three "oversight" models some of the government reps put on the
>> table (which, BTW, the caucus strongly opposed at the time).  It would
>> be better to finally have an open multistakeholder debate on the
>> merits than for the IBSA governments to take it to their summit and
>> into the UN GA without the benefit of this reality check.
>>
>> On Sep 18, 2011, at 6:27 AM, Marilia Maciel wrote:
>>>
>>> 2) During the next IGF, government representatives have accepted to
>>> take part in several workshops organized by CS that are discussing
>>> IGF improvement, when they will certainly be able to talk about
>>> IBSA's aims.  So the discussion will not bypass the IGF as you said.
>>> I hope you will be there to raise your issues. 
>>
>> There will be more opportunities than this.  For example, I intend to
>> raise it again in the main session on CIR, which I'm co-moderating
>> with Emily Taylor, and in my workshop on institutional choice in
>> GIG http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/component/chronocontact/?chronoformname=WSProposals2011View&wspid=178
>> <http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/component/chronocontact/?chronoformname=WSProposals2011View&wspid=178>,
>> which is a feeder for the CIR session.  Tulika from the Indian
>> government will be speaking on both, as will Alice, Anriette, and
>> Fiona (plus others here who are on or the other, e.g. Avri, Jeanette,
>> Patrik..).  So let's get it out in the open and hear what people have
>> to say either way.  While such a debate will be divisive, a UN GA
>> proposal that hasn't been openly debated would be much more so.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Bill
>>
>>
>> ***************************************************
>> William J. Drake
>> International Fellow
>> Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
>> University of Zurich, Switzerland
>> william.drake at uzh.ch <mailto:william.drake at uzh.ch>
>> www.mediachange.ch/people/william-j-drake
>> <http://www.mediachange.ch/people/william-j-drake>
>> www.williamdrake.org <http://www.williamdrake.org>
>> ****************************************************
>>

-- 
------------------------------------------------------
anriette esterhuysen anriette at apc.org
executive director, association for progressive communications
www.apc.org
po box 29755, melville 2109
south africa
tel/fax +27 11 726 1692
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