[governance] Closing session civil society statement

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 28/09/2011, at 2:50 PM, Kleinwächter, Wolfgang wrote:

> Thanks for this clarification.
> 
> This underlines the need for CS to come up with an own draft of Internet Governance Principles. But this has to be done in an open and transparent manner. I am really surprised that IBSA worked in such an intransparent way. 


Referring back to the minutes of the IGC meeting, Wolfgang had suggested at that meeting that this should be a topic of our closing session speech, and that we should call for the IGF to adopt as its mission between now and the 2015 meeting to generate a truly multi-stakeholder statement of Internet governance principles.  We should now discuss that more.

I propose that in general terms we should talk in the closing session speech about how the various statements of principles that individual stakeholders are putting forward are good, because it shows that stakeholders are thinking about soft governance of the Internet rather than hard law.  Some stakeholders are even bringing their statements of principles back to the IGF to be discussed in workshops.  This is also good, since the IGF is the perfect place for such discussion.  But continuing this process, the next step will be for the IGF at large to progress towards consensus on common principles, and we call for the IGF to do this not merely in a stakeholder-organised workshop, but as a plenary body, involving all participants, and taking advantage of the improvements to its processes that we expect the CSTD Working Group will propose.  Amongst these improvements, we hope, will be a process to better involve remote participants, particularly from the global South, in the development of the principles.  As civil society's input into this process, we intend to prepare our own set of principles in an open and transparent fashion before the date of the next G20 meeting, and to formally launch them at the 2012 IGF. If such a set of common principles can emerge from the IGF before 2015, this accomplishment will imbue them with a status and legitimacy that none of the individual statements of principles - G8, CoE, EU, etc - could ever achieve.

Please provide your comments on the above.

Mallory Knodel wrote:

> Also, it's possible that I'll be dropping in at the IGF - will you hold a press conference at some point? Also, what's the on-the-ground mobilization in Nice or Cannes for publicizing it?


No plans for a press conference, but we can (see above) mention it in our closing session speech at the IGF.

I would have liked Izumi to deliver the closing address but he will be leaving Nairobi too early, and has asked me to do so.  But if anyone else wishes to deliver it, or has another name to put forward, please let me know.

-- 
Dr Jeremy Malcolm
Project Coordinator
Consumers International
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