Funding for CSO participation (was Re: FW: [governance] Re: Day 2 - CSTD IGF WG)

[Norbert Bollow]

parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
> I reiterate what I said a couple of days back in response to Mike's 
> email that I am of the view that 'all' civil society participants to MAG 
> and such bodies/ committees etc must be financially supported.

I'm strongly in support of this view.

Last year the Dynamic Working Coalition for Internet Governance
Mapping (see http://idgovmap.org/ ) has conducted an online survey
on the topic "Public Interest Representation in Information Society"
to which 134 survey responses were received, from civil society
organizations (CSOs) and self-identified individual public interest
representatives.

One of the questions that we asked in the survey was: "What are the
three biggest problems for civil society at large in coordinating its
participation in institutions of governance in the information
society?"

The breakdown of responses is as follows: 

  No coordinating framework or process: 26
  Poor communication between CSOs: 30
  Too many institutions to cover: 20
  Forum shifting to bypass CSOs: 19
  Disagreements within civil society: 14
  Decline of multi-stakeholderism: 11
  Lack of funding for participation: 47
  Other: 5

>From the perspective of the overall perception of the survey
respondents (and that is probably as close to reliable truth as one
can get on this question), lack of funding for participation is
clearly the single biggest obstacle.

It prevents people and entire stakeholder groups from being heard.

The consequence is that their problems, view, concerns and
perspectives will not be taken into consideration until this problem
has been solved.

Greetings,
Norbert.
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