AW: [governance] ISOC/USG WCIT Post Mortem

Sat Jan 19 04:33:52 EST 2013

Parminder:

I find so many, including on this list, who were so solidly against the Internet resolution appended to the new ITRs, which merely reasserted the activities that ITU already does in IG space and nothing more, are now getting very energetically ready to participate in the ITU's WTPF, which will deal with nothing other than Internet Governance. This is a real paradox for me.

Wolfgang:
This is no paradox. The problem with the WCIT resolution and the WTPF agenda (and the WTDC road map) is that there are obviously ambitions by some ITU member states to build an alternative "multistakeholder" Internet Governance mechanism under ITU (governmental) leadership. 

If you read carefully the references in the ITU documents than they go back to the Geneva 2003 declaration which gives the governments the "only" role to decide on public policy issues related to the Internet by just "consulting" non-governmental stakeholders. This approach ignores widely the WGIG report and the Tunis Agenda which goes beyond Geneva and proposed "shared" policy development and decision making procedures. It would be much wiser for the ITU to implement more seriously its Resolutions 102 and 103 from Guadalajara which invites ITU to enhance cooperation with ICANN, RIRs, W3C, ISOC etc. and to identify what the role of the ITU in the global IG Ecosystem could and should be. Nearly nothing has been done (with the exception of the Baku breakfest between Hammdoun and Fadi and the invitation to Fadi to give a welcome speech in Dubai). 

There is an impression that ITU does not like to be one unit among other IG organisations in this networked ecosystem where policies are developed bottom up by all stakeholders. Some ITU member states want that the ITU is a "leader" in a hierarchical system where governments make decicions (in the best case after "informal consultations" with non-govenrmental stakeholders) and the non-govenrmental stakeholders has just to implement what was decided by the governments (in intergovernmental negotiations behind closed doors). But the Internet does not need "leadership" it needs communication, coordination and collaboration of all involved parties.  

The engagement of non-govenrmetal stakehooders, including civil society, in WCIT, WTPF and WTDC is needed to bring the ITU down to earth and to help them to find its role in the networkde IG ecosystem. Infrastructure development and frequency coordination is one of the key roles where ITU is needed and where neither ICANN nor the RIRs should play a role. But there is no need to develop within the ITU capacities for DNS management or IP address allocation. 

Wolfgang

Here is what I wrote in my article about the WCIT Resolution:

"The text (of the WCIT Resolution) has two parts. Part 1 just refers to a number of documents adopted by WSIS and ITU at previous conferences. Part 2 invites the ITU member states and the ITU Secretary General to engage in Internet related public policy issues by using the multistakeholder model. What was wrong with this language? 

The six preamble paragraphs look rather harmless, but if you go to the references in the WSIS documents, you discover a one-sided approach. Para. 35 is language from the Geneva summit in 2003 which refers to the role of the various stakeholders in Internet Governance. It includes the statement that "policy authority for Internet-related public policy issues is the sovereign right of States". This was before the WGIG report which defined Internet Governance as "shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures, and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet" on the basis of the multistakeholder model (Tunis Agenda para. 34). Para. 35 was also enriched in the Tunis Agenda by para. 55, which recognized "that the existing arrangements for Internet governance have worked effectively to make the Internet the highly robust, dynamic and geographically diverse medium that it is today, with the private sector taking the lead in day-to-day operations, and with innovation and value creation at the edges." Would a sole reference to para. 35 mean to go back to a pre-Tunis time? Why the authors of the resolution did not refer to para. 34 and para. 55?

A similar unbalanced approach can be found in the second part of the Resolution. It just invites ITU Member States and instructs the ITU Secretary General to develop public policies for the Internet within the ITU by ignoring the existing Internet Governance mechanisms outside ITU.

Was this omission intentionally? Was the "broader Tunis approach" just forgotten? The imbalances in the two parts of the resolution could have been easily repaired. One could have just added

*	a reference to para. 34 and 55 of the Tunis Agenda into the Preamble;
*	an invitation to ITU member states to be more active in ICANNs Governmental Advisory Committee and
*	an instruction to the ITU Secretary General to enhance cooperation with ICANN and to strengthen his communication, coordination and collaboration with IETF, RIRs, W3C and other non-governmental members of the global Internet Governance Eco-System.

If the proposed compromise would have been based on a clear and honest understanding of the limited role of the ITU in Internet Governance and that the ITU is just a part of the global Internet Governance Eco System making valuable contributions to the global governance of the Internet by promoting first of all infrastructure development and recognizing that for other issues, including naming and numbering of Internet resources, other organizations have a leading role to play, such additional language should not have created a problem.

But this was obviously not the case. When the chair started the discussion of the resolution in the plenary long after midnight on Wednesday, the doubt was growing that this constructive expectation did not meet the reality. Already the first proposal to include para. 55 into paragraph d) of the preamble faced strong opposition from Saudi Arabia. And Russia said if the resolution is changed they come back with Document No. 47 as something like a "nuclear option". 

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20121217_wcit_and_internet_governance_harmless_resolution_or_trojan_horse/

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