[governance] IGF Cancelled

Fri Jul 26 03:28:40 EDT 2013

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Dear all

No formal notification has yet been sent by the Indonesian government,
as Donny has pointed out. This was also confirmed to me by the
Secretariat yesterday.

Let's wait until it is official before assuming that the IGF in Bali is
cancelled.

On de-linking the IGF from the UN... I agree with Parminder and Nick. 
It would be a substantial blow to efforts to create more inclusive
international governance processes. It would reinforce efforts to make
an existing intergovernmental body like the ITU (which has a narrower
more technocratic focus, and which is only just beginning to recognise
the need for being more inclusive) responsible for being the UN-based
space to deal with internet policy. It would undermine efforts of
UN-bodies like UNESCO and the CSTD who are trying to be more inclusive.

It would also make it MUCH harder to get meaningful developing country
participation in internet policy.

Perhaps a new forum can be rebuilt somewhere else, with some other
funding. Yes, one could do that and find ways of involving civil
society. Technical community, developers, standard setters and business
people will come along, and so will a few governments who a) have the
resources and b) are not fully committed to international governance. 
But most governments from the developing world are not likely to
participate effectively.

More over, ground gained at regional and national levels could also be
lost. Is our longer term project not to achieve more democracy and
social justice in ALL global governance? I have always believed (naively
perhaps) that the IGF has been, and could be, a significant milestone on
this path.

The IGF still has to improve, substantially. At times this feels hard to
achieve considering the lack of resources and capacity. The UN system
has to be challenged and perhaps this threat of the IGF being cancelled
should really galvanise us to look at the model and the relationships.

But at this point in time I feel the loss would be huge.

Anriette

On 26/07/2013 07:59, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
> On 26/07/13 13:06, parminder wrote:
>>
>>> and given that a lot of the obstruction of the IGF has come from UNOG
>>> (funding constraints, censorship, Secretariat-led policy direction),
>>> other options have to be considered.
>>
>> Again, similar standard 'logics' against public system. Beyond a point
>> one cannot keep responding to them. BTW, it is the 'multistakeholders'
>> that were strictly against UN based stable funding for the IGF during
>> the proceedings of the WG on IGF improvements , and what censorship
>> are you talking about...
>
> The seized postcards and posters, the unwritten rules about what you can
> say about whom, etc.
>
>> .. and dont know what you mean by secretariat -led policy, which
>> secretariat BTW is now led by an ISOC appointed and paid person.......
>
> Yes, what a farce.  But long before that, Nitin and Markus had shaped
> the IGF into the image they had in mind for it all along, and it was
> very easy for them in that position of power to ignore the submissions
> about the IGF's structure and processes that didn't conform to that
vision.
>
>>> We have WTO, ISO, etc as intergovernmental organisations that are
>>> notionally separate from the UN, so why not the IGF as well
>>
>> No problem for it to be notionally separate from anywhere, till it
>> remains a public system and not corporate driven... (there is a limit
>> to which the multistakeholder front for corporate control can be
employed)
>
> Just also to note that I'm not humming a new tune here in suggesting
> that the IGF eventually cast off the UN.  Five years ago I wrote that "a
> thin link between [the IGF] and the existing international system [is
> justified] at least until the network builds up sufficient social
> capital across all stakeholder groups to,break free and become fully
> autonomous."
>
> On the other hand I also take your point that when we try to reinvent
> intergovernmentalism we tend to do it badly.  The GAC is one case in
> point, the WTO another (and its love child, the TPP, worse still).
>
> But one can draw strong parallels between the case for ICANN shedding
> its links to the US government and the IGF breaking free of its roots in
> the United Nations.
>
>>> - but it's clear there will be no funding flowing from the UN anyway,
>>
>> give the dog a bad name and then hang it... Starve the UN of funds,
>> dont allow the IGF improvement working group to decide on UN funding
>> for the IGF and then use the argument 'there anyway isnt going to be
>> any flow of funding from the UN'.... Doesnt work.
>
> Fair criticism.
>
>>> so I don't see how cutting the UN loose would make the situation worse.
>>
>> If you are intent on not seeing how corporate controlled policy spaces
>> will be lot worse than where we are today, I really cannot do much
>> about it...
>
> No I do see that, and I would support any change that would turn the IGF
> into a corporate controlled policy space.  But I don't think much of the
> way the UN has handled it either.  If the mandate is not renewed by the
> General Assembly next time, we'll have to reconsider this then.  So this
> seemed like another apposite opportunity.
>

- -- 
- ------------------------------------------------------
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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