[governance] IGF Cancelled

Fri Jul 26 09:24:18 EDT 2013

Agree with Anriette's assessment to wait for official news before jumping on the "igf bali got cancelled bandwagon"

suffice it to say - the situation is a complex one. The govt. is week, internal indonesian politics that are at play. Sources familiar with Indonesia tell me that the ICT minister is involved in a scandal and likely will be sacked when ramadan ends. The news could be seen as a manoeuvre to raise attention and help with fundraising..

What we need to look for are statements from the Indonesian president's office and/or the IGF secretariat on the status.

Prudent planners are also looking at contingencies - ie having the event take place elsewhere - but, crossing fingers that won't happen.

Will keep folks updated

Robert
--
R. Guerra
Phone/Cell: +1 202-905-2081
Twitter: twitter.com/netfreedom 
Email: rguerra at privaterra.org

On 2013-07-26, at 3:28 AM, Anriette Esterhuysen wrote:

> 
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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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