[governance] IGF Cancelled

Sun Jul 28 17:51:26 EDT 2013

My recollections of the discussions at the Working Group meetings are
the same as Marilia's.

A few other things. Not only developed countries opposed committed UN
funding. South Africa and Iran also opposed committed UN funding. I
discussed this later with the SA representatives at length, so I am very
certain about this.

Their reasons as I understood them were simple. The UN does not have the
funds, and the only way of getting the funds would be from member
contributions and many member countries were not able to contribute
more, nor did they want the developed countries to do so either for
various reasons.

As for a domain name 'tax', as Marilia said it was not discussed in
full. There are different money flows in the domain name system, and it
is a system that are run by primarily for-profit (and a few
not-for-profit) entities. One would need to come up with a model for how
this one would be collected, check how much it would contribute, do a
cost benefit analysis, etc.

Another option to explore would be the option of an additional payment
by domain name holders towards the IGF. 

But I don't see how this, if it is workable, is not part of a mixed model?

But as Marilia says, without quite specific models on the table it was
difficult to take this further. Moreover, there was no consensus on
putting detailed financial proposals in the report in the first place. 
Several other proposals for resourcing the IGF were also discussed, but
not included in the report.

As for my personal reasons for being 'lukewarm' about ICANN and the DNS
industry being a greater source of funds...I felt that more diversity of
sources would be a better option than extracting more from the same
sources that the IGF is already depending on. Not that I don't think
ICANN should contribute far more to the IGF!

I also think that if one does go for a 'tax/overhead' of some kind on
domain names, before assuming it should go to the IGF, one should
consider whether it could not be used for increasing affordable access,
or supporting linguistic diversity - e.g. creation of content in
languages not well-represented on the internet. And if such a 'tax' is
being collected from domain name holders, should they not be part of the
discussion on what it should be spent?

I was also interested in mechanisms of crowdsourcing funding and support
from internet users and the IGF community. During the Working Group
discussions on funding I proposed a voluntary contribution/donation to
be made during online registration for each annual event. But this is
apparently not possible because of some UN rule or practice.

However, other ways of sourcing funds in this way can be found, and
there a proposal was made to the MAG to set up a fund, administered
independently by the Tides Foundation (a not-for-profit foundation based
in San Francisco) that could receive donations and contributions which
cannot easily be managed by the UN Trust Fund.

Anriette

On 28/07/2013 14:11, parminder wrote:
>
> Hi Marilia
>
> Firstly, about your positions, I think we shared almost all positions
> at the WG meeting...
>
> That said, it is important to discuss what positions different actors
> held, and what issues were deliberately pushed aside. Now, which point
> gets time for discussion and which doesnt, itself is often politically
> determined... or determined by the power configurations that are
> manifest in the room...
>
> It needs to be clearly pointed out that committed UN funding was
> opposed by the business sector, technical community and the developed
> countries. They also rejected out of hand a committed ICANN funding
> model. That is a fact.... It is important to know what happens in
> public committees which are responsible to the public, and this issue
> is most germane to the current IGF imbroglio. .
>
> As for civil society reps, other than you, I found the views were
> lukewarm.... And that is important to know as well. As for 'mixed
> models; - of course there was not one view on the table that the
> voluntary model of funding would be banned or anything.... So the only
> operative part of a mixed model was strongly pitching for a committed
> UN funding, and I know it that there wasnt any such pitch made or
> supported...
>
> I would not give much weight to what a UNDESA official was musing
> about the UN's general state of funds, orientations etc.. The group
> neededd to recommedd what it thought was right to do, and was needed
> to be done. It had all the power. After all is was sending its advice
> to the General Assembly, which can decide anything. Is it that if the
> same official have said that multistakeholderism is difficult to be
> really accepted in the deep UN corridors we would bypassed that part....
>
> And do you remember the kind of devices that were invented, and
> obstructions made.... It was strongly and repeated proposed that the
> UN can in fact *cannot* fund the IGF.... This is one of the funniest
> things I have ever heard. UN GA can do anything, and the WG's was to
> be an advice to the UN GA.... But this complete falsehood was
> propagated by involving high - ups or insiders that you know about and
> I wont want to go into naming.... I think it is important to report
> these things to the people who were not present...
>
> People need to know what has gone into bringing the IGF to the state
> that it is in today, especially in terms of the funding... And what
> was the contribution to it of the working group constituted to
> specifically suggest improvements in the IGF. These lessons are also
> useful for the future, because we are not far from the 10 year review
> of the IGF.
>
> Happy to further hear your views  on this... And thanks for sharing
> them in the first place..... parminder
>
>
>
>
> On Saturday 27 July 2013 09:18 PM, Marilia Maciel wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 27, 2013 at 3:13 AM, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net
>> <mailto:parminder at itforchange.net>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>     Such a proposal for using ICANN collected funds to support the IGF
>>     was put forward in the WG on IGF Improvements by my organisation
>>     as well as by India, and supported by developing countries. Why
>>     did other non gov stakeholders (including civil society) and
>>     developed countries oppose this proposal.... Can at least the
>>     civil society members of that group who are on this list
>>     explain.... I can see why private sector or corporate funded
>>     technical community did not want it... can also see the agenda of
>>     US supporting developed country constituency.... but why did civil
>>     society oppose it... If the IGF is really their most loved child...
>>
>>
>> Hi Parminder!
>>
>> As a participant on the WG on IGF improvements, I would just like to
>> comment on what I recall from memory:
>>
>> - The issue of allocating sustainable and predictable public UN
>> funding to the IGF was tabled and discussed among members despite the
>> time constraints we had. As I remember, most CS representatives,
>> including myself, supported this proposal of UN public funding
>> (meaning: public UN funding and private voluntary funding should
>> coexist). As you said, there was strong opposition and the proposal
>> was not included in the report. But we must also acknowledge that UN
>> posed main obstacles to that. UNDESA came to one of our meetings with
>> the purpose to tell us that it was fruitless to put forth such a
>> proposal (UN funding), because UN funds were being cut all across the
>> board. If the UN executes decisions of member countries, maybe it is
>> also fair to say that countries that support UN public funding for
>> the IGF also lacked political articulation and let DESA "impose" that
>> line on the group, saying it was an "impossible topic". Sometimes it
>> seems to me that no one wants to put more money (either because they
>> dont believe in the importance of the IGF or because current lack of
>> transparency on fund management - a real big problem - prevents them
>> from willing to commit). It is a vicious cycle and a blame-game.
>>
>> - If I remember correctly,  the proposal to use ICANN funds to
>> support the IGF was not properly discussed in the group. When the
>> proposal was tabled, the group started to dwell on procedural issues:
>> if the group had competence to propose it, if the UN had legitimacy
>> to propose it, if it was juridically feasible to propose it, if we
>> could propose it in a group in which ICANN was not represented,
>> etc...  Some group members were openly against it, but, to my
>> understanding, this proposal did not get to be discussed in depth and
>> substance, reason why I think it is not accurate to say that CS
>> members were against it... Speaking on my own behalf: I needed more
>> time to think and understand all the implications, but the discussion
>> did not continue. I think (i dont remember exactly) the vehemency of
>> opposition made clear that the group would not have consensus on that
>> issue and, since the report was consensus-based, we moved on.
>> Marília
>
>

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