[governance] Proposal by the Government of India to the WGEC

[Anja Kovacs]

Dear all,

As I thought this would be of interest to many people on these lists, I
wanted to share a short blog post about the proposal for EC India made to
the WGEC (see below this message and here:
http://internetdemocracy.in/2013/11/is-india-reviving-its-un-cirp-proposal/)

Over the past year, for various reasons, the earlier UN CIRP proposal
seemed to be off the table and Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and
Information Technology, in particular had become increasingly vocal about
his support for multistakeholder models for Internet governance. However,
during the meeting of the WGEC earlier this month, the Indian government
again tabled a proposal for a multilateral Internet policy to be
established under the UN, very similar to the earlier UN CIRP.

Comments most welcome.

Best,
Anja

 Is India reviving its proposal for a multilateral UN body to take over the
governance of the Internet?  by Anja
Kovacs<http://internetdemocracy.in/author/anja/>

*Recent events at the UN CSTD Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation give
the strong impression that this is indeed the case. *

In a submission to the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation
(WGEC)<http://unctad.org/en/Pages/CSTD/WGEC.aspx>,
which met for the second time in Geneva last week, the Indian government
recommended the following:

The UN General Assembly could embark on creation of a multilateral body for
formulation of international Internet-related public policies. The proposed
body should include all stakeholders and relevant inter-governmental and
international organisations in advisory capacity within their respective
roles as identified in Tunis agenda and WGIG report. Such body should also
develop globally applicable principles on public policy issues associated
with the coordination and management of critical Internet resources.

Despite the fact that stakeholders from India already active within the
field of Internet governance have overwhelmingly disagreed with India’s
earlier proposal to establish a Committee for Internet-related Policies
within the UN (UN CIRP), this proposal thus seems to have been revived.

Like the earlier one, the proposal that is currently on the table is
problematic for a number of reasons. It clearly seeks to endorse
governments as the primary stakeholders in Internet governance, whose
dominance needs to be established at the expense of other stakeholders.
Irrespective of the issue under consideration, other stakeholders will only
be given an advisory role in Internet governance. Moreover, they will only
be allowed to play the roles defined in the Tunis Agenda. That these
definitions - especially where the role of civil society is concerned - are
outmoded is something that has been recognised widely. During last week’s
WGEC meeting, India acknowledged the debates around the role definitions of
the Tunis Agenda, but said nothing about how these debates might affect its
proposal.

Support for India’s proposal at the meeting of the 42-member WGEC only came
from the government of Saudi Arabia and from an Indian civil society
representative. The latter took with this a position quite radically
different from other Indian members of civil society active in Internet
governace, or indeed from most of global civil society in this field, who
believe that a multistakeholder model for Internet governance is the way
forward.

Many, including the Internet Democracy Project, have argued that there
might at times be space for multilateralism within this multistakeholder
model. For example, if a multistakeholder group comes to the conclusion
that the best way forward to protect the right to privacy of all people in
the Internet age is a new treaty, then from that point onwards, governments
would take over as negotiating treaties is their job.

However, a crucial difference between such proposals and the ones currently
and previously made by the Indian government is that in a multistakeholder
model, broad agreement among all stakeholders, including on the modalities,
is a prerequisite for any solution to go forward. The India proposals, in
contrast, presume the necessity of government dominance in the policy
process, irrespective of the problem at hand, and thus requires agreement
only among governments. This not only means that inputs by other
stakeholders need not necessarily be given due consideration, it also
leaves the Internet policy making process much more vulnerable to the
vagaries of global geopolitics.

The proposal by India that the new UN body would be responsible also for
developing globally applicable principles on public policy issues
associated with the coordination and management of critical Internet
resources is particularly surprising in this regard. So far, the
coordination and management of critical Internet resources lies
overwhelmingly with bodies such as ICANN that, though not without their
flaws, are already multistakeholder in their functioning. To think that
principles that should govern the work of these bodies can be formulated or
effectively applied without a central involvement of all stakeholders
already involved in these groups (stakeholders who often have, it should be
said, conflicting views about the way forward) is obviously deeply flawed.

The multistakeholder WGEC is charged with making recommendations on how to
fully implement the mandate of enhanced cooperation contained in the Tunis
Agenda.

India’s renewed proposal, in this context, to establish a UN body that
would privilege governments in the making of international Internet-related
public policy was made without any domestic consultation, even if a
Multistakeholder Advisory Group had been established by the government
precisely for such purposes in August of this year.

For many observers in India, it therefore came as something of a surprise -
even more so as Mr. Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and Information
Technology, has repeatedly stressed over the past year (and as recently as
17 October) the importance of multistakeholderism for effective Internet
policy making, and his own commitment to this model.



-- 
Dr. Anja Kovacs
The Internet Democracy Project

+91 9899028053 | @anjakovacs
www.internetdemocracy.in
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