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

Mon Nov 18 03:45:11 EST 2013

No prizes for guessing who the indian civ soc representative is, of course

However the indian govt is like several others - with the left hand not
knowing what the right is doing, and it may need a further round of
lobbying before things settle down.

Moreover - there are elections coming in mid 2014 and it is by no means
certain that the current government will remain in power. The party poised
to win is a religious right wing entity, but has not been in power for all
that long a time over the past decades, so its foreign policy and stance on
the CIRP is so far an unknown quantity.

Anja Kovacs [18/11/13 13:52 +0530]:
>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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