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

Mon Nov 18 10:53:00 EST 2013

Dear Anja

Thank you for this.

I followed the meeting remotely (which was really hard as I could not
get the webcast but I could follow the transcript) and noticed this
similarity with the CIRP proposal and the IT For Change proposal.

Could it be differences between ministries?

I have had a sense that in the case of India, similar to South Africa,
the ministry of foreign affairs agenda has not always been fully cleared
with, or co-developed with, the ministry of communications.

Ministries of foreign affairs usually try to plug in issue specific
matters into a broader foreign policy agenda. Sometimes this works will
for the line ministries, sometimes not.. or sometimes they are just a
but left out of the loop.

But I think we should also allow for the fact that all governments,
including some of those most committed to multi-stakeholder
participation, should be watched carefully, not just those who openly
put a multi-lateral model on the table. Often governments pay lip
service to 'multi-stakeholder' models but they are quite comfortable
also working in multi-lateral frameworks and mashing them up in their
speeches and inputs without really concretising what they mean by
multi-stakeholder IG.

That is why as CS we need to be really vigilant and demand very clear
commitments and mechanisms that allow us to be integrally part of
proposed solutions.

Anriette

On 18/11/2013 10:22, Anja Kovacs wrote:
> 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
>
> /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 <http://www.internetdemocracy.in/>

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