[governance] Inter-stakeholder issues in a multi-stakeholder environment

[Deirdre Williams]

Dear Mawaki,
Thank you for helping me to clarify what I was thinking.

Civil society, as we are using the term, seems to embrace "all of us" and
therefore is a very unwieldy thing to provide "representation" for. Apart
from any other considerations the societies within which we live have
coalesced around a broad range of norms, values and priorities. To my mind
the differing priorities create the greatest obstacle to reaching
consensus. To make matters worse "civil society", as well as standing for
all of us also stands for "each of us"; that is "civil society" is the most
likely champion of the rights of the individual as well as of those
individuals taken together as a group, a society.

If I wanted to propose a conspiracy theory I would suggest that one of the
best ways to discredit the claims for consideration of individual and
social rights is to create an entity called "civil society" and offer it
one, or more, seats at the table to speak for individual and social rights.
Divide and rule is a method which has proved successful, but aggregate to
divide to rule, that's a really innovative twist.

Which is why I think it's important to emphasise the individual and social
policy perspectives, rather than the people comprised by "civil society".

Consider the nature of "all of us". Many of us have no idea what "Internet
governance" is all about, and do not understand the rather arcane language
that is used, particularly the acronyms, and especially if we belong to the
group that has little or no knowledge of English. All of us however are
affected by the Internet, even if we don't use it. But most of us don't
think through a prism of "the Internet"; instead we are concerned about the
privacy of our personal information, our rights to express ourselves and
associate with others, what things cost, our control over the money that we
earn, our security, etc., all of which may in some way be connected with
the Internet.

The main aspects of issues have been fairly well established. I would
suggest that there are 5 - technical, governmental, business, social and
individual. Not all issues will have all 5 aspects, but very few of them
will have only one. In some cases the relevant different aspects will align
harmoniously, in others a point of balance will have to be negotiated. Each
of the 5 will need a team of advocates to argue and support the claims of
that aspect. Each team will need to have a broad geographic spread - for
example in the technical aspect what is possible and desirable in Denmark
may not work in Cameroon. Each team will need to be able to focus on the
particular aspect for which it is the advocate. Each team will therefore
"argue from a particular perspective" rather than "belong to a particular
group".

George asks "where?" I don't know. We need a marketplace, an agora. We need
a place of trust and safety. Possibly we need a virtual hammam to which
could be brought naked ideas?

Setting up another new space is always problematic, but trust is a very
expensive thing to lose. Trust is in fact priceless: you cannot buy it. It
will grow back by itself given a favourable environment, but the current
environment is unfavourable to the point of being toxic. What is needed is
an "honest broker" who can be trusted, by everyone, not to build empires
and to insist on fair play. And to finance the enterprise? The cost of
maintaining the space could be provided in equal shares by all of the large
enterprises for whom the Internet is a source of revenue - as a free gift -
the money to be scrupulously and publicly audited annually.

This is an attempt to look at the problem from a different direction.

Deirdre




On 26 November 2013 08:27, Mawaki Chango <kichango at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Deirdre Williams <
> williams.deirdre at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I began this message 12 days ago in response to a thread started by
>> Michael Gurstein
>> Let's Get Real Folks--Re: [governance] Re: [bestbits] DISCLOSURE REQUEST
>> Re: Funding Available for Strengthening Civil Society
>> I gave up. Now I am encouraged to try again by this new thread
>> Re: [governance] Inter-stakeholder issues in a multi-stakeholder
>> environment
>> begun by George Sadowsky.
>>
>> Is there any way to shift the focus from the people to the issues?
>> In the final analysis everyone belongs to civil society. That point was
>> made by a representative of a local telecommunications company at a recent
>> workshop on IXPs held in Saint Lucia. As he said, his children also query
>> the speed of the Internet at home when they have to do their homework. The
>> only people excluded from civil society are incarcerated prisoners, and
>> that also is a statement that can be questioned. If I understand him
>> correctly George Sadowsky is making the same point. Civil society is us -
>> all of us.
>>
>
> Sure! We may declare everybody is CS and expect any institutional policy
> process to open mike to whoever walks in and requests to speak as CS. From
> my part, I was working on the basis of assumptions I thought were widely
> recognized as part of the current landscape --and even an inevitable part.
> If we want to talk about _multistakeholder_ processes, then we cannot but
> recognize multiple stakeholders, thus boundaries. If we have set up IGC as
> a membership structure, then we have necessarily identified criteria for
> membership, thus boundaries. Mine was an attempt to clarify and even extend
> those inevitable boundaries (based on our operating assumptions); I didn't
> participate in creating them and am not necessarily advocating for
> maintaining or reinforcing them. I can content myself with any other viable
> way to make my voice and voices of any people with legitimate concerns
> heard and taken into account.
> I think I have said all what I had to say on this topic.
> Thanks,
>
> Mawaki
>
.....


-- 
“The fundamental cure for poverty is not money but knowledge" Sir William
Arthur Lewis, Nobel Prize Economics, 1979
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