[governance] HLLM in LOndon - CS reps

Fri Nov 29 16:59:05 EST 2013

The HLLM is convened by the ICANN CEO who has control over whom he invites. It is unclear whether ICANN intends to have civil society represented, that is those from outside the ICANN community. Earlier messages from William Drake to this list suggested that only one slot was open even though some pushed for two slots. Some civil society Organizations demanded inclusion despite not being involved within the ICANN community. 

Any discussion in global circles purporting to be Multi stakeholder must also to some degree represent the community including those outside of ICANN. ICANN espouses Accountability and Transparency and takes great pride in doing so. I suspect that the At Large community within ICANN will be filling one civil society slot and the other tossed to us. The seats may already be filled.

However, Robin from ICANN's Non Commercial Stakeholder Group which is the arm in ICANN that carries civil society voices has been liaising with ICANN CEO.

The reality is that they may even reject both the names that was furnished to them. The ratio of public sector, private sector and civil society is not balanced as it currently is.

There were many names for consideration but after careful dialogue amongst the different groups, two names that received overwhelming support were Anriette and Milton. They will steward the views of global civil society as they dialogue. we wish them well should they choose to accept the responsibility.

Whilst this HLLM is underway, what are your thoughts about potentially convening a High Level Meeting where we can have more diverse inclusion of civil society, business constituency, technical constituency, governments and intergovernmental organisations etc. If there is interest, it could be facilitated by a widely respected neutral facilitator like Jovan Kurbalija of Diplo Foundation.

The meeting could be jointly convened by an organising committee that represents civil society, technical community, business community, governments etc. I am aware that the HLLM is "ICANN owned" and driven. If they only give us one seat or two to comfort us, we should seriously consider the possibilities of organising our own High Level Meeting that is Inclusive, Collaborative and allows for dynamic discussion to take place.  In fairness to ICANN, the HLLM is part of an internal process designed to discuss strategies pertaining to ICANN's mandate.

If there is appetite to do this, we can certainly consider working towards achieving this prior to Brazil. This does not have to be a complex affair but a simple meeting that can be globally streamed into where there is a social media strategy to monitor the input and more importantly where views can be heard. In turn, this can be consolidated for retroactive engagement with communities on the ground until we have a sound document that is both grassroots and community driven. I believe that amongst the civil society organizations, we are networked enough to pull this off.

Alternatively another model could be used where we keep the discussions regionally and allow for the dialogue to take place in each region. 

Some of the discussions are important to have but I do not see why we should be hurried by the Brazilian timeline. This is not to say that the IGC will not be contributing to the discussions as we will. There are clearly many concerns that the wider community has and these issues need to be aired in relevant and appropriate forums.

In the not too distant future, the IGC will be invited to start preparing its submissions for Brazil on wide and diverse areas pertaining to Internet Governance.

Keep watching the space.

Kind Regards,
Sala

Sent from my iPad

> On Nov 30, 2013, at 9:50 AM, "Ian Peter" <ian.peter at ianpeter.com> wrote:
> 
> Please find a letter just send to Fadi Chehade under my signatory as an independent facilitator as regards civil society representation at this meeting in two weeks time.
>  
> Let me be the first to admit the process was imperfect, the result was imperfect. But so was the task we were given, the timeframe,  the people involved in making the decision, and the facilitation process.
>  
> I can only say that there was widespread agreement we should submit names, and for the names submitted. And that doing and saying nothing would have been the alternative in this timeframe.
>  
>  
> Ian Peter
>  
>  
> 29 November 2013
> RE: Civil Society Representation on High Level Panel in London
>  
> Dear Fadi and Nora:
>  
> I am writing to you following from discussions held by a coalition of representatives of the
> civil society networks most involved in Internet governance deliberations, we appreciate your
> willingness to engage civil society in discussions regarding the future of Internet
> governance. We also appreciate your recognition that civil society is under-represented on
> your High Level Panel and your willingness to accept additional civil society participants to
> this panel to provide more balance.
> After consultations with our networks, we propose adding the following 2 civil society
> representatives to begin to balance against the much larger numbers from government, the
> private sector, and technical representatives placed on the initial panel.
> Civil society’s two nominated representatives for the London High Level Panel are:
> 1. Anriette Esterhuysen (anriette at apc.org)
> 2. Milton Mueller (mueller at syr.edu)
> Would you please kindly confirm your acceptance of these names, and contact our
> representatives directly to arrange their participation?
> We also strongly recommend the involvement of Jovan Kurbalija of the Diplo Foundation as
> a highly experienced and knowledgeable facilitator.
> We trust that in future we will be able to look at much more equitable representation of civil
> society in such panels and committees.
> Persons involved with these deliberations and choice of names from various civil society
> networks were:
> Virginia Paque, Diplo Foundation
> Anriette Esterhuysen, Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
> Robin Gross, ICANN's Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG)
> Norbert Bollow and Salanieta Tamanikaiwaimaro, Internet Governance Caucus (IGC)
> Jeremy Malcolm, Best Bits
> Signed,
> Ian Peter, Independent Facilitator
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