[governance] netmundial 0.1

Sat Apr 26 17:26:24 EDT 2014

Let me share with you my very quick evaluation. I just arrived at home and I have not had time yet for a deep evaluation. 

This meeting in my view has been historic. It it the first time that we produce outcomes of this nature in a multistakeholder open process and MS meeting. 
I remember only 2 cases that we could take as a reference. 

a) The WGIG: The WGIG was a multistakeholder experience that produced a final document, but instead of being based on the commonalities, it includes several options for the most controversial issues. The other difference is that the WGIG was compossed by a known number of participants, and so, even the difficulties of a very innovatitve experience, it was easier to determine when there was consensus or not. 

b) The document produced by the Unesco WSIS+10 meeting in February 2013. While the experience was very good, we have to recognize that the points included in the document were less controversial and those of Netmundial. 

I'm not sure if there are antecedents of processes and meetings like this one even outside of the Internet Governance area. Perhaps the value of this meeting is still bigger of what we can perceive at this moment. 

So, the in my humble opinion, the process it self, while imperfect, it is a great success itself. I agree with Ian that it is important to learn lessons form this meeting specially for continue improving these innovative experiences. 

With regard to the specific issue of the High Level Committee, Executive Committee and the tracks' Chairs, the purpose of the meeting was to detect any "very strong objection" to the outcomes. Not for adding topics but for detecting serious concerns that would undermine the support to the document. The document was not intended to identify the different positions on each topic, but the common ground. That's the challenge of a meeting where we have all the stakeholders and all the diverse views represented and we want to summarize the common ground.
There were only 3 changes introduced in the document in that meeting, in a 12 pages document. Of course those changes are on sensitive points, but this is exactly due to the purpose of the meeting. Only in controversial topics there could be "very strong objections" 

Those changes were:  One sentence in the IANA transition paragraph was changed, one paragraph with 2 lines in Internet Surveillance was deleted (it was pretty obvious to me that thta paragraph could not get consensus) and the Intermediary responsibilities paragraph (that was the one with bigger changes) 
Not introducing those 3 changes would have mean the failure of the meeting and the process.

Those 3 changes saved the rest of the document. Would anybody have preferred to saving the text in a document that don't get the acceptance of the participants. Maybe yes, but honestly the document would have had a very low value. 

Is the content of the document good? 

It's the first time that we are able to include in a document produced in a multistakeholder process: a list of Principles!! This is also historic. Does that list include all the principles some of us would have liked? surely no, but the list is really impressive and goes beyond what many people expected at the beginning of the process. 

A few years ago some of us were not able to include the perspective of the Human Rights in the agenda of IGF. It was not 20 years ago. Just a few years ago. And now the first chapter of Principles in the Netmundial Statement is HUMAN RIGHTS AND SHARED VALUES. 

Shouldn't we celebrate that? Unfortunately there are more people speaking about what the document doesn't include and not about what the document YES includes.

The text referred to Network Neutrality obviously doesn't fit the positions of civil society  (neither my personal positions), but i don't think somebody could have expected to have stronger positions on that area. At least not now. 
But despite there is not strong text on Net Neutrality, the discussion held through this process and in the meeting, leave the topic of Net neutrality as one of the hottest topics for the upcoming discussions. I think we made progresses in giving priority to this issue and I also think that Neutrality got more support through the Netmundial process and with the approval of the Marco Civil law in Brazil. 

There are many other areas where I think that the text included is very good and constitute an important progress in the IG discussion. I mentioned HHRR just one of the most outstanding examples.

My final comment so far is that the Civil Society representatives in all the committees and sessions did an impressive job and they are responsible of all the very important things were included in the document. At the beginning of the process some people said that Human Rights were out of the scope of this meeting and others proposed to include just one sentence saying that the Internet Governance should be based on the respect of Human Rights, and what was finally achieved was much more than that. And this was because the impressive work done by CS representatives. We have to be very grateful for their contributions. Although I am clearly more associated to the Technical community than to the CS, I thank them very much. 

This email doesn't intend to start a polemic on the evaluation of NETtmundial. I wanted just to share with all of you some of my personal opinions.

Best, 

Raúl 

El 25/04/2014, a las 10:17, Ian Peter escribió:

> The conference is now over, and many of us now go into travel and long flights. But before I do, I want to say that during this conference, and the meeting beforehand, civil society people really worked incredibly well together – far more so than other constituencies. It was great to work with a group of such talented and knowledgeable people. There was a high volume of exchange and consultation between people and speakers on our behalf, with a willingness to take on other perspectives from the group, to stand down to allow a more relevant speaker to address a subject etc. great team work.
>  
> As regards the results – this was version 0.1 of this very interesting – and i think promising – version of multistakeholder consultation. So like all versions 0.1, it was full of bugs and there are a few changes that should be made and improvements. I might say a thing or two about that after I have cleared my head. So I think the process has some lessons for us, and is worth repeating.
>  
> As regards the outputs – as the civil society statement said, there were areas of disappointment. I would say personally that I was very angry at last minute changes made to some sections after the formal processes of drafting and consolidating text had ended and passed through those committees to the final approval stage. This was an example of some governmental players being more equal than others. As one colleague said, more like imperialism than multistakeholderism, from a party who preaches the religion. Oh well. In time I might say more about the detail of that.
>  
> But for now – there was much good as well, and it was fantastic to be involved in this with such a great group of people. All our Brazilian reps, and also our selected reps on various committees, did a fantastic job – ad it was privilege to see how well they did. They worked long and hard on our behalf and deserve a lot of praise. If I start names I will miss someone, but to everyone who represented us, I must say job extremely well done.
>  
> Now to wind down after three days of intense activities. Great work everyone, really worthwhile event.
>  
> Ian Peter
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