[governance] [bestbits] Remarks at UNESCO Closing Ceremony of "Connecting the Dots Conference"

Anriette Esterhuysen anriette at apc.org
Thu Mar 5 07:06:46 EST 2015


Thanks so much Shahzad.

Anriette


On 05/03/2015 13:03, Shahzad Ahmad wrote:
> 
> ...and adding to what Anriette said below, we are shocked to see such a
> response from veterans and leaders of CSOs on IG. This unfortunately,
> completely negates the spirit of working together.
> 
> We have to continue to work together and strive for more building upon
> and capitalizing on the small successes here an there.
> 
> Thanks and best wishes
> Shahzad
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/5/15 3:35 PM, Anriette Esterhuysen wrote:
>> Dear all
> 
>> Just an explanation and some context.
> 
>> I was on the 'coordinating committee' of the event. Our role was to
>> review comments on the draft statement and support the chair and
>> secretariat in compiling drafts.
> 
>> The final UNESCO outcome document did include the vast majority of
>> text/proposals submitted by civil society beforehand and onsite.
> 
>> This includes text submitted by Richard Hill on behalf of JNC (Richard
>> made several editorial suggestions which improved the text) and text
>> from Anita Gurumurthy from IT for Change (which greatly improved
>> weakened language on gender in the pre-final draft).
> 
>> The text on 'social and economic rights' were not excluded for any
>> reason other than it came during the final session and the Secretariat
>> were trying to keep the document short and linked directly to the Study.
>> It was decided to elaborate on the links to broader rights, and to
>> UNESCO needing to work with other rights bodies, in the final study
>> report rather than in the outcome statement.
> 
>> Again, not ideal from my perspective, but that was the outcome of the
>> discussion.
> 
>> It is a pity that 'democratic' was not added, but it was never really an
>> option. I personally, and APC, support linking democratic to
>> multistakeholder and we were happy that this happened in the NETmundial
>> statement. And reading Norbert's text below (thanks for that Norbert) I
>> would like to find a way to make sure that the meaning of democratic
>> However, in the UN IG context there is a very particular angle to why
>> "democratic multistakeholder" is so contentious. In the Tunis Agenda the
>> word "democratic" is directly linked with the word "multilateral" -
>> every time it occurs. This means that people/governments who feel that
>> 'multilateral' can be used to diminish the recognition given to the
>> importance of multistakeholder participation, and take the debate back
>> intergovernmental oversight of IG, will not agree to having 'democratic'
>> in front of multistakeholder.
> 
>> In the context of these UN type negotiations it will be code for
>> reinserting multilateral (in the meaning of 'among governments') into
>> the text.
> 
>> At the NETmundial we had to fight for 'democratic multistakeholder', but
>> because it is a 'new' text we succeeded.
> 
>> The thing with documents that come out of the UN system is that they are
>> full of invisible 'hyperlinks' to previous documents and political
>> struggles that play themselves out in multiple spaces.
> 
>> I actually looked for a quote from the Tunis Agenda that we could insert
>> (at Richard's suggestion) to see if I could find a reference to
>> democratic that is not linked to 'multilateral' but I could not find
>> this quote, and I showed this to Richard and warned him that
>> unfortunately 'democratic' will most likely not be included.
> 
>> I can confirm that the editing group did consider this seriously, but
>> that the number of objections to this text were far greater than the
>> number of requests for putting it in.
> 
>> This is simply in the nature of consensus texts that are negotiated in
>> this way.
> 
>> There was also much stronger text on anonymity and encryption as
>> fundamental enablers of online privacy and freedom of expression in the
>> early draft. But it had to be toned down on the insistence of the
>> government of Brazil as the Brazilian constitution states that anonymity
>> is illegitimate.
> 
>> Civil society never succeeds in getting everything it wants in documents
>> we negotiate with governments. We have to evaluate the gains vs. the
> losses.
> 
>> In my view the gains in this document outweighs the losses. Supporting
>> it means that we have  UN agency who has a presence in the global south
>> who will put issues that are important to us on its agenda, which will,
>> I hope, create the opportunity for more people from civil society,
>> particularly from developing countries, to learn, participate and
>> influence internet-related debates with policy-makers.
> 
>> Michael, as for your tone, and your allegations. I don't really know
>> what to say about them. They are false, they are destructive and they
>> demean not only the work of the civil society organisations or
>> individuals you name, but also the work - and what I believe to be the
>> values - of the Just Net Coalition.
> 
>> Anriette
> 
> 
> 
>> On 05/03/2015 11:46, Norbert Bollow wrote:
>>> On Thu, 5 Mar 2015 02:27:14 +0100
>>> Jeremy Malcolm <jmalcolm at eff.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mar 4, 2015, at 7:54 PM, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Perhaps we could have an explanation from Jeremy and others on the
>>>>> drafting committee as to when and how "democracy" and "social and
>>>>> economic rights' became unacceptable terms in a document meant to
>>>>> have global significance?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> With pleasure.  This is why:
>>>>
>>>>
> http://igfwatch.org/discussion-board/unesco-resists-jncs-attempt-to-turn-democracy-against-ordinary-internet-users
>>>
>>> I would like to hereby state clearly that what Jeremy claims is JNC's
>>> view of "democratic multi-stakeholderism" is not an actual position of
>>> JNC.
>>>
>>> For JNC, "democratic" simply means: democratic.
>>>
>>> We insist that just like governance at national levels must be
>>> democratic (which has been internationally accepted as a human right,
>>> even if there are countries where this is not currently implemented
>>> satisfactorily), any and all global governance must also be democratic.
>>>
>>> JNC's foundational document, the Delhi Declaration, states this as
>>> follows:
>>>
>>>    Globally, there is a severe democratic deficit with regard to
>>>    Internet governance. It is urgently required to establish
>>>    appropriate platforms and mechanisms for global governance of the
>>>    Internet that are democratic and participative.
>>>
>>> We are opposed to any kind of system in which multistakeholderism is
>>> implemented in a way that is not democratic.
>>>
>>> We are *not* opposed to participative mechanisms for global governance
>>> of the Internet. In fact we explicitly demand, in our foundational
>>> document, mechanisms for global governance of the Internet which are
>>> democratic *and* participative.
>>>
>>> This demand has nothing whatsoever to do with what Jeremy claims is our
>>> goal, which he describes as “limited type of government-led
>>> rulemaking”. That would clearly *not* be participative.
>>>
>>> We insist that Internet governance must be democratic *and*
>>> participative.
>>>
>>> Is that so hard to understand???
>>>
>>>
>>> The above-mentioned post of Jeremy also links, twice, to an earlier
>>> blog post of his, and he claims that he has there "revealed ... the
>>> agenda of the Just Net Coalition". That post happens to be quite full of
>>> factually false assertions. I have now published my response (which had
>>> previously been communicated in a non-public manner) at
>>>
>>> http://justnetcoalition.org/reply-jeremy-malcolm
>>>
>>> Greetings,
>>> Norbert
>>> co-convenor, Just Net Coalition
>>> http://JustNetCoalition.org
>>>
>>>
>>>
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> 
> 
> 
> 
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