AW: [governance] On WSIS+10 (was Re: Why?)

Sat May 23 13:12:12 EDT 2015

Hi Mawaki,

as far as I remember the DNS and Internet Governance was not an issue neither at PrepCom 1 (June 2002) nor in the four regional conferences for Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe (May 2002, Bamako; November 2002, Bucharest; January 2003, Tokyo; January 2003, Bávaro). In the final document from the European Prepcom (November 2002) you will find only this para.: "The Information Society is, by nature, a global phenomenon and issues such as privacy protection, consumer trust, management of domain names, facilitation of e-commerce, protection of intellectual property rights, open source solutions etc. should be addressed with the active participation of all stakeholders." In the Asian PrepCom in Tokyo (January 2003)there is this para.: "The transition to the Information Society requires the creation of appropriate and transparent legal, regulatory and policy frameworks at the global, regional and national levels. These frameworks should give due regard to the rights and obligations of all stakeholders in such areas as freedom of expression, privacy, security, management of Internet addresses and domain names, and consumer protection, while also maintaining economic incentives and ensuring trust and confidence for business activities." 

This references did not give IG and the DNS an important key role. But in the final of the five regional PrepComs (Beirut, February 2003) this issue was suddenly raised as a special problem. I personally was not in Beirut but people who attended the meeting told me that it was indeed somebody from civl society who introduced the DNS question as a key question for WSIS, encouraged by an ITU official. This intervention produced the following paragraph in the Beirut Declaration (February 2003, just eleven days before PrepCom2)under the heading "Securing national domain names": "The responsibility for root directories and domain names should rest with a suitable international organization and should take multilingualism into consideration. Countries top-level-domain-names and Internet Protocol (IP) address assignment should be the sovereign right of countries. The sovereignty of each nation should be protected and respected. Internet governance should be multilateral, democratic and transparent and should take into account the needs of the public and private sectors as well as those of the civil society." This was rather professional language, prepared obviously by somebody who had a clear strategy. Such language did not appear in the other four regional conferences. With other words, Beirut was the last opportunity to include DNS/IG into the PrepCom2. And indeed, ITU and some governments started to reference the Beirut Declaration and the priority within WSIS shifted slowly from bridging the digital divide towards Internet Governance. 

PrepCom 2 (February 2003) did not really structure the discussion. This was done by the so-called "Intersessional" in Paris (July 2003) when the WSIS plenary created five working groups. WG 5 was Internet Governance and it was unclear whether non-governmental stakeholders as civil society should be given access to the WG meetings. The plenary did say NO, but left it in the hands of the chair of the WG to allow (silent) observers. 

The first meeting of WG 5 was in the basement of the UNESCO building in Paris. Nobody stopped civil society to enter the room (it was 9.00 p.m. in the evening). We were about 40-50 people in the room, 10 non-governmental, mainly civil society and technical community. It was a funny meeting because some governmental representatives argued that the Internet should have the same status as national news agencies, press, radio or television. It was Paul Wilson from APNIC who took the floor and asked whether it would be allowed to explain how IP address allocation is organized. The chair allowed him to speak and his intervention was very applauded because only a small number of governmental people in the room had any idea about Internet protocols, domain names and IP addresses. From this point onwards the WG 5 was open to civil society and we made contribution which were seen as an enrichment of the discussion. 

WG 5 was closed again during PrepCom3 (September 2003) when China asked the chair of WG 5 whether there is consensus among the member states that CS should remain in the room. There was no consensus. We were kicked out of the room. We were waiting outside of the room (in the basement of the Geneva Conference Center). After one hour two governmental representatives from friendly governments came out of the room and told us what was going on inside the room. China was pushing for a take over of the DNS and the IP address allocation by the ITU. Waves got higher and higher and some will remember that IG became the most critical point in the PrepCom 3+ and PrepCom 3++ (October 2003 and November 2003). At the end (December 2003) there was the compromise to establish the WGIG and to give the WGIG a mandate to come back with a "definition". 

In the WGIG we concluded that in the Internet Governance ecosystem we do need neither private sector nor governmental leadership but a distributed multilayer multiplayer mechanism where all stakeholders work hand in hand in their respective roles, sharing decision making. This was the consensus for the multistakeholder model for Internet Governance supported by governments of the 193 UN member states. The WGIG definition became word by word part of the Tunis Agenda. 

Wolfgang

Thank you both for the enlightenment.

/Brought to you by Mawaki's droid agent
On May 23, 2015 11:17 AM, Kleinwächter, Wolfgang <
wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de> wrote:
>
>
The main subject for WSIS was bridging the digital divide. But the ITU used
the regional PrepComs between PrepCom1 (2002) and PrepCom2 (June 2003) to
include Internet Governance into the list of issues with the aim get back
what they "lost" in Minneapolis.

But how did that actually happen, more specifically? I was under the
impression that questions about ICANN (and Internet governance) were first
brought to the fore by some civil society members - notably, members who
were neither from North America nor from Western Europe (at the PrepCom in
Paris?), and who had been involved in ICANN processes prior to WSIS, if you
see what I mean?

Mawaki

P.S. In any case it appears with that we were coming full circle, doesn't
it? Which always makes for nice stories to tell our grand children,
including those who already are as well as the others still to be.

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