[governance] Civil Society MAG 2016 endorsements and recommendations - FINAL Report

Mon Feb 1 11:01:00 EST 2016

Dear IGC members,

*Bellow, the information from Ian Peter with regard the MAG endorsement.*

*Regards,*

*Analía Aspis*

Folks, (both Nomcom and CSCG members)

Attached in document form, and also below, is the final report of the CSCG
Nomcom for 2016 MAG nominations. Please circulate to your lists.

Many thanks to my co-chair Ginger Paque and also the Nomcom team (Nadira
Alaraj (Best Bits), Analia Aspis (Internet Governance Caucus), Robin Gross
(Non Commercial Stakeholders Group, ICANN), Chat Garcia Ramilo (Association
for Progressive Communications), and Parminder Jeet Singh (Just Net
Coalition)) for a fantastic effort.

Ian Peter

REPORT FOLLOWS

(text below is also attached in document form)

Dear Chengetai, IGF Secretariat, and MAG selection committee(s),

First, we wish to thank you for your past co-operation with us in aiming to
ensure the best possible representation for civil society in the IGF
Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG). We were pleased that you were able
to accept all but one of our suggested nominations last year, and also our
suggestions for speakers at IGF. We look forward to further strengthening
this collaboration, in line with various recommendations calling for
greater legitimacy, transparency and stakeholder involvement in such
processes

The Civil Society Coordination Group (CSCG) exists solely to ensure a
co-ordinated civil society response and conduit when it comes to making
civil society appointments to outside bodies. It comprises representatives
of the coalition members of the Best Bits, Association for Progressive
Communications, Internet Governance Caucus, Just Net Coalition, and the
Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group of ICANN. Together the reach of these
groups extends to many hundreds of non-governmental organisations, as well
as a great number of individuals. In addition, the CSCG receives
recommendations of non-affiliated individuals and groups who chose to voice
their endorsements through the CSCG mechanism. The CSCG represents the five
largest groupings of civil society organisations addressing Internet
governance issues. We also work in collaboration with other initiatives in
the UN, but also outside of it (such as the Netmundial Conference in Brazil
in 2014 and the subsequent Netmundial Initiative).

We are pleased to forward the following civil society endorsements for
candidates for the 2016 MAG renewal.

The Nomcom considered 16 names submitted via our networks, which are
attached as Appendix 1. For the record, we also asked to be privy to any
other civil society nominations forwarded to you from other sources, and,
for full transparency, all civil society stakeholder group applications,
which we ideally should have considered fully and without discrimination,
but we were told this was not possible.  However if there are other names
you are considering, we offer our services to give you confidential
assessment of any such candidates.

In completing our task, we note that three candidates designated by you as
civil society representatives have terms ending this year; two from LAC
region and one from Asia. (Fatima Cambronero, Desiree Zachariah, and Subi
Chaturvedi)

In considering replacements, we have looked at a number of considerations,
the most important of which at this particular time, are:

First, to restore the balance of LAC region representation, to replace
retiring civil society members, we recommend:

   1. *Julian Casasbuenas*. Julian is a member of the Association for
   Progressive Communications (APC), and has been attending IGF since 2006.
   He was involved in the organization of LAC regional IGF meetings and
   participated actively as a reporter and speaker in these events. In 2012
   his organization, Colnodo, was co-organizer with .CO Internet of the Fifth
   IGF LAC meeting that was held in Bogotá Colombia.

   2. *Renata Aquino Ribeiro*. Renata is currently a professor in the IT
   Campus at Quixadá City in Federal University of Ceará, Brazil. In 2014, she
   was a researcher in social development, technology and education at
   Business and Economics Faculty (FEAAC) at Federal University of Ceará
   (UFC). For the last decade, she has followed the Internet governance
   debates such as regional IGFs and ICANN53 participation as a fellow,
   Brazilian Internet School of Governance 2014 fellow, South School of
   Internet Governance 2015 fellow, LACRALO ALS Nexti participant, and NCUC
   participant in ICANN.

Our second and third major considerations are to increase voices speaking
for the geo-political global south, and to add to the level of experience
in internet governance matters of civil society participation. We believe
this can be done with one specific candidate. i.e.:

3. *Norbert Bollow*. Norbert has a background in mathematics, physics and
IT, and he also has many years of experience in civil society activism on a
wide range of information society topics including advocacy for human
rights and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). He has participated in the
consultations that preceded the first IGF and he has since then
participated in many IGFs, including several times as a workshop organizer.
He has been a co-coordinator of Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus.
Norbert is currently a co-convenor of the Just Net Coalition
http://justnetcoalition.org/jnc-members, an international civil society
coalition of 35 organisations and networks, most of them South based, with
a focus on demands that the Internet must advance human rights and social
justice, and that Internet governance must be truly democratic.

Our fourth consideration is to gain representation from the MENA region,
which currently has no civil society representation; and at the same time
to strengthen our African presence. To this end we endorse:

4. *Rasha Abdulla*.  Dr. Rasha A. Abdulla is Associate Professor (tenured)
and Past Chair of Journalism and Mass Communication at the American
University in Cairo. She has a Ph.D. in Communication (December 2003) from
the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. She is the proud
recipient of several teaching and research awards. Her current research
interests focus on the Internet as a medium. Her doctoral dissertation was
the first large scale academic study of the uses and gratifications of the
Internet among Arab students in Egypt...

Thank you for your consideration of these candidates. Please note that, in
addition to addressing matters of geographical and gender balance, civil
society, like other stakeholders, needs to consider geopolitical balance
and the need to ensure that all stakeholder voices are represented. What
might appear to be simple changes to the representation we suggest can be
quite problematic for us, and result in either imbalance in representation
or in inappropriate candidates being selected. To avoid these problems
which have occurred in the past, we do suggest that, should you be looking
at appointing anyone as a civil society representative not on our list of
endorsements, you discuss this in confidence with our coordinators. In
addition to any names you might have received individually, we recognise
that there are a number of excellent candidates from distinct geographic
regions who applied to be nominated through CSCG who we were unable to
include in our limited number of endorsements above, that might come into
consideration in such discussions.

Given the investment in the important process of (perceived) legitimacy,
balance, transparency and consensus, we feel strongly that selections
should be done with our collaboration. This enhanced co-operation and
consultation can assist to ensure the best possible civil society
representation, a goal we all share. This also addresses the recommendation
of the Working Group on Improvements to the IGF, later endorsed by UN
General Assembly, seeking ‘self-management’ of stakeholder representative
process by respective stakeholder groups.  We are open for further
discussion on this point and other relevant recommendations of the
mentioned Working Group.

Finally, we do think that, in the light of recommendations in the mentioned
CSTD WG and in Netmundial, calling for greater legitimacy, transparency and
stakeholder involvement in such processes, it would be appropriate in
coming months to review the IGF MAG selection processes, to align them more
with emerging best practice in ensuring stakeholder representation and also
overall transparency. We offer our services to work with you and other
stakeholder representative organisations towards this objective, which we
consider imperative to have in place for the 2017 MAG selection process.

Sincerely,

Virginia Paque and Ian Peter

Non-voting Co Chairs CSCG

*Nomcom members:* Nadira Alaraj (Best Bits), Analia Aspis (Internet
Governance Caucus), Robin Gross (Non Commercial Stakeholders Group, ICANN),
Chat Garcia Ramilo (Association for Progressive Communications), Parminder
Jeet Singh (Just Net Coalition)

*The role of CSCG is to ensure a co-ordinated civil society response and
conduit when it comes to making civil society appointments to outside
bodies. Our procedures can be viewed at
http://www.internetgov-cs.org/procedures
<http://www.internetgov-cs.org/procedures>*

*APPENDIX ONE*

*CANDIDATES EVALUATED BY CSCG NOMCOM *

*Julian Casasbuenas (LAC)**

*Renata Aquino Ribeiro (LAC)**

*Norbert Bollow (WEOG*)*

*Rasha Abdulla (Africa)**

Renata Avila (LAC)

Wisdom Kwasi Donkor (Africa)

Isaque Manteiga Joaquim (Africa)

Olevie Kouami (Africa)

Glenn McKnight (WEOG)

Jeremy Malcolm (WEOG)

Joseph Marc Antoine Ridore (Africa)

Grigori Saghyan (WEOG)

Salanieta Tamanikaiwaimaro (Asia-Pacific)

AbdulRasheed Tamton (Africa)

Arsene Tungali (Africa)

Deidre Williams (LAC)

_______________________________________________
CS-coord mailing list
CS-coord at internetgov-cs.org
http://internetgov-cs.org/mailman/listinfo/cs-coord
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