[Ecommerce] FromGeneva: First day of consultations on Internet Governance Forum

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

This is my blog from the morning session of the first day of the open
consultations on the Internet Governance Forum.


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http://fromgeneva.blogspot.com/2006/02/first-day-of-consultations_114011108863158197.html


      First day of consultations on Internet Governance Forum

16 February 2006
Thiru Balasubramaniam
Morning session

Today in Geneva the UN is holding two days of open consultations on
convening an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) which is mandated by the
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). This mandate calls for
the IGF to be a multi-stakeholder policy dialogue. The IGF is chaired by
the Secretary-General's Special Advisor for WSIS, Mr. Nitin Desai. A
live webcast of the proceedings can be viewed at:
http://streaming.polito.it/IGF-live.

Here is an official
transcript <http://www.intgovforum.org/contributions/IGF-1-0216.txt> of
the morning session can be found here:

According to the IGF website,

<blockquote>
The aim of the consultations is to develop a common understanding among
all stakeholders on the nature and character of the IGF. The meeting
will address the IGF's scope of work and substantive priorities as well
as aspects related to its structure and functioning. It will also
discuss the convening of the inaugural meeting including agenda and
programme.(http://www.intgovforum.org/)</blockquote>

Tentative dates for the IGF have been recommended by representatives of
the UN Secretary-General and the Greek government; they are 24-26
October 2006. A decision on the dates will be taken jointly by the
Secretary-General and the Greek government in light of the Geneva open
consultations of 16-17 2006.

The format of the first day was open to governments, inter-governmental
organizations, civil society, businesses, academics and individuals.
Unlike other UN meetings I have attended, there was no hierarchy in
terms of the order of statements. The statements of governments, civil
society, IGOs and others were all interspersed during the day.

The main buzz words of the day seemed to be "multi-stakeholder" and
"multilingualism". However, it was not quite clear as to what different
parties meant by these terms.

Both the EU (represented by Austria) and Brazil called for spam to be a
discussion item at the Athens IGF.

Pakistan took the floor on behalf of the G-77 and China and called for
development-oriented clarity to the discussions of internet governance.

Brazil noted that decision making internet public policy issues should
be taken by world community at large and not by number of technical
bodies or a single government.

They said that technical bodies were deciding upon public policy issues.
They warned that this awkward situation could go on forever without
causing serious trouble and as they had said before, things that cannot
go on forever don't.

They wanted the IGF to be a locus for the global community at large to
create the necessary international applicable legal framework for
internet-related pubic policy issues.

Brazil mentioned cyber-security, cybercrime, spam, consumer protection,
counterfeiting, and global public policies related to top related domain
names as possible substantive topics to be discussed in the Athens meeting.

<blockquote>
The chairman, Mr. Desai concluded the morning session on the follwoing note
Everyone accepts multi-stakeholder participation. What does this mean
though? Should it be based on open consultations, however, that was a
simple process. The IGF should meet around 3 days once a year. What type
of structure is to be expected at Athens? Many have echoed that IGF
should have a development orientation. Development country participation
is important (not just govt-but CSOs as well). Can this space be a forum
to discuss the digital divide? The development dimension of ICT should
be there but it is much bigger-education, e-health-governance and many
other dimensions. We should not load everything from Tunis process into
IGF. What is that we are expecting to see in IGF? We need flexibility,
shared understanding of first IGF to look like. IGF term is 5 years. My
request; it's not our job to fix outcomes, it's the job of the IGF to do
this. What we need to focus is how to structure the forum.
</blockquote>

Here is a link to Georg Greve's blog
<http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/internet_governance_forum_day_1_many_discussions_few_conclusions>
of the discussions.
/posted by Thiru Balasubramaniam @ 5:35 PM
<http://fromgeneva.blogspot.com/2006/02/first-day-of-consultations_114011108863158197.html>/