Fwd: [Internet Policy] Fwd: [WG-Strategy] Seeking roll back of the IGF Leadership Panel
Forwarded as a response to Evan's email on this subject on this elist .. parminder -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: [Internet Policy] Fwd: [WG-Strategy] [At-Large] Seeking roll back of the IGF Leadership Panel Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2021 09:46:58 +0530 From: parminder <parminder.js@gmail.com> To: internetpolicy@elists.isoc.org I have views on both Wolfgang's and Evan's responses to our letter, and their position vis a vis the new IGF Leadership Panel. What however completely passes me is how anyone can agree with both Evan's and Wolfgang's positions, as some have some... Unless, of offense, but one is just desperate to somehow agree with whatever is happening, and looks difficult to change. Evan's and Wolfgang's positions come from fundamentally opposed premises, and have fundamentally different expectations from the Leadership Panel. In fact there positions like in two opposite extremes from mine, or in other words mine is actually somewhere in the middle. I therefore find it difficult to in the same email argue against the two positions. Meanwhile, I'd request those supporting both positions to help me understand how both can be right. Thanks. Evan considers the IGF to a bubble removed from world's reality, something which has entirely failed. It is so dead or nearly so, that Even is happy if it can be given a last squeeze, everything being otherwise so dismal, that something good may come out.. He himself says he is not sure, and I am paraphrasing, if his medicine is worse than the cure. He just thinks that the IGF is all talk, ineffective, etc, and anything outcome- oriented is better than that. He seems to have applied no mind to what that outcome- oriented would be, how it would work, and what kind of outcomes can be expected (obviously, not all outcomes are describable.) I consider it kind of desperate kind of view, which, my apologies, but does not deserve any serious consideration among people who concern themselves with long term nature and implications of governance institutions. It is quite like, and as desperate as, crying out, all this bloody liberal democracy just doesn't work, bring in a good dictator inside, we would at least see some action! This is despite that I normally have quite respected Evan's views, agree with him that the IGF has become an insiders bubble, and had a disease needing cure, etc. He is completely wrong that in indicated that we as letter writers have any intention to perpetuate the status quo, live off it, etc, which I think he need to know more about how much we fight the status quo every day, including the IGFs. He is also wrong that no alternatives are offered; we so regularly offer them, and we were also one of the most active members of the CSTD WG on IGF improvements. To sum; I take Evan's critique to be of an outsider, who has rightly seem a lot of problems with the IGF, but not been invested enough, nor thought through the new Leadership Panel's nature and likely implications, whereby his statement of the problem is fine, but accepting the Leadership Panel as a solution to try out way off .. Since he himself says he isnt sure if the sure is better than the disease, I think he confirms my summing of his position. I read it as genuine expression of desperation with the current IGF, which I considerably share, and nothing more -- nothing that can really be taken serious about the actual discussion here, about the new Leadership Panel .. parminder On 25/11/21 5:37 pm, Winthrop Yu via InternetPolicy wrote:
Not that i disagree with what Wolfgang is saying here, but i am more fully in accord with the comments on this by Evan and Roberto on the At-Large list. (We have a forked discussion.)
WYn
On 25 Nov 2021 7:18 pm, Carlos Afonso via InternetPolicy wrote:
Careful and relevant considerations by Wolfgang.
A lot is still on the discussion table regarding how this HL will work and relate to the overall IGF community. One option is to discard it, another is to keep it and make sure we participate in the process from the beginning.
[]s fraternos
--c.a.
On 24/11/2021 16:47, Wolfgang Kleinwächter wrote:
Hi,
I disagree with the letter, signed by Parminder and Milton. I do not share their arguments. I believe, that Parminders and Miltons proposal, to "urge civil society and technical community, to refrain from sending any nominations for the IGF Leadership Panel" is very counterproductive, undermines the future role of the IGF and weakens civil society engagement in Internet related public policy making at the global level.
The IGF is indeed a unique experiment in the UN system. Its key purpose is to broaden the participatory base of digital policy making. Since 2006 it has enabled a broad variety of voices to be heard, including those voices otherwise marginalized.It was (and is) a kitchen to cook new ideas. Discussion without barriers. Bottom Up. This was the intention. It has worked, but it did have also its limits.
As a member of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), which proposed the establishment of the IGF in 2005, I think we were very right to create the IGF as a "discussion plattform" (forum function) without any decision making capacity. The fear was, that if the IGF becomes a negotiation body, this will kill free and frank discussions. And indeed, the informal nature of the IGF did open "mouths and minds" of all stakeholders.
I was also a member of the UNCSTD IGF Improvement Working Group (2012). In this group we agreed that the IGF should continue as a discussion platform, but needs more tangible outputs.
The outcome of the IGF are its (sometimes controversial) "messages". There are no "IGF positions": some stakeholders say so, others say so. It is a bottom up process. And this is good for a discussion platform.,
However, the digital world has moved forward in the last 17 years. Internet Governance isn´t anymore a "technical issue with political implications", it is a "political issue with a technical component". For many Internet related public policy issues new bodies have been created outside the WSIS process and dislinked from the IGF. In the 2020s, there are more than a dozen global negotiation bodies where issues like cybersecurity, digital economy, sustainable development or human rights in the digital age are disucssed. Those issues are on the agenda of the IGF since its beginning. But the reality is, that the policy makers in the new negotiation bodies, which are primarily intergovernmental bodies, are in many cases not informed about the IGF discussions. They even have very often no clue what was discussed at the IGF. There is neither a formal nor an informal linkage between the "discussion layer" (the multistakeholder IGF) and the the "decision making layer" (new intergovernmental negotiation bodies).
There is a need to bring the expertise, knowledge and ideas from the multistakeholder IGF to the intergovernmental negotiation table. And the IGF will benefit, if the diplomats report back - formally or informally - to the IGF sessions. The idea of the Multistakeholder Leadership Panel (MLP) is driven by this idea to build bridges.
The proposal for the Multistakeholder IGF Leadership Panel is the result of a years long multistakeholder discussion process, where all pros and cons of such a new unit were critically evaluated and considered by many different groups, including many civil society organisations. It was inspired by the UNCSTD work. It started with the UNSG High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation (2018). It was developed by the Option Paper 5A&B (2019) and further specified in the UNSG Roadmap (2020).
Risks, which were articulated in various statements of civil society organisations, that a new unit will emerge outside the IGF and could lead to a competitive situation, duplication or overlapping of functions, with the potential to weaken the IGF, has been heard by the UNSG. My understanding of the multistakeholder leadership panel - with its very limited mandate - is, that it is part of the general IGF structure and rooted in the (broader) MAG. It is like an executive committee for the MAG and will make the work of the whole MAG more efficent and effective. It makes the IGF stronger, more visible on the international scene and will open the door for a more enhanced bottom up cooperation among all stakeholders in global Internet policy making. It is an IGF+. Members of the new Panel will act as ambassadors between the discussion and decision-making layers. They are not the "new Internet policy makers", they function like a "post office", bringing the messages from the multistakeholder IGF to the intergovernmental negotiation table and vice versa.
This is a unique opportunity for civil society. And civil society organisations, in particular from the Global South, should make use of it. Strong civil society representation in the multistakeholder leadership panel will contribute to build a human centric information society, based on the Civil Society WSIS Declaration (2003), the Tunis Agenda (2005) and the Multistakeholder NetMundial Statement (2014). And it will pave the way for a strong civil society voice in the process towards a "Global Digital Compact" (2023).
Best wishes
Wolfgang
Below are links to our "multistakeholder statement" for the Option Paper 5A&B (2020) and the outcome from a multistakeholder expert seminar (2021) where a lot of civil society organisations where represented.
https://circleid.com/posts/20210304-framing-the-internet-governance-debate-l... <https://circleid.com/posts/20210304-framing-the-internet-governance-debate-l...>
https://circleid.com/posts/20200426-cross-pollination-in-cyberspace-internet... <https://circleid.com/posts/20200426-cross-pollination-in-cyberspace-internet...>
parminder via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> hat am 24.11.2021 16:12 geschrieben:
Dear All,
Please find enclosed a letter addressed to the UN Secretary General appealing to him to roll back the decision for an IGF Leadership Panel.
The letter is co-signed by Dr Milton Mueller, on behalf of the Internet Governance Project, Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy, and Parmider Jeet Singh, for IT for Change, and the Just Net Coalition.
It is cc-ed to representatives of civil society and technical community groups requesting them to refrain from sending nominations for the IGF Leadership Panel, and thus legitimizing it.
The letter argues how the IGF Leadership Panel militates against the basic idea, objectives and structure of the IGF, and will weaken it.
Best, parminder
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
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Dear all, One thing that strikes me is that I do not have the same reading of Evan’s message that Parminder has - but this is not really important, as I may have misunderstood one or the other - or maybe both. The point that I would like to make is that I am reasonably sure that the folks who have written the letter are not completely happy with the status quo and may want to suggest a way forward that is different from the UNSG proposal. The problem is that this does not appear at all from the letter - unless also in this case I have misunderstood. If we by and large agree that the status quo is not satisfactory - and therefore agree that something should be done to improve it - it would be a better use of our time to put proposals on the table. The UNSG approach is not good enough for some? Then I would expect, rather than a simple shooting exercise, with attempt to also interpret what others say, an exposition of an alternative. In short, if not the LP, what? Otherwise this discussion will only get us to polarise in two camps and never make any progress - which is something that I am not really much interested to do. Cheers, Roberto
On 26.11.2021, at 05:19, parminder via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
Forwarded as a response to Evan's email on this subject on this elist .. parminder
-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: [Internet Policy] Fwd: [WG-Strategy] [At-Large] Seeking roll back of the IGF Leadership Panel Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2021 09:46:58 +0530 From: parminder <parminder.js@gmail.com> <mailto:parminder.js@gmail.com> To: internetpolicy@elists.isoc.org <mailto:internetpolicy@elists.isoc.org>
I have views on both Wolfgang's and Evan's responses to our letter, and their position vis a vis the new IGF Leadership Panel.
What however completely passes me is how anyone can agree with both Evan's and Wolfgang's positions, as some have some... Unless, of offense, but one is just desperate to somehow agree with whatever is happening, and looks difficult to change.
Evan's and Wolfgang's positions come from fundamentally opposed premises, and have fundamentally different expectations from the Leadership Panel. In fact there positions like in two opposite extremes from mine, or in other words mine is actually somewhere in the middle. I therefore find it difficult to in the same email argue against the two positions.
Meanwhile, I'd request those supporting both positions to help me understand how both can be right. Thanks.
Evan considers the IGF to a bubble removed from world's reality, something which has entirely failed. It is so dead or nearly so, that Even is happy if it can be given a last squeeze, everything being otherwise so dismal, that something good may come out.. He himself says he is not sure, and I am paraphrasing, if his medicine is worse than the cure. He just thinks that the IGF is all talk, ineffective, etc, and anything outcome- oriented is better than that. He seems to have applied no mind to what that outcome- oriented would be, how it would work, and what kind of outcomes can be expected (obviously, not all outcomes are describable.) I consider it kind of desperate kind of view, which, my apologies, but does not deserve any serious consideration among people who concern themselves with long term nature and implications of governance institutions. It is quite like, and as desperate as, crying out, all this bloody liberal democracy just doesn't work, bring in a good dictator inside, we would at least see some action! This is despite that I normally have quite respected Evan's views, agree with him that the IGF has become an insiders bubble, and had a disease needing cure, etc. He is completely wrong that in indicated that we as letter writers have any intention to perpetuate the status quo, live off it, etc, which I think he need to know more about how much we fight the status quo every day, including the IGFs. He is also wrong that no alternatives are offered; we so regularly offer them, and we were also one of the most active members of the CSTD WG on IGF improvements. To sum; I take Evan's critique to be of an outsider, who has rightly seem a lot of problems with the IGF, but not been invested enough, nor thought through the new Leadership Panel's nature and likely implications, whereby his statement of the problem is fine, but accepting the Leadership Panel as a solution to try out way off .. Since he himself says he isnt sure if the sure is better than the disease, I think he confirms my summing of his position. I read it as genuine expression of desperation with the current IGF, which I considerably share, and nothing more -- nothing that can really be taken serious about the actual discussion here, about the new Leadership Panel .. parminder On 25/11/21 5:37 pm, Winthrop Yu via InternetPolicy wrote:
Not that i disagree with what Wolfgang is saying here, but i am more fully in accord with the comments on this by Evan and Roberto on the At-Large list. (We have a forked discussion.) WYn
On 25 Nov 2021 7:18 pm, Carlos Afonso via InternetPolicy wrote:
Careful and relevant considerations by Wolfgang.
A lot is still on the discussion table regarding how this HL will work and relate to the overall IGF community. One option is to discard it, another is to keep it and make sure we participate in the process from the beginning.
[]s fraternos
--c.a.
On 24/11/2021 16:47, Wolfgang Kleinwächter wrote:
Hi,
I disagree with the letter, signed by Parminder and Milton. I do not share their arguments. I believe, that Parminders and Miltons proposal, to "urge civil society and technical community, to refrain from sending any nominations for the IGF Leadership Panel" is very counterproductive, undermines the future role of the IGF and weakens civil society engagement in Internet related public policy making at the global level.
The IGF is indeed a unique experiment in the UN system. Its key purpose is to broaden the participatory base of digital policy making. Since 2006 it has enabled a broad variety of voices to be heard, including those voices otherwise marginalized.It was (and is) a kitchen to cook new ideas. Discussion without barriers. Bottom Up. This was the intention. It has worked, but it did have also its limits.
As a member of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), which proposed the establishment of the IGF in 2005, I think we were very right to create the IGF as a "discussion plattform" (forum function) without any decision making capacity. The fear was, that if the IGF becomes a negotiation body, this will kill free and frank discussions. And indeed, the informal nature of the IGF did open "mouths and minds" of all stakeholders.
I was also a member of the UNCSTD IGF Improvement Working Group (2012). In this group we agreed that the IGF should continue as a discussion platform, but needs more tangible outputs.
The outcome of the IGF are its (sometimes controversial) "messages". There are no "IGF positions": some stakeholders say so, others say so. It is a bottom up process. And this is good for a discussion platform.,
However, the digital world has moved forward in the last 17 years. Internet Governance isn´t anymore a "technical issue with political implications", it is a "political issue with a technical component". For many Internet related public policy issues new bodies have been created outside the WSIS process and dislinked from the IGF. In the 2020s, there are more than a dozen global negotiation bodies where issues like cybersecurity, digital economy, sustainable development or human rights in the digital age are disucssed. Those issues are on the agenda of the IGF since its beginning. But the reality is, that the policy makers in the new negotiation bodies, which are primarily intergovernmental bodies, are in many cases not informed about the IGF discussions. They even have very often no clue what was discussed at the IGF. There is neither a formal nor an informal linkage between the "discussion layer" (the multistakeholder IGF) and the the "decision making layer" (new intergovernmental negotiation bodies).
There is a need to bring the expertise, knowledge and ideas from the multistakeholder IGF to the intergovernmental negotiation table. And the IGF will benefit, if the diplomats report back - formally or informally - to the IGF sessions. The idea of the Multistakeholder Leadership Panel (MLP) is driven by this idea to build bridges.
The proposal for the Multistakeholder IGF Leadership Panel is the result of a years long multistakeholder discussion process, where all pros and cons of such a new unit were critically evaluated and considered by many different groups, including many civil society organisations. It was inspired by the UNCSTD work. It started with the UNSG High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation (2018). It was developed by the Option Paper 5A&B (2019) and further specified in the UNSG Roadmap (2020).
Risks, which were articulated in various statements of civil society organisations, that a new unit will emerge outside the IGF and could lead to a competitive situation, duplication or overlapping of functions, with the potential to weaken the IGF, has been heard by the UNSG. My understanding of the multistakeholder leadership panel - with its very limited mandate - is, that it is part of the general IGF structure and rooted in the (broader) MAG. It is like an executive committee for the MAG and will make the work of the whole MAG more efficent and effective. It makes the IGF stronger, more visible on the international scene and will open the door for a more enhanced bottom up cooperation among all stakeholders in global Internet policy making. It is an IGF+. Members of the new Panel will act as ambassadors between the discussion and decision-making layers. They are not the "new Internet policy makers", they function like a "post office", bringing the messages from the multistakeholder IGF to the intergovernmental negotiation table and vice versa.
This is a unique opportunity for civil society. And civil society organisations, in particular from the Global South, should make use of it. Strong civil society representation in the multistakeholder leadership panel will contribute to build a human centric information society, based on the Civil Society WSIS Declaration (2003), the Tunis Agenda (2005) and the Multistakeholder NetMundial Statement (2014). And it will pave the way for a strong civil society voice in the process towards a "Global Digital Compact" (2023).
Best wishes
Wolfgang
Below are links to our "multistakeholder statement" for the Option Paper 5A&B (2020) and the outcome from a multistakeholder expert seminar (2021) where a lot of civil society organisations where represented.
https://circleid.com/posts/20210304-framing-the-internet-governance-debate-l... <https://circleid.com/posts/20210304-framing-the-internet-governance-debate-l...> <https://circleid.com/posts/20210304-framing-the-internet-governance-debate-l...> <https://circleid.com/posts/20210304-framing-the-internet-governance-debate-l...>
https://circleid.com/posts/20200426-cross-pollination-in-cyberspace-internet... <https://circleid.com/posts/20200426-cross-pollination-in-cyberspace-internet...> <https://circleid.com/posts/20200426-cross-pollination-in-cyberspace-internet...> <https://circleid.com/posts/20200426-cross-pollination-in-cyberspace-internet...>
parminder via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> <mailto:at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> hat am 24.11.2021 16:12 geschrieben:
Dear All,
Please find enclosed a letter addressed to the UN Secretary General appealing to him to roll back the decision for an IGF Leadership Panel.
The letter is co-signed by Dr Milton Mueller, on behalf of the Internet Governance Project, Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy, and Parmider Jeet Singh, for IT for Change, and the Just Net Coalition.
It is cc-ed to representatives of civil society and technical community groups requesting them to refrain from sending nominations for the IGF Leadership Panel, and thus legitimizing it.
The letter argues how the IGF Leadership Panel militates against the basic idea, objectives and structure of the IGF, and will weaken it.
Best, parminder
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large <https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large> At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org <http://atlarge.icann.org/>_______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy <https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy>) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos <https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos>). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
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+1 @Roberto. Javier Rúa-Jovet +1-787-396-6511 twitter: @javrua skype: javier.rua1 https://www.linkedin.com/in/javrua
On Nov 26, 2021, at 9:33 AM, Roberto Gaetano via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
Dear all,
One thing that strikes me is that I do not have the same reading of Evan’s message that Parminder has - but this is not really important, as I may have misunderstood one or the other - or maybe both.
The point that I would like to make is that I am reasonably sure that the folks who have written the letter are not completely happy with the status quo and may want to suggest a way forward that is different from the UNSG proposal. The problem is that this does not appear at all from the letter - unless also in this case I have misunderstood.
If we by and large agree that the status quo is not satisfactory - and therefore agree that something should be done to improve it - it would be a better use of our time to put proposals on the table. The UNSG approach is not good enough for some? Then I would expect, rather than a simple shooting exercise, with attempt to also interpret what others say, an exposition of an alternative. In short, if not the LP, what? Otherwise this discussion will only get us to polarise in two camps and never make any progress - which is something that I am not really much interested to do.
Cheers, Roberto
On 26.11.2021, at 05:19, parminder via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
Forwarded as a response to Evan's email on this subject on this elist .. parminder
-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: [Internet Policy] Fwd: [WG-Strategy] [At-Large] Seeking roll back of the IGF Leadership Panel Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2021 09:46:58 +0530 From: parminder <parminder.js@gmail.com> To: internetpolicy@elists.isoc.org
I have views on both Wolfgang's and Evan's responses to our letter, and their position vis a vis the new IGF Leadership Panel.
What however completely passes me is how anyone can agree with both Evan's and Wolfgang's positions, as some have some... Unless, of offense, but one is just desperate to somehow agree with whatever is happening, and looks difficult to change.
Evan's and Wolfgang's positions come from fundamentally opposed premises, and have fundamentally different expectations from the Leadership Panel. In fact there positions like in two opposite extremes from mine, or in other words mine is actually somewhere in the middle. I therefore find it difficult to in the same email argue against the two positions.
Meanwhile, I'd request those supporting both positions to help me understand how both can be right. Thanks.
Evan considers the IGF to a bubble removed from world's reality, something which has entirely failed. It is so dead or nearly so, that Even is happy if it can be given a last squeeze, everything being otherwise so dismal, that something good may come out.. He himself says he is not sure, and I am paraphrasing, if his medicine is worse than the cure. He just thinks that the IGF is all talk, ineffective, etc, and anything outcome- oriented is better than that. He seems to have applied no mind to what that outcome- oriented would be, how it would work, and what kind of outcomes can be expected (obviously, not all outcomes are describable.) I consider it kind of desperate kind of view, which, my apologies, but does not deserve any serious consideration among people who concern themselves with long term nature and implications of governance institutions. It is quite like, and as desperate as, crying out, all this bloody liberal democracy just doesn't work, bring in a good dictator inside, we would at least see some action!
This is despite that I normally have quite respected Evan's views, agree with him that the IGF has become an insiders bubble, and had a disease needing cure, etc. He is completely wrong that in indicated that we as letter writers have any intention to perpetuate the status quo, live off it, etc, which I think he need to know more about how much we fight the status quo every day, including the IGFs. He is also wrong that no alternatives are offered; we so regularly offer them, and we were also one of the most active members of the CSTD WG on IGF improvements.
To sum; I take Evan's critique to be of an outsider, who has rightly seem a lot of problems with the IGF, but not been invested enough, nor thought through the new Leadership Panel's nature and likely implications, whereby his statement of the problem is fine, but accepting the Leadership Panel as a solution to try out way off .. Since he himself says he isnt sure if the sure is better than the disease, I think he confirms my summing of his position. I read it as genuine expression of desperation with the current IGF, which I considerably share, and nothing more -- nothing that can really be taken serious about the actual discussion here, about the new Leadership Panel ..
parminder
On 25/11/21 5:37 pm, Winthrop Yu via InternetPolicy wrote:
Not that i disagree with what Wolfgang is saying here, but i am more fully in accord with the comments on this by Evan and Roberto on the At-Large list. (We have a forked discussion.)
WYn
On 25 Nov 2021 7:18 pm, Carlos Afonso via InternetPolicy wrote:
Careful and relevant considerations by Wolfgang.
A lot is still on the discussion table regarding how this HL will work and relate to the overall IGF community. One option is to discard it, another is to keep it and make sure we participate in the process from the beginning.
[]s fraternos
--c.a.
On 24/11/2021 16:47, Wolfgang Kleinwächter wrote: Hi,
I disagree with the letter, signed by Parminder and Milton. I do not share their arguments. I believe, that Parminders and Miltons proposal, to "urge civil society and technical community, to refrain from sending any nominations for the IGF Leadership Panel" is very counterproductive, undermines the future role of the IGF and weakens civil society engagement in Internet related public policy making at the global level.
The IGF is indeed a unique experiment in the UN system. Its key purpose is to broaden the participatory base of digital policy making. Since 2006 it has enabled a broad variety of voices to be heard, including those voices otherwise marginalized.It was (and is) a kitchen to cook new ideas. Discussion without barriers. Bottom Up. This was the intention. It has worked, but it did have also its limits.
As a member of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), which proposed the establishment of the IGF in 2005, I think we were very right to create the IGF as a "discussion plattform" (forum function) without any decision making capacity. The fear was, that if the IGF becomes a negotiation body, this will kill free and frank discussions. And indeed, the informal nature of the IGF did open "mouths and minds" of all stakeholders.
I was also a member of the UNCSTD IGF Improvement Working Group (2012). In this group we agreed that the IGF should continue as a discussion platform, but needs more tangible outputs.
The outcome of the IGF are its (sometimes controversial) "messages". There are no "IGF positions": some stakeholders say so, others say so. It is a bottom up process. And this is good for a discussion platform.,
However, the digital world has moved forward in the last 17 years. Internet Governance isn´t anymore a "technical issue with political implications", it is a "political issue with a technical component". For many Internet related public policy issues new bodies have been created outside the WSIS process and dislinked from the IGF. In the 2020s, there are more than a dozen global negotiation bodies where issues like cybersecurity, digital economy, sustainable development or human rights in the digital age are disucssed. Those issues are on the agenda of the IGF since its beginning. But the reality is, that the policy makers in the new negotiation bodies, which are primarily intergovernmental bodies, are in many cases not informed about the IGF discussions. They even have very often no clue what was discussed at the IGF. There is neither a formal nor an informal linkage between the "discussion layer" (the multistakeholder IGF) and the the "decision making layer" (new intergovernmental negotiation bodies).
There is a need to bring the expertise, knowledge and ideas from the multistakeholder IGF to the intergovernmental negotiation table. And the IGF will benefit, if the diplomats report back - formally or informally - to the IGF sessions. The idea of the Multistakeholder Leadership Panel (MLP) is driven by this idea to build bridges.
The proposal for the Multistakeholder IGF Leadership Panel is the result of a years long multistakeholder discussion process, where all pros and cons of such a new unit were critically evaluated and considered by many different groups, including many civil society organisations. It was inspired by the UNCSTD work. It started with the UNSG High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation (2018). It was developed by the Option Paper 5A&B (2019) and further specified in the UNSG Roadmap (2020).
Risks, which were articulated in various statements of civil society organisations, that a new unit will emerge outside the IGF and could lead to a competitive situation, duplication or overlapping of functions, with the potential to weaken the IGF, has been heard by the UNSG. My understanding of the multistakeholder leadership panel - with its very limited mandate - is, that it is part of the general IGF structure and rooted in the (broader) MAG. It is like an executive committee for the MAG and will make the work of the whole MAG more efficent and effective. It makes the IGF stronger, more visible on the international scene and will open the door for a more enhanced bottom up cooperation among all stakeholders in global Internet policy making. It is an IGF+. Members of the new Panel will act as ambassadors between the discussion and decision-making layers. They are not the "new Internet policy makers", they function like a "post office", bringing the messages from the multistakeholder IGF to the intergovernmental negotiation table and vice versa.
This is a unique opportunity for civil society. And civil society organisations, in particular from the Global South, should make use of it. Strong civil society representation in the multistakeholder leadership panel will contribute to build a human centric information society, based on the Civil Society WSIS Declaration (2003), the Tunis Agenda (2005) and the Multistakeholder NetMundial Statement (2014). And it will pave the way for a strong civil society voice in the process towards a "Global Digital Compact" (2023).
Best wishes
Wolfgang
Below are links to our "multistakeholder statement" for the Option Paper 5A&B (2020) and the outcome from a multistakeholder expert seminar (2021) where a lot of civil society organisations where represented.
https://circleid.com/posts/20210304-framing-the-internet-governance-debate-l... <https://circleid.com/posts/20210304-framing-the-internet-governance-debate-l...>
https://circleid.com/posts/20200426-cross-pollination-in-cyberspace-internet... <https://circleid.com/posts/20200426-cross-pollination-in-cyberspace-internet...>
parminder via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> hat am 24.11.2021 16:12 geschrieben:
Dear All,
Please find enclosed a letter addressed to the UN Secretary General appealing to him to roll back the decision for an IGF Leadership Panel.
The letter is co-signed by Dr Milton Mueller, on behalf of the Internet Governance Project, Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy, and Parmider Jeet Singh, for IT for Change, and the Just Net Coalition.
It is cc-ed to representatives of civil society and technical community groups requesting them to refrain from sending nominations for the IGF Leadership Panel, and thus legitimizing it.
The letter argues how the IGF Leadership Panel militates against the basic idea, objectives and structure of the IGF, and will weaken it.
Best, parminder
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
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_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
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+1 Roberto Regards Alberto +El 2021-11-26 10:33, Roberto Gaetano via At-Large escribió:
Dear all,
One thing that strikes me is that I do not have the same reading of Evan’s message that Parminder has - but this is not really important, as I may have misunderstood one or the other - or maybe both.
The point that I would like to make is that I am reasonably sure that the folks who have written the letter are not completely happy with the status quo and may want to suggest a way forward that is different from the UNSG proposal. The problem is that this does not appear at all from the letter - unless also in this case I have misunderstood.
If we by and large agree that the status quo is not satisfactory - and therefore agree that something should be done to improve it - it would be a better use of our time to put proposals on the table. The UNSG approach is not good enough for some? Then I would expect, rather than a simple shooting exercise, with attempt to also interpret what others say, an exposition of an alternative. In short, if not the LP, what? Otherwise this discussion will only get us to polarise in two camps and never make any progress - which is something that I am not really much interested to do.
Cheers, Roberto
On 26.11.2021, at 05:19, parminder via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
Forwarded as a response to Evan's email on this subject on this elist .. parminder
-------- Forwarded Message --------
SUBJECT: Re: [Internet Policy] Fwd: [WG-Strategy] [At-Large] Seeking roll back of the IGF Leadership Panel
DATE: Fri, 26 Nov 2021 09:46:58 +0530
FROM: parminder <parminder.js@gmail.com>
TO: internetpolicy@elists.isoc.org
I have views on both Wolfgang's and Evan's responses to our letter, and their position vis a vis the new IGF Leadership Panel.
What however completely passes me is how anyone can agree with both Evan's and Wolfgang's positions, as some have some... Unless, of offense, but one is just desperate to somehow agree with whatever is happening, and looks difficult to change.
Evan's and Wolfgang's positions come from fundamentally opposed premises, and have fundamentally different expectations from the Leadership Panel. In fact there positions like in two opposite extremes from mine, or in other words mine is actually somewhere in the middle. I therefore find it difficult to in the same email argue against the two positions.
Meanwhile, I'd request those supporting both positions to help me understand how both can be right. Thanks.
Evan considers the IGF to a bubble removed from world's reality, something which has entirely failed. It is so dead or nearly so, that Even is happy if it can be given a last squeeze, everything being otherwise so dismal, that something good may come out.. He himself says he is not sure, and I am paraphrasing, if his medicine is worse than the cure. He just thinks that the IGF is all talk, ineffective, etc, and anything outcome- oriented is better than that. He seems to have applied no mind to what that outcome- oriented would be, how it would work, and what kind of outcomes can be expected (obviously, not all outcomes are describable.) I consider it kind of desperate kind of view, which, my apologies, but does not deserve any serious consideration among people who concern themselves with long term nature and implications of governance institutions. It is quite like, and as desperate as, crying out, all this bloody liberal democracy just doesn't work, bring in a good dictator inside, we would at least see some action!
This is despite that I normally have quite respected Evan's views, agree with him that the IGF has become an insiders bubble, and had a disease needing cure, etc. He is completely wrong that in indicated that we as letter writers have any intention to perpetuate the status quo, live off it, etc, which I think he need to know more about how much we fight the status quo every day, including the IGFs. He is also wrong that no alternatives are offered; we so regularly offer them, and we were also one of the most active members of the CSTD WG on IGF improvements.
To sum; I take Evan's critique to be of an outsider, who has rightly seem a lot of problems with the IGF, but not been invested enough, nor thought through the new Leadership Panel's nature and likely implications, whereby his statement of the problem is fine, but accepting the Leadership Panel as a solution to try out way off .. Since he himself says he isnt sure if the sure is better than the disease, I think he confirms my summing of his position. I read it as genuine expression of desperation with the current IGF, which I considerably share, and nothing more -- nothing that can really be taken serious about the actual discussion here, about the new Leadership Panel ..
parminder On 25/11/21 5:37 pm, Winthrop Yu via InternetPolicy wrote:
Not that i disagree with what Wolfgang is saying here, but i am more fully in accord with the comments on this by Evan and Roberto on the At-Large list. (We have a forked discussion.)
WYn
On 25 Nov 2021 7:18 pm, Carlos Afonso via InternetPolicy wrote: Careful and relevant considerations by Wolfgang.
A lot is still on the discussion table regarding how this HL will work and relate to the overall IGF community. One option is to discard it, another is to keep it and make sure we participate in the process from the beginning.
[]s fraternos
--c.a.
On 24/11/2021 16:47, Wolfgang Kleinwächter wrote: Hi,
I disagree with the letter, signed by Parminder and Milton. I do not share their arguments. I believe, that Parminders and Miltons proposal, to "urge civil society and technical community, to refrain from sending any nominations for the IGF Leadership Panel" is very counterproductive, undermines the future role of the IGF and weakens civil society engagement in Internet related public policy making at the global level.
The IGF is indeed a unique experiment in the UN system. Its key purpose is to broaden the participatory base of digital policy making. Since 2006 it has enabled a broad variety of voices to be heard, including those voices otherwise marginalized.It was (and is) a kitchen to cook new ideas. Discussion without barriers. Bottom Up. This was the intention. It has worked, but it did have also its limits.
As a member of the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), which proposed the establishment of the IGF in 2005, I think we were very right to create the IGF as a "discussion plattform" (forum function) without any decision making capacity. The fear was, that if the IGF becomes a negotiation body, this will kill free and frank discussions. And indeed, the informal nature of the IGF did open "mouths and minds" of all stakeholders.
I was also a member of the UNCSTD IGF Improvement Working Group (2012). In this group we agreed that the IGF should continue as a discussion platform, but needs more tangible outputs.
The outcome of the IGF are its (sometimes controversial) "messages". There are no "IGF positions": some stakeholders say so, others say so. It is a bottom up process. And this is good for a discussion platform.,
However, the digital world has moved forward in the last 17 years. Internet Governance isn´t anymore a "technical issue with political implications", it is a "political issue with a technical component". For many Internet related public policy issues new bodies have been created outside the WSIS process and dislinked from the IGF. In the 2020s, there are more than a dozen global negotiation bodies where issues like cybersecurity, digital economy, sustainable development or human rights in the digital age are disucssed. Those issues are on the agenda of the IGF since its beginning. But the reality is, that the policy makers in the new negotiation bodies, which are primarily intergovernmental bodies, are in many cases not informed about the IGF discussions. They even have very often no clue what was discussed at the IGF. There is neither a formal nor an informal linkage between the "discussion layer" (the multistakeholder IGF) and the the "decision making layer" (new intergovernmental negotiation bodies).
There is a need to bring the expertise, knowledge and ideas from the multistakeholder IGF to the intergovernmental negotiation table. And the IGF will benefit, if the diplomats report back - formally or informally - to the IGF sessions. The idea of the Multistakeholder Leadership Panel (MLP) is driven by this idea to build bridges.
The proposal for the Multistakeholder IGF Leadership Panel is the result of a years long multistakeholder discussion process, where all pros and cons of such a new unit were critically evaluated and considered by many different groups, including many civil society organisations. It was inspired by the UNCSTD work. It started with the UNSG High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation (2018). It was developed by the Option Paper 5A&B (2019) and further specified in the UNSG Roadmap (2020).
Risks, which were articulated in various statements of civil society organisations, that a new unit will emerge outside the IGF and could lead to a competitive situation, duplication or overlapping of functions, with the potential to weaken the IGF, has been heard by the UNSG. My understanding of the multistakeholder leadership panel - with its very limited mandate - is, that it is part of the general IGF structure and rooted in the (broader) MAG. It is like an executive committee for the MAG and will make the work of the whole MAG more efficent and effective. It makes the IGF stronger, more visible on the international scene and will open the door for a more enhanced bottom up cooperation among all stakeholders in global Internet policy making. It is an IGF+. Members of the new Panel will act as ambassadors between the discussion and decision-making layers. They are not the "new Internet policy makers", they function like a "post office", bringing the messages from the multistakeholder IGF to the intergovernmental negotiation table and vice versa.
This is a unique opportunity for civil society. And civil society organisations, in particular from the Global South, should make use of it. Strong civil society representation in the multistakeholder leadership panel will contribute to build a human centric information society, based on the Civil Society WSIS Declaration (2003), the Tunis Agenda (2005) and the Multistakeholder NetMundial Statement (2014). And it will pave the way for a strong civil society voice in the process towards a "Global Digital Compact" (2023).
Best wishes
Wolfgang
Below are links to our "multistakeholder statement" for the Option Paper 5A&B (2020) and the outcome from a multistakeholder expert seminar (2021) where a lot of civil society organisations where represented.
https://circleid.com/posts/20210304-framing-the-internet-governance-debate-l...
<https://circleid.com/posts/20210304-framing-the-internet-governance-debate-l...>
[1]
https://circleid.com/posts/20200426-cross-pollination-in-cyberspace-internet...
<https://circleid.com/posts/20200426-cross-pollination-in-cyberspace-internet...>
[2]
parminder via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> hat am 24.11.2021 16:12 geschrieben:
Dear All,
Please find enclosed a letter addressed to the UN Secretary General appealing to him to roll back the decision for an IGF Leadership Panel.
The letter is co-signed by Dr Milton Mueller, on behalf of the Internet Governance Project, Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy, and Parmider Jeet Singh, for IT for Change, and the Just Net Coalition.
It is cc-ed to representatives of civil society and technical community groups requesting them to refrain from sending nominations for the IGF Leadership Panel, and thus legitimizing it.
The letter argues how the IGF Leadership Panel militates against the basic idea, objectives and structure of the IGF, and will weaken it.
Best, parminder
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org [3] _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on. _______________________________________________ WG-Strategy mailing list WG-Strategy@intgovforum.org To unsubscribe or manage your options please go to http://intgovforum.org/mailman/listinfo/wg-strategy_intgovforum.org
_______________________________________________ To manage your Internet Society subscriptions or unsubscribe, log into the Member Portal at https://admin.internetsociety.org/622619/User/Login and go to the Preferences tab within your profile. - View the Internet Society Code of Conduct: https://www.internetsociety.org/become-a-member/code-of-conduct/
_______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
Links: ------ [1] https://circleid.com/posts/20210304-framing-the-internet-governance-debate-l... [2] https://circleid.com/posts/20200426-cross-pollination-in-cyberspace-internet... [3] http://atlarge.icann.org/ _______________________________________________ At-Large mailing list At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.
participants (4)
-
alberto＠soto.net.ar -
Javier Rua -
parminder -
Roberto Gaetano