Consultations on the convening of the IGF
19 May 2006
Selected EXCERPTS
from the morning session
F.Muguet V0.1 15 March 2007
Corrected for typos and minor errors.
Important statements in bold.
Explanatory notes in italic.
Most upper case letters are removed.
Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Consultations on the Convening of the Internet Governance Forum, in Geneva on 19 May in Geneva, Switzerland. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
>>CHAIRMAN DESAI: ../.. Obviously, we were not trying to get a complete sort of negotiated agreement or any such thing, but to get a good sense of what's the range of views, what would be possible, what is definitely not possible, et cetera, and conveyed that to the secretary general. And the secretary general has constituted this advisory group to assist him in convening the Internet Governance Forum. As you will recollect, this forum is something which is of a very unique character. It is in not a formal intergovernmental meeting, as most U.N. meetings are, but it is a meeting which will be convened by the secretary general of the United Nations. And therefore this -- the primary purpose of this advisory group is to advise the secretary general on the processes of convening this meeting.
../.. And as you can see from the short preamble to the list of members which is there, the main task which has been given to us as an advisory group is to prepare the substantive agenda and program for the first meeting of the forum which is to be held in Athens, from 30th October to 2nd of November. I would like to stress that at this stage, we are only focusing on the first meeting. Questions about how the future will be handled, et cetera, we will perhaps have to come to after we gain some experience, some learning, from this process. Of course, when we discuss issues about priorities for the substantive agenda and program, we will also have to have a little thought to the format of the meeting. And I hope that when you speak, you will be able to give your views and comments on that also. What we are doing to do is a process of open consultation. The advisory group will be meeting on Monday and Tuesday. It is very important that the members of the advisory group have a good sense of what is the broad sentiment on these issues amongst the people who are -- who are likely to be very active participants in the forum.
>>PAKISTAN: I take the floor on behalf of the Group of 77 and China. Most of you may know already that this statement is therefore on behalf of 133 member states of the United Nations. Mr. DESAI, we are glad to see the process of preparations of the IGF getting on road with the composition of the ad hoc advisory process being posted on the Web site, and with the meetings being proposed for next week. As mentioned in the discussions held yesterday, the Group of 77 and China believe that WSIS belongs to the series of U.N. summits that focused on economic and social development issues our declared commitment in the Geneva Declaration of Principles that began the objective of the summit, including all aspects dealing with the Internet governance, was to create a people-centered, inclusive, and development-oriented information society. The Internet Governance Forum should operationalize this commitment of a development-oriented information society.
../.. the Group of 77 and China have already sent forth a list of subjects that it considers of priority for discussions within the IGF. While outlining a multiyear program, the IGF must not lose the development perspective in examining all these issues and seek to operationalize the development content of the Tunis Agenda, with particular reference to the following -- and this is the list that has already been provided to Mr. Kummer. The list is as follows:
A, bridging the digital divide, access, policy, and financing.
B, affordability and availability of the Internet.
international interconnection costs.
D technology and know-how transfer.
E, multilingualism and local content.
F, local development of software and open source software.
G, capacity-building and participation of multistakeholders from developing countries.
H, equitable and stable and -resource management.
I, Internet access and international transit arrangements.
../..
>>UNITED STATES: ../.. The United States believes that the IGF should be a truly multistakeholder event. Therefore, it is important that it not be encumbered by extensive existing United Nations processes and procedures. Attendance and participation in the IGF should be open to a broad array of stakeholders, including governments, business entities, civil society, scientists, and intergovernmental organizations. Linkages to the U.N. should be minimal in terms of procedures. And the IGF should avoid burdensome preparatory processes. The secretariat should be small, with the mission to support the smooth functioning of the IGF, and to facilitate broad participation in the event. Finally, a multistakeholder bureau will be extremely important to act as a program committee and to offer input as to discussion topics, speakers, and format.
>>BRAZIL: I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, to repeat myself. Nevertheless, as the Brazilian delegation has already stated during the first consultation on the IGF last February, we decided in Tunis to request the United Nations secretary general to help us on two tasks. The first one was to convene by the second quarter of 2006 a meeting of the new forum for multistakeholder policy dialogue, called Internet Governance Forum, which is paragraph 72 of the Tunis Agenda. But we also asked the secretary general to start a process towards an enhanced cooperation by the end of the first quarter of 2006, Mr. Chairman. I think it's March 31st, which is paragraph 71 of the Tunis Agenda. We are aware of the fact that this meeting is related specifically to the Internet Governance Forum, and therefore, it is the Brazilian delegation's understanding that another meeting is going to be organized to take care of the enhanced cooperation process. Brazil is confident of that, Mr. Chairman. In fact, not only Brazil is confident and eager to help; Latin America and the Caribbean region, the GRULAC, is also confident. To be precise, Mr. Chairman, the European Union is also ready to support the United Nations secretary general on this task, which is to start a process towards an enhanced cooperation.
../..
>> RUSSIAN FEDERATION: ../..
Ensuring the stability, security, and continuity of the Internet is required for any activity that is carried out in this global information network or uses it. The international community should give close attention to the principles of the Internet Governance Forum. We also would like to mention that the above-mentioned problems could not be started and resolved without ITU participation.
>>ART REILLY (Cisco Systems ) : My name is Art Reilly speaking on behalf of the International Chamber of Commerce and the CCBI. ../.. We are pleased that the U.N. Secretary-General has announced the members of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group, and we welcome the selection of this group. ../..
>>ROBERT GUERRA: ../.. In regards to discussions that have been taking place on civil society discussion spaces on the advisory group I think it would be important over the course of the day to (have) more idea and information on the exact scope and term limit of any of the advisory group. There is perhaps a misunderstanding, perhaps it might be personal, that the advisory group has been set up only to prepare the Athens meeting. Shall it be set up to prepare other meetings, that should be known in advance because it would be important to have that information. And specifically, how the advisory group will work with stakeholders between now and the Athens meeting itself. I think that working in a collaborative fashion, in an open fashion, in a consultative fashion would be appropriate. ../..
>> CHAIRMAN DESAI: Just a clarification on a question you raised. Your understanding is correct. At the present stage, this forum's job is preparing for the Athens meeting. And what press release says is, decisions on how to prepare subsequent meetings and on any future structured working methods of the forum will be taken in the light of experiences gained during the preparatory process for the Athens meeting. Let's put it this way. This is an experiment. And we will see how it works out before we jump in and commit ourselves to a particular model for five years. We don't know. This is the first time we are trying something like this out in the U.N., and let's see how it works out, and how effective it is in generating a valuable and useful meeting. So we'll take stock afterwards. Nothing is ruled out, nothing is off the table. But right now, our focus is just the Athens meeting.
../..
>> David Wood: David Wood, am representing here the World Broadcasting Unions. ../.. We have activities in terms of technology and, in fact, if you are interested, tomorrow night we have what will probably be the world's largest peer-to-peer live stream with our large audience program which is called the EURO-vision songs contest. ../..Of course the technical dimension, the legal dimension. But please not forgetting that there has to be a creative dimension, there has to be a content side, there has to be measures and discussions about how to achieve and help people to achieve audiovisual expression if we are to make the full use of Internet capacity.../..
>>UNESCO: Thank you, chair. UNESCO is delighted to see you back in the chair, and Mr. Kummer in the Secretariat. Congratulations to all members of the advisory group. My name is Liz Longworth from UNESCO, as you have heard. On the topic of structuring, we would suggest that structuring around discrete topics, separates topics, without showing the linkages or end goal could possibly risk a lack of coherence, and perhaps we might miss an opportunity. By way of illustration, I have just participated in some of the action-line facilitation meetings, and one of the challenges in those meetings was how to deal with interlinked, interconnected, interdependent topics.
>>CHAIRMAN DESAI: ../.. Because we will end up spending a fair amount of time just getting ourselves organized. So some suggestions, reflections from you on how we prepare for Athens, because there's not a negotiating body, it doesn't require any committee or any such thing. But we encourage people to workshops? Do we encourage the secretariat to find people who would write background papers in this? Would that be a possibility of the stakeholders also contributing their expertise and knowledge in order to prepare for this? Give a little thought to this, say some what you would wish to -- on this theme. I think some people did mention this whole notion that don't just restrict yourself to the people who can come to Athens; find ways of connecting with the world outside. There was a reference to the fact that the material from these meetings is available online. And that's very valuable. I want us to think of the next step, which is how would material which is online be fed into this process? ../.. So give some thought to some of these concepts, see how do we bring the outside in, how do we structure these things, how do we have a balance in our themes from things which are clearly of interest to practically any Internet users to things which are of interest to the professional Internet user?
>>BRAZIL: Yes, I think, Mr. Chairman, it's time for some dialogue after reading statements. And I think I can say to you that for sure in Brazil's mind, the idea of IGF is not to have a school, to organize a school for little boys and girls to go there to be taught by big companies and academics. That's not the idea. You know that we are of the view that if we are going to an Internet Governance Forum, we would like to discuss governance. And our secretary general, Kofi Annan, is very wise when he selected the group. From what I've seen from the list, we have four representatives from the ICANN. Three of them from the board of ICANN, and one employee of ICANN. If we have ICANN over there, maybe we could discuss governance. That's what ICANN used to do. The second point, Mr. Chairman, about the list. We would like -- I have to send back to Brazil a small C.V. of the people here selected from the Brazilian side, I have on my right side, Dr. Jose Bicalho. He is from our national telecommunications agency. He is a member of the Brazilian government. I am going to say this in public to be sure that the Brazilian government has one representative in the group, representing the Brazilian government. But I would like to know which and who the others are representing, then it will help us, including a kind of C.V. of the organization they are working for. Let me give you an example. We have here a very well-known man, Michael Gallagher. He used to work for the United States government, if I am not mistaken. He used to be the head of the NDIA, Department of Commerce. Nowadays, it's written here, Chairman of the Communications Group, Perkins School. I have no idea what it means, and my government would like to know what this organization is doing nowadays, what are their objectives and who they are working for and things
like that. And I think this could make this Advisory Group more transparent. I think I'm going to stop here, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
>>CHAIRMAN DESAI: I think certainly we can make information available. But I would like to stress that the people who are participating in the Advisory Group ( are advising the secretary general. They are advising the secretary general. They are participating there. And they are named people. It's not the organization which has been asked. It was the individuals who were asked. Yes, the individuals were asked after consultation with organizations, including governments and regional groups. Let me also say that in addition, the secretary general has authorized me, as the chairman of this group, to have, so to speak, advisors to assist me. Because I do understand that this process needs more institutionalization. And I will certainly propose to use that flexibility, particularly to bring people in who could speak, so to speak, say, for instance, for regional groups, to give an example ( for information , the Special Advisers to the Chair are Kleinwächter, Wolfgang Aarhus - Professor, International Communication Policy and Regulation, University of Aarhus, Kurbalija, Jovan Geneva/La Valetta - Director, DiploFoundation , Miloshevic, Desiree London - Afilias, ISOC Board Member Sadowsky, George, Stamford, CT - Executive Director, Global Internet Policy Initiative : Shaw, Heather New York - Director, International Telecommunications and Information Policy, United States Council for International Business )
. But -- so that's a separate issue. At this stage, I would stress that these are people who are there as individuals. They have been selected after consulting with organizations. But I would say that we will certainly ask when we meet on Monday, ask all the members to give us a brief C.V.
>>JOHN MATHIASON: Thank you, Mr Desai. Just a short intervention in response to your suggestion that we make comments on process. As everyone knows, the success of the forum, like any other large event, will depend on its preparations. And this is something on which we would hope that the Advisory Group would focus. This is also an area in which, since the forum itself is a very interesting and important experiment, its preparations offer the possibility for innovation.
The Internet Governance Project with which I participate has just issued a paper which we call : The Distributed Secretariat: Making the Internet Governance Forum Work, this is available on the Web site http://www.internetgovernance.org www.internetgovernanceforum@intergovernance.org. ( http://www.intergovernance.org ? )
But it substantially makes a series of proposals on how the function of substantive secretariat, which in many events is very important, is a way of making a -- putting a common set of facts and normative principles on the table to expedite discussion, could be prepared in a new way, through finding a way of distributing the function among different stakeholders.
>> IRINI VASSILAKI: Yes. My name is Irini Vassilaki, and I am representing here the German Foundation for Law and Informatics. After we saw all the comments of the participations, we thought -- we defined three issues on which the meeting in Athens should focus. First, the foundational issue. Second, a political issue. And, third, a legal issue. The foundational issue first. It's a precondition for a country and region that wants to become part of the global information society is the universal access, namely, access to infrastructure, content, service, application to the Internet. The first meeting in Athens should assist in the preparation of international agreements that enable cooperation between international backbone operations and the local ISPs. ../..
>> CHAIRMAN DESAI: ../.. I don't think that we have to be prisons of any mixed model. At one end you have a U.N. model with a very set pattern. There has to be a plenary and then groups for negotiations, et cetera. Now, that is not required in our case. We are not going to negotiate anything there, in Athens. But we are really focused he that we must always have a plenary, a grand meeting, where everybody speaks on the full issue.
../.. Is there a distinction between events which would be organized by the IGF secretariat and events which would be organized by others. Or do we have a much more free policy of what constitutes an IGF event. For instance, at the other extreme we are the World Social Forum where the forum secretariat does not organize any meeting. It simply provides a space. Anybody is free to come and organize a meeting. These are some issues which you need to come and address because we are not organizing a U.N. meeting. We are organizing something which is a little different from a normal U.N. meeting. It's a meeting convened by the U.N., and yet it has to have some resemblance to what people are used to so we don't spend a lot of time struggling with the format when we are there.../..
>>BRAZIL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let's try to help you in giving some thoughts on this matter. Even though the IGF is not a U.N. meeting, we expect, and I suppose the Greek government is expecting to have the U.N. secretary-general for their opening ceremony. And if you are going to have an opening ceremony that the Greeks are going to organize in a very nice way, I'm sure, we are going to have statements. And for statements, we need a plenary. Then the first question, yes, we need a plenary. Second point, we need to divide ourselves later on in groups to discuss topics. And this goes to my second point, which is again, even though we are not going to take decisions in the forum, that's why we are calling it a forum, we can have recommendations. And to have recommendations, we need to divide ourselves in topics, in groups, for each group to recommend something on specific topics, and then goes back to the second plenary and the last one where we are going to approve recommendations, nonbinding recommendations, but it would be recommendations for -- to be delivered – we are going to send back, I suppose, to the secretary-general of the United Nations, and then these recommendations can be delivered to specific bodies that takes decisions on matters. Then my suggestion, Mr. Chairman, then we have an opening plenary, a closing plenary. Panels, groups, study groups in between, as many as we want, as we decide, as the group decides. Each one producing recommendations on a consensus basis. Of course there will be no votes. Recommendations goes back to the last plenary, and then we approve, and we are ready to go to (inaudible).
>> CHAIRMAN DESAI: I want to go a little further. You have used the word "we approve." Who is the "we" in the plenary? This isn't intergovernmental meeting with 1200 defined borders. This is an open-door meeting. Who is the "we"?
>>BRAZIL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Of course this is not an intergovernmental body, as I told at the beginning. It is a forum. And I suppose the Greek government is going to organize a list of participants. They are going to have -- people are going to apply to be part of the forum. The "we," I suppose it will be delegations from countries, because we are going to send a delegation to Greece, and you will have a Brazilian delegations. We are going to have NGOs from Brazil going to there, representatives from the private sector going to Greece. And the "we" will be the list of participants. As simple as that. Thank you.
>>CHAIRMAN DESAI: ...consensus between 500 participants from multiple sectors groups. I will put it to the advisory group. It's an interesting thought. I will put it to them and see how they feel about it.
>>AZERBAIJAN: ../.. And I don't know if we go for plenary, and then we reconvene at the end to work on the recommendations to approve them. Well, in quotes, "Approve." But certainly they should be the fruit of the meeting in Athens. ../..
>>JOVAN KURBALIJA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, while I am pleased to see the continuation of the progress started with the WGIG... ../.. We started in the beginning of April with 80 representatives from developing countries and there is a strong community with quite a powerful and deep interaction and knowledge exchange. And this community representing 70 countries, developing countries, is in constant touch, and they will be also integrated into the process of the preparation for the meeting in Athens. As soon as advisory group has provisional agenda, the capacity building participants will start providing -- start conducting research and providing input with particular relevance for the position of developing countries.
Therefore, you can expect quite considerable input from that group, and we will keep you informed about developments within the Internet Governance capacity building program.
>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPPELLE: ../.. I just want to make a brief comment as prompted by a reference that you made to the two somewhat extreme models, one on the U.N. meetings that are purely intergovernmental and the World Social Forum that is purely a hosting space. Interestingly enough in the last two or three years, the two processes have converged in an interesting manner, meaning the WSIS was an example where self-organization of parallel events within the framework of the summit was a complement to the official plenaries and sessions. And similarly in the context of the World Social Forum, particularly in Porto Alegre two years ago and more recently last year, a certain number of events organized by the coordination of the forum is taking place in parallel to the self bottom-up organization. I personally took part in the co-organization of what is called "Tables of Controversy" in the World Social Forum where Mr. Ocampo and representatives of international organizations came to meet a large number of NGOs there. So taking this convergence into account, and taking also into account the fact that in many professional and business conferences you also have -- scientific conferences, you have a difference of levels, between issues, topics, and tracks, which are clustering certain topics together, I think there is a possibility to combine self-organized events, more structured aspects. ../..
>>KAREN BANKS: ../.. And in relation to preparation, I think it would be useful to link this to thinking about how we can ensure that there isn't duplication between the IGF and WSIS implementation, and that possibly working groups, if they were to be established, and we would be very interested in committing energy to a working group that looks at this question of access, that we try and integrate with work going on in, for example, the action lines dealing with infrastructure access, in WSIS implementation, simply to provide a conduit for sharing information and staying in touch, and maybe bringing to the IGF elements that are relevant in relation to governance of that issue. And I don't think that's a terribly difficult thing to do.
>>ISOC: ../.. We should not be in Athens and talking to ourselves. We should be reaching out to those experts who are not here and engaging them and bringing in other communities, a very important component.
>>CHAIRMAN DESAI: Matthew, normally in the U.N., we have only two categories: A meeting is either a success or an outstanding success ../..