Monday, July 18, 2005
New talk-shop to debate internet governance?
By Steven Lang, Highway Africa News Agency
15 July, 2005
Luxembourg- A report released into the preparatory process for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) recommends that a new forum be established to allow for more debate on how the internet should be governed.
The Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) was set up after the first phase of the WSIS meeting in Geneva in 2003 failed to produce consensus on the concept of internet governance. The UN Secretary General tasked WGIG with drawing up a report tackling some of the more contentious aspects of this subject.
One of the more interesting recommendations of the WGIG report, due for release on Monday, calls for "the creation of a new space for dialogue for all stakeholders on an equal footing on all internet governance-related issues".
This space, or forum, could be yet another hollow talk-shop where unresolved issues are left to be eternally dissected until they are forgotten, or it could be a useful think-tank that produces meaningful solutions.
WGIG recommends the forum because it "…identified a vacuum within the context of existing structures, since there is no global multi-stakeholder forum to address internet-related public policy issues".
It says the forum "…should preferably be linked to the United Nations, in a form to be defined". By not defining the details of the forum, and by subtly nudging the proposed body towards the UN sphere of influence, the WGIG report ensures that the public policy debate is kept away from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). It would further strengthen the momentum to create a full blooded internet body within the UN framework.
The report also proposes that the forum have a secretariat of two or three people – but it says nothing at all about who should finance the forum.
WGIG says that such a forum would be of particular benefit to developing countries because there is no other place for discussing internet-related public policy issues.
Paragraph 44 of the WGIG report reads:
"The forum. It would be better placed than existing Internet institutions to engage developing countries in a policy dialogue. This would be an important factor in itself, as the future growth of the Internet is expected to be mainly in developing countries".
The WGIG report will be at the centre of deliberations of the third WSIS preparatory committee (PrepCom 3) meeting in Geneva at the end of September. PrepCom is supposed to prepare the final resolutions and documentation for the second phase of the summit due to take place in Tunis in November.
15 July, 2005
Luxembourg- A report released into the preparatory process for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) recommends that a new forum be established to allow for more debate on how the internet should be governed.
The Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) was set up after the first phase of the WSIS meeting in Geneva in 2003 failed to produce consensus on the concept of internet governance. The UN Secretary General tasked WGIG with drawing up a report tackling some of the more contentious aspects of this subject.
One of the more interesting recommendations of the WGIG report, due for release on Monday, calls for "the creation of a new space for dialogue for all stakeholders on an equal footing on all internet governance-related issues".
This space, or forum, could be yet another hollow talk-shop where unresolved issues are left to be eternally dissected until they are forgotten, or it could be a useful think-tank that produces meaningful solutions.
WGIG recommends the forum because it "…identified a vacuum within the context of existing structures, since there is no global multi-stakeholder forum to address internet-related public policy issues".
It says the forum "…should preferably be linked to the United Nations, in a form to be defined". By not defining the details of the forum, and by subtly nudging the proposed body towards the UN sphere of influence, the WGIG report ensures that the public policy debate is kept away from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). It would further strengthen the momentum to create a full blooded internet body within the UN framework.
The report also proposes that the forum have a secretariat of two or three people – but it says nothing at all about who should finance the forum.
WGIG says that such a forum would be of particular benefit to developing countries because there is no other place for discussing internet-related public policy issues.
Paragraph 44 of the WGIG report reads:
"The forum. It would be better placed than existing Internet institutions to engage developing countries in a policy dialogue. This would be an important factor in itself, as the future growth of the Internet is expected to be mainly in developing countries".
The WGIG report will be at the centre of deliberations of the third WSIS preparatory committee (PrepCom 3) meeting in Geneva at the end of September. PrepCom is supposed to prepare the final resolutions and documentation for the second phase of the summit due to take place in Tunis in November.
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