FINISHED - 2014 09 03 - WS139 - Evaluating Mechanisms to Address Governance Issues - Room 9

FINISHED COPY



NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE

INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014

ISTANBUL, TURKEY

"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED

MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"



03 SEPTEMBER 2014

11:00

WS 139

EVALUATING MECHANISMS TO ADDRESS GOVERNANCE ISSUES



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The following is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings.  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.

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>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Well, good morning.  Welcome to Evaluating Mechanisms to Address Governance Issues.  Thank you for being here.  As a matter of introduction the introduction of multiple Internet Governance frameworks and mechanisms has been the focus of considerable discussion in 2014.  This process must proceed through careful analysis.  Some Governments highlighted concern about Internet related policies for which they cannot be identified on the existing Internet.  However, before concluding that new mechanisms should be created, alternative options must be sought to insure that changes will contribute to enhancing security, stability, privacy, proceedings and interpretability of the Internet and through economic and social analysis of benefits.  

This workshop will examine how governance operational problems will be addressed in the manner in which continues to look at security.  Also we will examine the Working Group on enhanced cooperation multianalysis and consider how to utilize this warning to enable a stakeholder to identify existing mechanisms, developed through private sector, governmental and intergovernmental organisations to address governance issues.

That's the hope of this workshop today.  The mechanics of the workshop, we have as you might see, five panelists here.  I'm moderating.  Each of them is going to have an introductory speech of five minutes and then we will open the floor for questions, comments and whatever you see fit for about half an hour, and end up with a wrap up session with final remarks and recommendations coming from our panelists.  Our panelists are composed of five people, on my left, Joy Liddicoat.  On my left, Basher Esmat, he is Vice President of stakeholder Middle East.  Over there on my right next to Joy is Phil Rushton, standards and numbering strategy on British Telecom, Jandyr Santos is the head of the information society division of the Ministry of External Relations for the Government of Brazil, and Mohammed Hashim, founder of a Cairo based think tank.  

I thank all of you for being here today with us.  We have lead discussant, Chris and our Rapporteur would be Barbara Wanner, U.S. Council for International BASIS.  Last but not least, I am Sebastian Haselbeck.  This workshop is organized by ICC‑BASIS, APC and the Internet Society, I am based in Montevideo.

I will now give the floor to our panelist and start our substantive discussions.  I will ask.

>> BASHER ESMAT:  Thank you, Sebastian.  Good morning, everyone, good morning, afternoon, good evening to remote, my name is Basher Esmat, I'm with ICANN, and I happen to be the first one to speak today.  So just trying to take a step back and thinking of discussions that started more than a decade ago during the WSIS I process.  Discussion was about definition of Internet Governance, about what issues that would be considered Internet public policy issues, who are the players, the stakeholders, what are their roles and responsibilities, so forth.  

One of the key outcomes of this discussion, or these discussions was the creation of the IGF, the Forum that we are all participating in today in its ninth edition in Istanbul, and I can see having participated in the process from the beginning,  I can see the evolution in the discussion.  I can see the evolution even in our perspectives, you know, the perspective we had about certain issue ten years ago is not the same perspective we have today because the Internet itself has evolved and so is its governance.

The reason I'm mentioning this is because today while we are discussing today if any of you are following the ICANN sort of discussions, we would have heard about ICANN accountability.  This is a big issue today at ICANN and all community members are taking part in this discussion.  And it takes place at other organisations as well.  So I think it's important while we are having this discussion as I said is to refer also to some of the work that took place in other fora about mechanisms and evaluating of mechanisms, about also evaluating of the IGF itself.

So more than two or three years ago, the Working Group was established under the CSTD at the UN to sort of evaluate the IGF and propose recommendations on how to improve the IGF.  And the Working Group came up with specific recommendations on enhancing or improving the IGF from its working methodologies to how to improve participation from Developing Countries, how to diversify funding resources, how to strengthen the outcomes of the IGF and make them more tangible.

Today we are seeing some of those improvements being established.  We are seeing some more tangible and more visible outcomes coming out of the IGF and so forth.  Another example was a CSTD Working Group on enhanced cooperation which looks in the mechanisms and I'm sure other panelists will talk to that in more detail.  So in a nutshell, the discussion about Internet Governance mechanisms and enhancing cooperation among stakeholders is, and in my opinion should be, an ongoing discussion.  There isn't a point when we are going to say, okay, we are done, okay.  It's finished.  I don't see this point or I don't see any possibility of reaching to this point at any time because, as I said, the Internet itself is, it's an evolving phenomenon and it will continue to be like that.

So it's very important while we are looking into processes to insure that the main principles are maintained, you know, openness, multi‑stakeholder processes, bottom up accountability, transparency, so forth, and these also are the same principles that the NETmundial event has adopted.

So let's continue the discussion and let's all work on doing our best to continue to improve the Internet Governance mechanisms not only at the global level, but more importantly or as importantly at national and regional levels.  Let's not forget that many of the Internet Governance issues we are discussing here at the IGF have more to do with national sort of environments and policies.  So I will stop here and give the chance to my colleagues.  Thank you.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you very much.  I take from what you said how important is the linkage between the multi‑stakeholderism and the accountability, how important is that and it is important to enforce that?  I will ask now Joy Liddicoat to take the floor.  Thank you.

>> JOY LIDDICOAT:  Thank you, Joy Liddicoat from Associated Progressive Communications.  And thank you, I liked your reference to evolution and I think that's an interesting concept to bring to this discussion because we are at a moment of time of change and growth and it's important to remember that when we look at evaluating multi‑stakeholder mechanisms and the tendency we see sometimes in the discussion for a desire, for the final solution, the final point in this journey we are on to discover multi‑stakeholder mechanisms, are we here?  Is this it?  And I strongly resist the urge.  So I like this notion of evolution.

My problem with the notion of evolution is that the creationist in theory has it that it's survival of the fittest.  And this, in this process, I don't believe that's the case at all.  I think this is a process of evolution in which we are all creators and all agents of this change, this process we want to see happen.  So I see it more as rather than as survival of the fittest, more are we fit for purpose?  Are we creating multi‑stakeholder, multi‑stakeholder mechanisms that are fit for purpose?  So I want to share some reflections on this from some of the work IPC has done particularly in looking at multi‑stakeholder processes in Human Rights in the last year.

So what trends can we see?  What are we seeing in this process of evolution, and what deductions or conclusions can we make from this that help us in framing principles that we might be able to agree on?  I think in terms of the first one around Human Rights, I think we have also seen a change, for example, right now there is a workshop happening in relation to ICANN in Human Rights in discussion.  Now, when I first came into the ICANN world through the Country Code Top Level Domain system of NSED, there was no discussion of Human Rights at all in ICANN.  There was some discussion about freedom of expression and policy and now we have an entire session at the IGF focused on this.

I think we are creating new spaces in multi‑stakeholder processes where we are bringing in Human Rights discussions which we haven't seen before.  I think we are also seeing new kinds of rights, not only references, for example, to freedom of expression, but increasingly the question of economic rights, social rights and cultural rights being talked about in multi‑stakeholder discussions.

These are very important issues for those in Developing Countries, for example.  We are starting to see in the Freedom Online Coalition, for example, references to economic, cultural and social rights principles.  So I see growth.  I see an expansion in the kinds of principles that are being articulated, and I also see growth in the places where multi‑stakeholder itself is being referenced.

So, for example, we see just last month in the United Nations Human Rights Council, the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the report on the right to privacy in the digital age specifically calls for multi‑stakeholder input and multi‑stakeholder engagement to respond to the challenges, and the right to privacy in the digital age.  This is extraordinary because this is a new discourse to have these member state bodies referring to multi‑stakeholder processes and engagement and calling on them and asking for help with them.

So, and I think there are a range of mechanisms that are really there to assist these other spaces like the council with this.  So, again, I see this evolution.  I see the principle of multi‑stakeholderism itself being taken on in other places.  Now, this is not to say that this is a seamless process.  It's not without challenge, it's not without confusion, without contesting what is multi‑stakeholderism, how does it work.  Of course, these are active debates and ones on which we might disagree violently on core principles, but nonetheless the discourse is expanding and I was fortunate to work with my colleague Phil Rushton on the CCC Working Group and the mapping exercise we will discuss later but we saw in that mapping exercise the call for submissions to examine mechanisms focused on multi‑stakeholder processes and mechanisms and we saw many, many submissions detailing dozens and dozens of places where multi‑stakeholder mechanisms and processes are discussing not only Human Rights but other things.  And we will talk more about that.

So with that rather optimistic if not uncritical remarks.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you very much, and I take the concept of the multi‑stakeholder evolution must not be Darwinian, but be inclusive, and the dimension of Human Rights ‑‑ it's very interesting, thank you very much.  I will now ask Phil Rushton to take the floor, please.

>> PHIL RUSHTON:  Good morning, everyone.  Building on Basher's and Joy's presentations, I think it's fair to say that are we going to arrive at a destination or are we going to have a continual journey and discuss and try and finalize what we mean by enhanced cooperation by mechanisms that support and enhance cooperation.  And I think the answer to that is when the Internet stops growing and evolving, then you probably will come up with a finite set of rules about Internet Governance.

And I think as the technology is used differently, as the technology invades everybody's life to greater and greater degrees then what we mean by Internet Governance or governance associated with Internet will actually change.

Joy and Basher mentioned the CSTD work and that started 18 months ago.  Like all activities where you are in a broader landscape we had to discuss what our processes would be and there were difficult discussions around that what we did in the first step we said what are the issues associated with Internet Governance and the governance of the Internet and that generated 200 plus issues.  So faced with 200 plus issues we took the next best step and said are some of these similar, and, yes, they are.

They are not all the same and there are subtle differences, there are major differences, and we got the 200 issues down to 24.  Well, if there are these 24 very broad areas are there not some discussions going on somewhere that relate to the Internet in these areas?  And when we went and asked colleagues in the wider world than just the CSTD, the answer was, yes, there were.  And we created, thanks to Ve Casper and Sam Dickinson a detailed spreadsheet of mechanisms that exist in these 24 broad areas.  And one of the things that you have with this spreadsheet is a good starting point to begin the evaluation.

It's not complete, and some would argue that it's not perfect, but it is there, and by going out and just asking people give us examples of what you understand by a mechanism, we got some really interesting answers.  And the one that struck me, and it's so blindingly obvious, was the role of Interpol in some of the issues that people associated with crime.  Now, Interpol exists.  Everybody knows that it exists, but it's not central to what you would consider Internet Governance.

And it has a role, and maybe that's an indication of where you have to start thinking about evaluating the mechanisms.  It's not necessarily those mechanisms that are central, but perhaps it's mechanisms that touch upon the Internet, that have their own central role in a totally different universe to ours but coming to relation at some point and it's understanding the relationships between our world and these other worlds that I think is an important step to take in any future evaluation.

I think the examples and evidence we have got thus far in a spreadsheet are good.  I think it could be done with more evidence and information, and I would say if anybody thinks that they have anymore examples of mechanisms where enhanced cooperation of Internet Governance exists, come and see me afterward and we will see how we can get the data incorporated into the spreadsheet.  Because I think going forward, it's understanding the relationship between specific mechanisms, both of our world and of other worlds being the legal, fiscal, when you have to go and pay your taxes to those nice people at Her Majesty, in customs and understanding that they have a role in their world.  We need to have a linkage into our world, understanding that that relationship becomes quite critical.

So I think the position I'm left with is whilst there are mechanisms that exist, we need to understand whether or not they are complete, whether or not they are truly global, whether they deal with regional.  And I think we have to talk about mechanisms in the plural because rather like the Internet, it is not just one thing.  It is many, many things brought together, and I think that's how the governance reflects the Internet and I think going forward as that Internet evolves so those mechanisms will so evolve with the Internet.  Thank you.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you very much, Phil.  I would say that even though the Internet is just one, there is no central authority.  And it needs distributed mechanisms too.  So I would take it with what you said.  Thank you very much.  I would ask now Jandyr Santos to assist us.

>> JANDYR SANTOS:  Thank you, Sebastian.  Good morning to you all.  I was asked to provide you with an example of a multi‑stakeholder mechanism to address governance, and I must say this was particularly interesting given my professional background.  I'm a diplomat.  I was trained in the multilateral environment.  I work at the UN in New York so I always thought that the multilateral tools that we had in the UN negotiations would be able to solve all problems and questions we have in the international community, but I was wrong, and this is something I learned with Internet.

And that is what I think makes Internet so fascinating because you realize the multilateral tools are just not enough for the complexity of issues at stake.  And when it comes to a concrete example of how a multilateral, multi‑stakeholder approach can really break new ground, I would like to comment on the recent NETmundial event that was held in Brazil last April.  Perhaps you, some of you might have attended.  

And the first thing I would like to say it was not a Conference of Brazil, but it was a Conference in Brazil organized with the support of multi‑stakeholder group.  And I think that was a very practical and successful application of the multi‑stakeholder approach because representatives from different stakeholders were able to get together to talk to each other, to listen to each other and they negotiated in good faith an outcome document.

And this NETmundial proved that this was doable and possible and the multi‑stakeholder approach can be outcome oriented.  This is an ongoing discussion here at the IGF as we all know, and I think the lessons we learn in Sao Paulo could be useful to us and they are still discussed and being discussed and I think they will continue to be discussed in the future.

And then I wonder and then you might wonder as well, why, perhaps, what were the reasons for their success in NETmundial?  And I think there are several reasons for that if I could just point some of them, I think, when the central point is that the people that were involved in the negotiations in the NETmundial from the different stakeholders, they were driven by a common goal of finding common ground.  Instead of focusing on the issues that divide the different groups, they tried to focus on a common approach and this was possible and they were really able to come together with a concrete outcome.

Sometimes they agreed to disagree on some issues, but rather they focus on what brings them together.  And the preparation process, the mechanisms which were at stake, I think, they were very important for the success of the event because even though people think that NETmundial was a two‑day Conference, the negotiations of the documents started like months in advance.  They were really focused.  

The questions were identified in advance.  We were, the group had to come together to produce a set of principles on Internet Governance as well as a roadmap for the future evolution of Internet Governance so that the objectives were very clear so people knew in advance what to expect when they got to Sao Paulo, and this, I think, added predictability to the process.

And not to mention that the negotiations were transparent, were inclusive, people were able to follow the, on the ground how the documents were evolving, and these again added legitimacy to this exercise.  Of course, not everybody was satisfied, but our view and the view of many of the participants in Sao Paulo that we managed to break new ground and the lessons we learned could be useful to different fora.

And once I was asked if the NETmundial created a new multi‑stakeholder model to address Internet Governance, and I was thinking, and this perhaps the answer is yes and no.  No, because there is no single multi‑stakeholder approach to address this range of challenges we have in Internet Governance.  And perhaps, yes, because the NETmundial was able to provide us with some innovation to address these issues, and then, and this could help to lead us to new lessons in the future for Internet Governance.

So I think Sao Paulo helped put us on the right track, but, of course, there are many challenges ahead, and mainly how the principles and the roadmap that was produced in Sao Paulo, how it can help feed into the other processes currently going on including the IGF.  There are many questions ahead of us, and I will be happy to continue discussing that in the Q and A session.  Thank you.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you very much, Jandyr Santos, and I think how important is your declaration that Governments are discovering a new world, a new ground, how important it is for a number of them to also discover the Government at work, that interrelation.  Thank you very much.  I will ask now Mohammed.

>> MOHAMMED HASHIM SALEH:  Thank you very much.  My name is Mohamed Hashim Saleh.  The Internet will develop faster than democracy.  That's a good starting point to agree on.  And as such it is very easy to have the impulse that, well, if you have issues developing more rapidly it makes more sense, and new bureaucratic mechanisms.  I stress on the word bureaucratic and attach it to mechanism because most of the time that's the way it is and people do that on the assumption that, well, whatever new we create will always be better.  

Now, of course, the new will always be better is a position held by a lot of people and it always fails when you tell them that, you know, fine, then you will drink the new one, I will drink the old one.  But looking at that also means that if we are going to focus on the existing mechanisms which seems to be the approach, then we need to be honest about what the problems with the current mechanisms are and what the weaknesses are.  

And looking at that very large list of mechanisms that were developed by the review process of the Working Group on enhanced cooperation that was mentioned earlier, you notice that many of the institutions are, number one, very partial, they are as far as can be from many of them are as far as can be from multi‑stakeholder.

They are nested so they are a sub institution within a sub institution of a UN Commission which necessarily entails that it's difficult to access, it's difficult where a lot of stakeholders that were trying to engage to access that institution so the developing world thinking of Civil Society.  And, well, as you said, if it's not, and even those are not particularly multi‑stakeholder.  The IGF is as multi‑stakeholder as it can get really.  And even here, we are all well aware that there is a number of voices that we were told were included at the table and often aren't.

So the problem becomes not just the absence of mechanisms, but it's whether the stakeholders we are trying to engage actually trust those mechanisms enough.  Joy was talking about it's not survival of the fittest, and I completely agree.  Very largely, it will be survival of the leanest, survival of the most flexible.  The purpose isn't to centralize mechanism or to add layers even though that might be very tempting, but it would be the real challenge that we are faced is to see what we can do with the existing mechanisms to make the variety of stakeholders more comfortable with them.  

And by doing this, we need to have a very clear dialogue with those stakeholders about what really is the issue, what are the underlying trust issues there that makes them uncomfortable with existing mechanisms, and then somehow sort of think over the DNA of those institutions to make sure that they become more flexible and answer the needs of a larger group of stakeholders.  So this is the main challenge we are looking at right now.  We want to make the existing mechanisms more open to participation, more open to criticism and more open to accountability review.  Thank you.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you very much.  So I think you put the emphasis on trust of the existing mechanisms and how extensive is that trust to stakeholders and that's a very interesting perspective.  So we are now, we are right on time.  Excellent.  So I will ask Chris to help us start the discussion.  Chris, please.

>> AUDIENCE:  This is Chris Lockridge, the registry in Europe.  I gather my role here today is sort of to inspire discussion here, having listened to the speakers I'm sure people here will have a lot of questions already, so I will try and keep this quite brief and maybe just a few questions sort of came to me or were inspired by what I heard here.

I think one of the first things that really sort of, I wanted to sort of touch on and think about is the idea that Phil had that these are mechanisms in plural we are talking about and that this is not ongoing evolution.  This is not going to be something where we reach an end point.  And I think that sort of is really a key point about how we address this, but in terms of thinking about is it mechanism versus institutions, is the discussion about do we need new institutions in Internet Governance or can we look at using the existing institutions and perhaps coming up with new mechanisms under that.  

And I think the stewardship process is perhaps an example I would be interested to hear what the analysts think, what other people think about obviously using ICANN as a sort of convening force, but it's something separate to ICANN processes, so it's a bit of a new or interesting twist on that.

And are these sort of temporary groupings the more useful, the more dynamic or flexible way to go, and I think NETmundial is also an example of that that there has been discussion about is this NETmundial, or there was more discussion previously about is NETmundial a new Forum in an ongoing way, or is it something that happened it was a one off event that sort of sparked then new discussions?

And so I think in answering that, we do come back to the central point of this workshop, which is how do we evaluate all of those mechanisms?  And I think Joy's comments about it's not necessarily the survival of the fittest made me think a bit there, and I don't necessarily disagree, but at the same time, I guess when your perspective on survival of the fittest makes it sound like the strongest taking over or beating down the weakest, whereas, I guess, is it perhaps more useful to think about it as survival of the fittest being the need to sort of winnow down from experimentation from different mechanisms to find some efficiencies there that if we are going forward, if there is no one size fits all for addressing these issues, we need a way ‑‑ do we need a way to identify what works and what doesn't so that we are not starting over from scratch every time.

I think, Joy, you also commented as well on how much multi‑stakeholderism is being adopted or at least referenced or attempts to integrate it into high level organisations now, and Phil's point about Interpol raises an interesting question about do all of these venues need to be multi‑stakeholder?  What do we mean by multi‑stakeholder?  How rigid are we about our definition of what that actually means?

I don't imagine Interpol sees them as multi‑stakeholder, but at the same time I do know from personal experience that they are reaching out, talking to others, talking community, for instance.  And so then I guess finally breaking that down further to the logistics of how we do this evaluation, one question I think is what do we need to think about as a sort of prerequisite or a sort of common element in these different mechanisms about how we can then evaluate those mechanisms.  I think obviously transparency and what's going on, sharing information is key to that so that we actually know what a process involved and then whether that works going forward.

But are there any other elements that we need to be thinking of as common.  And the other question is the venue for this evaluation, who does the evaluation?  Where does it happen?  The CSTD obviously was mentioned and there are a couple of examples within that Forum, but without any prejudice here, is that the best place?  Is that the only place?  Do we need to have a single venue for that evaluation to take place or does it matter if it's more disbursed with different communities doing their own evaluations?

And then what is also the methodology for your reference to the sort of why the CSTD produced that spreadsheet is a really useful example, but are there others that people have thought about and developed.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you, Chris.  Any reaction?  Phil, please.

>> PHIL RUSHTON:  Thank you.  I think, Chris, you are right, and I think the comments of others on the panel, I think you can't ever say what's going to work or not work in terms of governance.  Also I think it's not necessarily the fact that every governance issue entity is multi‑stakeholder.  I think it's the linkages between them.  Interpol is the obvious one we mentioned that I cited because some quoted the CSTD.  

And I think, and my colleague said it best when he said if you look at NETmundial you have principles up front.  It was open, and as you evolve governance issues, you start from a, if there is nothing there, you are going to start from a blank sheet and, therefore, it's saying the first issue you are going to have as we found in CSTD was how do we do this?  What's the first issue?  What are the questions we should be asking and to whom should we be asking?  And it's only by going through the process and understanding every time you look around and say there is nothing that does this or what is there doesn't suit what it is.  We as a community, as a group of people want to do.

And having those principles of openness, transparency, and preparation in activity helps progress understanding.  And I think we should always, and it's an ongoing activity, I think, to continually look at what's there and to pick up on one point you said was I think it's not just one place and there never should be, I believe, just one place.

I think it's all of the places together have to work together nationally, regionally, internationally to make this work.  And that will just be an evolving journey.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you very much.

>> PETER MAJOR:  I'm Peter Major, the Chair of the working corporation, the CSTD.  Just to give you some insight, the Working Group itself is a multi‑stakeholder Working Group ‑‑ is the second multi‑stakeholder group in the CSTD and this time I think we have no problems with participation in the UN organisation from all parties of the Internet community.  As for the Working Group, after performing things for a one‑year period, we managed to come up with the questions and the responses to the question of the correspondence group extracted all of the issues which Phil mentioned the 200 plus issues and reduced them to 24.

And the whole process was wide open so we arranged to have responses from the whole community.  At the very beginning it was an open process with servers, and everybody could contribute.  Now, the purpose of the issues and to identify mechanisms is simply to find out what are the gaps.  We didn't go into the detail, but these were multi‑stakeholder mechanisms but that wasn't the objective of the exercise.  The exercise itself aimed to identify existing ones whether it be regional, whether it be global and find out if there are areas which are not covered.

Now, the CSTD and the Eco CERT in its Resolution gave the pass to the CSTD Secretariat to complete analysis and come up with a database on the existing mechanisms and, of course, to identify the gaps.  And this work is going to be carried forward to the intersession meeting of the CSTD, and personally I'm confident that the whole process is going to be done in an open way.  

As for the work of the Secretariat, they are doing it their way, but probably after the intersessional meeting, there will be a discussion, and following the discussion I really hope that the whole issue will be made public.  I will do my best even before the discussion will be made public.  And the whole community could contribute to this result to the comment, and we shall carry on with the work.

I don't think this is closed work.  It's important work and we have to thin this.  Thank you.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you very much.  Would you please identify yourself?

>> ANA NEVES:   Sure, I'm Ana Neves from Portugal.  On top of what has been said, I would like to underline something.  We are only talking here about capital.  Are you hearing me?  Meaning that we have several documents.  We have several movements, but the language that each other is using is not receive the by the others so we are not achieving our target.  So I think that nobody, when nobody is obliged to do things it's so much easier to do something.

Meaning, for instance, we had the high level meeting of users on Monday and everybody was really angry because they were not invited, et cetera.  Everybody was invited.  Nobody was left.  So once you feel that you are not part of something, so you are against.  When you feel that you are part, so your behavior, your attitude changes.  And I think that in evaluating this governance issues, it's much more complex or simple or maybe simple because I think that we are now at the stage where we see even people asking for non‑governance, that we don't need any governance of the Internet.

So the discussion is not developing, I think, in the right way.  So I just we like to point out the importance of soft law here, and I'm talking about confidence and trust between the different stakeholders.  And I'm talking here about confidence and trust between the different members of the Civil Society, the different members of the private sector because we are all different and I can say that I'm actively agree with the Government and against Civil Society because I'm not against anybody, so we all have our values and that is something that we are not really working.  We are here, but we do not know each other.

So we have to have more and more meetings, or fora where these kinds of discussions are more deep, and when we feel more confident in ourselves.  In a nutshell, not only hardware or documents, but self.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you very much any reaction for these two comments?

>> AUDIENCE:  Thank you.  Firstly, just to acknowledge Peter as the Chair of the CTD Working Group, and I would say that there is an afterlife, I think, in his very special place for those who are involved in such processes.  It was a long process and it was a rich process with stakeholders working hard.  So thank you for those inputs and I think one point to note about that, I think, is that we sort of see this tussle around the idea of these diverse recommend mixes and reforms, and this debate about whether there needs to be a mechanism of mechanisms almost, this idea of whether there needs to be a single mechanism where all mechanisms drive towards or some sort of network of networks, and I resist such an urge myself.

I am more in the spectrum of views which are that we must watch and see what happens in this evolving process rather than think because it's got all of these mechanisms, we need to create someplace for it.  So the mapping exercise I think has been useful for seeing that and answering the question of guess.  Also I think in terms of soft law I completely agree.  I think soft law, code of practice, sharing this practice, case studies, particularly for small Developing Countries enables space to ask questions and build bodies so I agree with that.

And I think just going back to the evolution point, certainly there are different forms of evolution.  It's not only survival of the fittest., the best mating dance, all of those things which allow animals to flourish, but I think what we have seen and we are seeing at this IGF in particular is a new evolution, so the gender dynamic coalition, for IG, has launched involving feminist principles of the Internet, women's group and organisations saying we are stakeholders and we want to contribute.  So I think the greatest process is not at an end but I want to see it start flourishing and growing.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you very much.

>> AUDIENCE:  Just very quickly on the multi‑stakeholder kind of mechanism and process, I think we also need to acknowledge that processes are not all the same even though they are multi‑stakeholder but not the same.  So CSTD process is not the same as another process like IT and I u support.  There are differences.  Part of the problem that community members in general, they are, they are kind of accustomed to certain processes so they won't go outside of their comfort zones and participate in different kinds of processes, then problems arise.  The same with the NETmundial, the NETmundial principles and the roadmap were reached by consensus.

Again, consensus driven processes are not very common in many organisations that ‑‑ who claim to be multi‑stakeholder.  So what I'm trying to say is that I think recognizing the difference between organisations and processes is important, and that does not mean that, you know, this process is less multi‑stakeholder than the other, but I guess also it's fair to say that there are general principles and, again, principles were included in the NETmundial document, that we should strive to maintain and to instill in whole if possible Internet Governance processes.

>> MODERATOR:  Thank you very much.

>> AUDIENCE:  I will try to make this quick since I am aware we don't have much time.  My name is Pranish, I work for Internet and society in India.  I missed the first speaker so this might have been addressed.  I saw acknowledgment of differences between multi‑stakeholderism, but there seemed to be a shared understanding of what multi‑stakeholderism means, whereas I'm very unclear as how the panelists were deploying that word.  You need to have stakeholder groups for something to be considered multi‑stakeholder?  Or would a grouping of individuals such as the Internet Engineering Task Force also be considered multi‑stakeholder?

Do you need different groups, et cetera, to have an equal footing for something to be considered multi‑stakeholder or would different footing based on different roles also be considered multi‑stakeholder?  These kinds of questions, I think, are very important and I actually don't think there is a shared understanding of multi‑stakeholderism even though we actually use the word very commonly.

The second point was I didn't see that very much evaluation just within the IGF forum.  If you go through the IGF mandate, you could ask questions about what has the IGF or the IGF process provided to any stakeholders about the affordability in developing countries or has the IGF helped find solutions to the issues arising from use and misuse of the Internet? these are from the mandate of the IGF.  Answering these questions o could provide us an evaluation of the functioning of the IGF, yet I don't see people doing much of this evaluation.

Lastly, the relationship, one other common evaluation would be the relationship between multi‑stakeholder mechanisms of governance and other kinds of mechanisms of governance such as trade treaties, for instance, where intermediary are being put, discussions happening in the World Intellectual Property Organization on certain topics and this necessary is a necessary part of evaluation of whether what's happening in places like IGF and CSTD, et cetera, are affecting at what governments are doing at the end of the day in form of hard law or whether they aren't affecting them at all, and I would like to see a bit more.  Thank you.

>> AUDIENCE:  My name is Ann Marie Zatsu and I work for the Swiss organisation, the Geneva Center for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces which is a security policy research institution in Geneva.  I'm going to the IG space from, I'm relatively new but my expertise in developing multi‑stakeholder governance mechanisms and models.  So I'm very interested in this paper that is a comparison to the models that you have put together.  I was a little bit plagued when coming in and I'm wondering how I can get a copy of it.

And I'm also curious if you put in there some of the models we have been working on with our institution.  So I will leave it there, but mainly my question is where can I get the paper?

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you.  If you come and see me afterward, we will talk about that.  Anybody else can come as well and I can share with you the paper.  Going back onto what is multi‑stakeholderism in answer to the gentleman's input saying could it be, could it be, is it, is it?  The IGF multi‑stakeholder of individuals?  The answer is I think it's rather like the mechanisms that we have been talking about in CSTD, multi‑stakeholders and it is relevant to that whole transaction.

So I think there is no one definition in my mind of what multi‑stakeholderism means.  I think it's the meeting of individuals, of groups, trying in activities central to the Internet to do activities, and trying to outreach and keep mentioning Interpol because that's the one I remember.  To other areas that are not central but impact our universe.

And I think the term universe is one of those things that is big enough to cover everything you want it to cover.  My universe will be different than your universe, but that's why it's a journey, I think.  And that's as we evolve and as we get better at understanding what it is, our universe is all about, and I think that discussion and that understanding of how those mechanisms work together will become more and more critical and, therefore, distilling out what they actually impact and how they impact the central to understanding the core activities to what the Internet is about.  (Phil Rushton).

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Reactions to comments?  Thank you Phil.  Quickly.

>> JOY LIDDICOAT:   Thanks for your question.  I think it's an important one, what is the definition of multi‑stakeholderism, and who are the multi‑stakeholders, the individuals, the actors? I think it's ‑‑ I always think about that question in the context of what's the definition of democracy?  And I think there is no single definition of democracy.  There is no single form of democracy.  

There are many, many different ways in which democracy itself is still evolving as a concept and it's processes of legitimization evolving as well, so I think I get to a point where I think it's good to look at shared concepts and definitions, but that striving for a single definition I find counterproductive.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you, Joy.  This is going to be our last intervention.

>> SYLVIA CADENA:   My name Sylvia Cadena.  I work at APNIC as advanced specialist, and I just wanted to make statement about the evaluation mechanisms and how hard it is to incorporate an evaluation when a process is already ongoing, so that a lot of people have different pieces of the puzzle?  So an evaluation going back may not be as effective because the framework was not adequate at the beginning.  But not to say it's not worth it, but it would be really good to take into account that element of how difficult it might be to get all of the evidence about the process and to make sure that (?) the difference between actions that have been events happen and how you can actually gain the benefit of those events and processes to the IGF.  

So I think it's very important that the framework for evaluation is shared in a way that people that are doing activities related to the IGF can start providing areas in the future, I mean, from now on of what (?) so it's easier to capture and to encourage people to go back to the records and provide the evidence of all of the processes before.  So the collection and the mechanisms to advertise this is not made that public.  So there is a lot of ‑‑ it should be good to make up some sort of awareness campaign to make sure that there are mechanisms (?)

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you very much.  Please, do you have a final comment intervention?  Chris?  I cut you off.  Okay.

>> AUDIENCE:  Thank you, Sebastian.  I would like to comment on that as well as touch on some of the points raised before.  My view is that I fully share the understanding that there is no common definition of what multi‑stakeholderism is.  And I think a multi‑stakeholder approach is less about the groups of, less about the people, it's more about the process itself.  It's about guaranteeing like everybody, everyone that takes part in a particular discussion being an individual of a group or of an organisation, even a country that there are ways and means for them to express their views and their concerns.

And as long as these channels of communication exist, and not only exist, but are fully recognized as legitimate by the parties involved, I think that there is ‑‑ this is a multi‑stakeholder approach.  It's about recognizing the other parties as legitimate in the process.  Because if you take the multilateral approach, when Governments negotiate treaties, they see that non‑government is sometimes not legitimate parties involved.  They think that these other parties, they have to channel their concerns through the Governments.

And this is a different approach.  So when you come to a multi‑stakeholder effort like mentioned NETmundial, we are hearing in the IGF, is the existence of these ways, these channels of communication that are seen as legitimate by all parties involved.

>> AUDIENCE:  Is standard multi‑stakeholderism the same as participating democracy?

>> AUDIENCE:  What I'm saying is the beauty of the approach is the legitimacy of the parties involved.  This is what I think makes this so strong, and more than that, more than making it very strong, it's, I think it addresses the issues in a way that can really be, I think we have to be creative in this.  Because especially if you take Internet, we cannot use the 20th century tools to address the issues we have here in 21st century.  Perhaps you have to be as creative as those who invented the Internet to devise ways and means for this multi‑stakeholder approaches, but I think the issue at stake is legitimacy, and it's present here in IGF, was there in Sao Paulo, NETmundial, and I think it's the beauty of this exercise.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you very much, we have time for a final remark summary of our panelists and if you provide any kind of recommendation, big solution for all of the problems.  I will start with Joy now.  No?

>> JOY LIDDICOAT:  Thank you.  I think one recommendation that I would encourage is to affirm this notion that we are in a process of change, and that that evolution and creation should be organic.  It should be creative.  It should be the best of what we have now that helps us keep growing into the future.  And that is kind of a value or a principle that you bring to the pros processes as my colleague from Brazil has mentioned of which I think (?) is so that would be one.

I think the other is that we must keep sharing best practice, lessons learned.  Not only what's worked but what didn't work.  What are our frustrations with some of these processes?  How can we restructure those ways which are constructive and help us build better processes and better mechanisms going forward?  So those would be my two.  Thank you.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you very much.

>> AUDIENCE: I feel that here at the IGF there is a hidden theme that is taking the IGF into a more action oriented kind of process and that's absolutely a positive thing.  This is where we need to keep in mind as a community in thinking about the future and thinking about moving beyond NETmundial and how we could ‑‑ I recognize that a lot has happened in the past years, many initiatives have been implemented, but I guess many out there are also looking for more action oriented kind of, you know, initiatives or projects.

And I think one thing we could ‑‑ I could propose as a recommendation would be, you know, being from a developing country, developing region, I think it's important to continue to promote and support national and regional multi‑stakeholder initiatives and processes whether they are being called IGF or something else, it doesn't really matter, but it's important to as community, as Internet Governance community, as experts in the field, that we all support the establishment and the continuity of these processes, because without participation at national and regional levels, we will hardly get real participation from Developing Countries and foras like IGF, ICANN, any international fora.  We can't reach effective participation from these regions without insuring that they have the tools and the capacities and the resources to experience this kind of participation in their own countries and own regions.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you.  Phil.

>> PHIL RUSHTON:  I think listening ‑‑ one of the things that comes out from this discussion today is there is no one answer.  I think there are many mechanisms that exist that we know about.  As I said when I started, we need to gather more evidence, so if people think they have examples of mechanisms where multi‑stakeholder corporations carry then we should encourage people to participate and I'm willing to share the spreadsheet that has that.  

I think going forward, there is national, regional, international activities going on.  We need to understand the separation of what is core to our activities on what we think is the Internet and what is in a different category.  There are other activities that have their own central activities, but they impact on what they are trying to have going.  We have heard about legitimacy, communication between these entities.

I don't think ‑‑ and I think I have heard nobody say, there should not be a mechanism for (?) I think it's trying to understand how all of the activities that we think we can identify can exist together.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you very much.

>> JANDYR SANTOS:  Thank you.  In an effort to try and wrap up and just coming up with some few concrete ideas after having listened to all of you is, of course, just like Phil said, first be creative.  There is no single solution.  The Internet is far too complex and the challenges ahead are too complicated and difficult.  And the tools we have, this is a regime in the making.  Be creative.  This is the first point I would like to make.

The second perhaps will be the ambitions, and they are to sail in uncharted waters, because since you don't have an answer for all of these questions, they are to innovate.  And this requires this accommodation.  Be transparent.  That adds confidence in the process, and people, the different groups and individuals, countries, organisations, they will feel that they are part of it.  And be predictable, because then again it adds confidence in the process. Like NETmundial, we got to Sao Paulo, we knew what we were going to discuss.  The documents were negotiated in advance.  People provided contributions to that, and it was a predictable exercise.  And then, again, I think it's a lesson we can take from NETmundial.  Thank you.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you very much.

>> AUDIENCE:  With the discussion about governance and the (?) democracy is the form of Government (?) and I wonder if that applies to governance.  I'm not sure if that is why we face multi‑stakeholder governance the way we do because it very much is trial and error process.  It's not a stable, it's not a final process.  It's very much or at least I hope all actors involved realize it's not, you know, the Holy Grail of governance systems as they stand.  

So the multi‑stakeholder process is somewhat flawed, but there is a balancing act here.  There is a delicate balance (?) at the same time we should not succumb to the urge to build more layers of bureaucracy.  So there is much more honesty with ourselves that is required here to figure out what the flaws are in the multi‑stakeholder process as it stands and in doing this you might know that there is a parallel Forum that's happening in town tomorrow on the governance Forum.  

And I was reading the abstract of the Conference and the recommendation is that the IGF and the multi‑stakeholder process as it stands is the problem itself because it gives disproportionate weight to many of the actors that are (?) so is this something that people hear and consider why is this multi‑stakeholderism directed at this very Forum?  So I mean (?) then we need much more honesty and need to involve all of the voices we can in that process.  Thank you.

>> SEBASTIAN HASELBECK:  Thank you, and thank you all.  This has been a great panel and I would like to thank you all for your participation.

(Applause).

Thank you all for coming.  Thank you very much.

 (Concluded at 12:21)



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This is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings.  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.

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