FINISHED TRANSCRIPT
EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES-ENHANCING MULTI-STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
23 OCTOBER 2013
2:30 P.m.
SESSION NUMBER 224
FINDING WORKABLE MODELS FOR ENHANCED COOPERATION
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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>> DEBORAH BROWN: This is panel 224. I think today we will aim to do three different things. First is to look at the national model, what has worked and what hasn't worked, and lessons learned from that. Then look at the International level and see what the state of play is and what opportunities are there to learn from experiences. And taking advantage with the research developments with the ICANN Brazil summit that is coming up soon. We will have an update from the meeting that ended just before this meeting, and look at ways that we can apply what we learned at the International level to come up with inputs into that new summit.
So let me start by introducing my panelists. We have Joana Varon Ferraz from Brazil, FGV.
To her right we have Anja Rofiah from Indonesia.
To my left, Bertrand de La Chapelle from the Internet and Jurisdiction Project in France.
And Alice Munyua from the Kenyan Government.
So Joana will start us off by speaking about the experience in Brazil.
>> JOANA VARON FERRAZ: Okay. I believe that many of you know about the Steering Committee, the Internet Steering Committee, in Brazil. So here I'll try to bring some more details about how the internal procedure of CGI.Br, of implementing the stakeholder mechanism and what is its role in Brazil, and some gaps it has in terms of efficiency and mostly political power within the country.
So CGI.BR is what it's called in Portuguese. It was created by decree in 2003 and it has nine representatives from Government and nine ministry agencies and different agencies. And then it has private sector, representatives from the private sector. Eight from the third sector, and from the technical community the same number. So more Government. The same on private third sector, and technical community. Plus Secretariat executives.
Those representatives are elected, and other stakeholders can apply to be part of the -- I don't know how to say that in English. In Portuguese it's (Speaking Portuguese) So it's the -- the electoral college. So this electoral college, it's open, and anyone or any organisation from those stakeholders can apply. And then it's formed. And each organisation can propose one candidate from its own community.
And then the candidates, you have the pool of candidates. And the private sector can vote only for one representative in the private sector, but the other sectors can vote for four representatives among its own sector. And that is how it's formed.
And the role of CGI.br in our political space is just to propose any ideas. It doesn't have a regulatory role or binding power. So the principles that -- we have inspired the review of the principles that were there, that were took for legislation. But it's always nonbinding. And for me it's good. I don't think we should have a regulatory agency for the Internet. But on the other hand, sometimes Government doesn't even have to listen or to have a look on what CGI.br is saying. So I think the gap here is that Governments should consult the CGI.br and have their opinions, and I think that's the major problem in this scenario.
So I will stop here and give it to Deb.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: We want to make this pretty interactive and take the time to ask some specific questions to see what we can learn from the different models. So I wonder in the case of CGI.br, who is actually responsible for funding it? Often we see with the IGF at the national or International level, there is no funding. So it makes it hard to plan. I wonder how you tackled that problem.
>> JOANA VARON FERRAZ: They have founders of CGI.br, so that's good.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: Okay. We will talk about you next.
>> ALICE MUNIYA: This is a multi-stakeholder plan form that brings together the GHO and Civil Society, private sector, and now increasingly the technical community, to actually support the national development plan, especially taking into consideration that ICT is a cross-cutting pillar of what we call our development blue print.
Now, the Kenya ICT action was set up coming up from 2003, where the policy and regulation was discussed at length, and with the various documents that emerged from there. Those of us who participated in that process then went back to the national level, and that's around the time that the Government was also looking at reforming the ICT sector, the communications sector, by introducing competition in the mobile sector, by, you know, introducing reforms, regulatory reforms, introducing a new licensing framework that was technology neutral.
And, basically, a new wave of reforms that involved quite a lot of actors and also the media, simply because by then we had the ICT sector, a budding industry that we began to feel that we all needed to be part of the Government's process. But then we didn't have an active Civil Society around 1999. And the Civil Society, that was news, some of them brought the Internet to Kenya for the first time in 1993 and others started developing, you know, a commercial and business model for the domain name sector and also the KE ccTLD. And then we had an industry and sector and the Civil Society and a number of individuals that were actively involved at the global level that began to actually push the Government to be a little bit more open to the stakeholders.
Around that time there was a wave of reforms that were promoted by the UN Economic Commission for Africa, basically looking at introducing International ICT policy frameworks. And by then, there were a lot of projects, Civil Society led projects, utilizing ICTs in Africa that developed an awareness around the need to have other stakeholders involved. So the Kenya ICT network was formed out of that process in 2004, and very actively participated in building the capacity, not just of Civil Society, but also of business in terms of how to engage with Government. Because many businesses, the business community in Kenya, had a tumultuous relationship with the Government. It was constant. It was put out in the public and then we had a Government that was not very -- that was against that kind of approach.
Civil Society introduced research first, so that we get informed input into the national process involving business, first business and Civil Society only, and then forming a strong alliance with the Kenya ICT network, and then began to engage with Government from a very strong view. And also invited International partners, Canadian IDRC, and others, GFID, that were finding the process but also the business started finding the process, making the Kenya ICT national network independent after several years.
Concretely, the network recently developed the policy, the Kenya ICT policy, of 2006, that was approved in 2006. And as a result of that, now we have a Kenya -- the ICT master plan. We have so many other policies that developed from that and other processes that have increased the openness and have involved other stakeholders. With the ICT policy processes and including the open data initiatives involving other stakeholders in various processes, some Civil Society members ended up being on the regulatory authority and getting the Kenya authority that was previously the Kenya ICT board network. Now we have a new Government and a new minister. They are still involved in it. And the ICT action network was the one involved in organising the Nairobi ICANN meeting. Members were responsible for organising the 2011 IGF. And also, generally speaking, and also the involvement of the Kenya ICT, called the Kenya ICT authority.
I'll stop there.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: I have one quick follow-up question. You mentioned that there was a change in Government earlier this year, and I wondered how the process was impacted. You said it continued. But were there challenges with the change of leadership with the new Government?
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Yes. I think there is always that, in every environment in every country. And currently we are having, you know, I wouldn't call it challenges, we have a new minister, but one of the things that we did manage to do before the change of Government is that, I think, for those who know Kenya, we have a new Constitution that, you know, -- which actually eventually enshrined the multi-stakeholder principle. So which means most stakeholders can actually sit back and demand to actually be involved in policymaking. So it doesn't matter whether we get a new minister or Parliament secretary, we make sure that we can demand -- stakeholders can demand to have space in any policymaking, and that was also evident in our contribution to the WCIT process last year.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: Thank you. Now I'll turn to Anja, who will give us the multi-stakeholder view and what is there.
>> ANJA: Hi I think the Government has been supportive of the principle of multi-stakeholderism, especially at the global level. And I don't think that that is doublespeak or bad intentions. But, unfortunately, we don't actually see that translated into practice at the national level in the same way.
Before September last year, the number of opportunities we had to engage with the Government were very few and it was really difficult for Civil Society especially to get to those opportunities. Since September, the things improved. The Minister of Communication and information technology has made several attempts to reach out to a broader community. It started with inviting first Global Civil Society and then Indian Civil Society for a meeting at the IGF last year. Then we had various meetings on topical issues, and which there was a lot of prorating in India. In the end, they were allowed to the national delegation to the WCIT, and I think if you look at the draft proposal of India and the stances they finally took, they shifted their positions considerably. And in our reading that has something to do with the feedback they were given from Civil Society and business, because it is in that direction that the positions shifted.
Since this August, the Government established a group so in the whole you can say that something is slowly moving. Why did this happen? To some extent, I think we have a bit of a situation what Alice was talking about in Kenya earlier as well, that people who are active at the global level, who see and hear the Government use this discourse all the time, more and more at the national level, are also asking so why don't we do this here as well? Some feedback from the Government as well. To some extent this was also a political reason as well in the sense that in the course of various cases of censorship in the country, this minister was vilified for his presumed role in this, to the extent that one magazine had a picture of him on the front cover with a Hitler mustach, something that he didn't appreciate at all.
So to one extent you get the impression that it was the exercise that you realise with national elections coming up next year, his reputation was not going in the right direction.
I think a final factor that played a role and a slight opening up was that there were certain people in the business community who were very supportive of multi-stakeholderism, and their support I think also helped opening doors and helped the Government to gain some fate.
I was in a conference in Delhi last Monday and Tuesday on cybersecurity. People asked me if you were part of the subvertists, and I think in many cases those tags don't suit the work that we do. They don't match.
So it was, I think, some confidence building had to happen, and the business sector played an important role in that. Despite the positive evolutions I think on the whole, even if one takes, for example, the establishment of the MAC, which seemed like a positive thing, that unfortunately aborted another process in which there was a MAG as well, which was led by an industry body. And for that reason, those Governments participated in it, it had been controversial. That process was cancelled at the moment that the Government established a MAG, despite the fact that the MAG was way into ordering a national meeting, so people had to cancel speakers. You know the MAG is working in a top down manner. Despite the fact that it was constituted in August, there is in a clarity on the agenda for what it's supposed to do.
There has not been a single meeting. Again, I don't think it's ill will. It's because Governments are slow and bureaucratic, et cetera. But on the whole, even if the intentions are good, if there was another process in place that got stopped, the outcome for, say, Civil Society, is not necessarily a good one because the opportunities to engage for us have actually decreased, rather than increased.
There is a also something about how we will deal with sensitive issues. Last year the Government -- the minister was challenged in Parliament about the set of rules. And to kind of ward off having to change the rules, he said we will have a multi-stakeholder consultation. A year later we haven't had that consultation despite the fact that we met several times in between.
We will have a national election coming up next year, where there will be a change in the regime, because multi-stakeholderism is not inscribed in the system at all or not yet. It's a wait and see if the new Government will continue that line. We will have to see.
So on the whole, I think the landscape in India is very uneven on more traditional issues like health and education, and it actually has a fairly strong record of consultations with wider Civil Society, perhaps because they are more mature fields, perhaps because they are less sensitive issues. It's typical that corporate donors that are Indian like to give money to education and health, because it's easy to be seen as a do-gooder without getting yourself into trouble like you can with more political issues like Internet Governance.
There is the Telecom Regulatory Agency, TRI. They have a very systemized process of consultation. But like in Brazil, the Government often doesn't take into account what TRI, for example, has recommended. And so then the question is what is the point? I think multi-stakeholderism, the Tunis agenda says that Internet Governance Forum is about shared decision-making processes and the consultation where it is not even explained why your content is not taken into account or your recommendation is not taken into account. Is there not really a multi-stakeholder consultation, I would argue? So while consultation might happen, I think shared decision-making is still a long way off and there is still quite a strong desire to maintain control over the process, which I have a sense that people are fearing they will lose if it becomes an actual multi-stakeholder process.
Thank you.
I have a follow-up question to your point that certain issues were seen as more politically safe and there is room for engagement, such as education and health. I wonder in the topics that are included in Internet Governance whether there are topics in that that are more friendly for Governments to look for input and whether you can start making inroads on those.
>> ANJA: Good question. I guess in India access is quite a popular and safe topic in the sense that at least on a mobile phone revolution, India has been quite staggering. The number of connections is massive. They haven't been able to replicate that with broadband Internet, but at least there is a real political will to expand the network. I think business is very interested obviously in taking this forward. When it was clear that the whole lot of rural areas would never be served by business, the Government decided to use the universal service obligation fund to roll out fiber, at least to all the communities, local communities. So they are building on that. I think that is a much safer topic, but yet not necessarily one that one can make the same kind of input in also.
So in that sense, that's a shortcoming there.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: So Anja and I were chatting just before the session and she shared interesting ideas that she has on enhanced cooperation at the multi-national level and ways that you can engage in India based on those ideas. I was hoping that you could share those with us as well.
>> ANJA: Well, for the global level, the project made a proposal where we tried to get out of the trap of arguing that either you need to maintain the status quo or you need to have a new body, be it IGF or a new body at the UN to deal with all Internet issues.
Our point was that good governance is often decentralized governance, which brings in many more people, many more experts as a consequence of the wider spread, has greater engagement, and often higher quality outputs. And we saw for developing countries, that is important. You have to know when you engage at the global level what the exact agenda is that you're going to engage in and what the outcome is going to be.
So the idea was that rather than having one body to follow a decentralized model, where one could draw on the WSIS action lines, which have a lot of Internet Governance issues embedded in them. So we stay, you know, those lines and start building on the agencies with different issues. Like on privacy it would be partly ITU but UNESCO is responsible as well, but from there build a new architecture. I was thinking it should be something that one should influence at the national level as well.
Because I cannot quite see how the same experts can actually deal with every single Internet Governance issue. That is why I made my qualification about access, for example, as well. Some of the technical aspects of access, at least at the moment, I'm not going to claim that I have expertise on that to actually advise the Government. I'm quite sure there are others in Civil Society who do. They are not necessarily experts on hate speech to AIM. And so I think if one wants to make space for this, the effect that different people have different expertise, it's got to get away from the one body solves all levels.
The challenge of moving into that at the national level, what it means is governance on the whole. It means that you want multi-stakeholderism everywhere. And so I can see that the starting point might still have to be one process, like CGI.br in Brazil, but I'm not sure if it is the end point. I think it will actually be too limited. And I'm quite sure, like with other forms of Governments, in 20 years' time if this is the model that we will follow, there will be a revolution of decentralization because people will realise again that centralization does not fulfill our needs.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: Thank you, Anya.
I really do want to continue the discussion on the global level. But I want to take a step back for a minute and see if we can extract some more tangible information from the different models that we talked about so far. So with CGI.br and KICTANet, i understand that KICTANet is often an online platform. And I wonder with CGI.br if that is the same. I want to get down to the nitty-gritty. How do the models work? What is the day-to-day process? What issues do they deal with.
So without putting you on the spot, if you could give us more information on that, Joana.
>> JOANA VARON FERRAZ: They have different sets of actions, they do very important research on technical issues and policies, and on statistics. So the most accurate data on connectivity and so on and so forth comes from one sector of CGI.br, and they do -- they organise events. They are the organizers of the Brazilian Internet forum that happens once a year. But also organise many other events throughout the year, either on standards, more technical or more political.
And then they have NIC.BR. And then internally they have one general meeting per month with an agenda that has to be set in advance. And then depending on the political scenario, they can discuss all the issues that are arising, so they can discuss things like, for instance, spam. So they have this good resolution of how to solve spam through the door 25 in Brazil, and that was started to be adopted by companies.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: A quick follow-up question. For International decision-making, what role does CGI.br play at the ITU or other UN forums or International forums where they might be discussing Internet issues?
>> JOANA VARON FERRAZ: As I mentioned, they don't have -- they are independent. They are an independent organisation. They don't have decision-making power. So they come to Internet forums as consultants for the Minister of Foreign affairs. But who rules -- not who rules. But who represents Brazil is our telecom agency. And the relation among -- they are part of CGI.br, but there is in a huge issue between both, because they have political power and not -- they don't listen to the CGI.br as much as we would like to.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: And what is the role between the public, between citizens and CGI.br? Do they do consultations? Do they do outreach and ask for opinions? Or are they an independent body and once they are elected they work independently?
>> JOANA VARON FERRAZ: It's quite open to have the representatives from the third sector, and the technical community, part of the technical community, or points of contact and interaction.
I don't remember any kind of consultation, but it takes into account that it's already multi-stakeholder.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: Thank you. And I'm going to put some of the same questions to Alice. I understand, as you said from the Constitution of Kenya, that public consultations are in fact part of the Constitution, and that oftentimes online consultations on a forum is what the Kenyan Government uses. So if you can tell us a bit more about that.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: In Kenya, for the last five or six years now, any piece of policy or regulation from the Ministry of Information Communication or from the regulatory authority is always first made, you know, put out in the public.
And by the public here, I mean newspaper, radio, and on KICTANet, so it's a special network, online forum. And most often, the Parliament secretary and the minister would then ask for comments, providing a particular deadline. And what used to happen before simply because we also wanted to build capacity, we would have one or two people.
For example, Grace, for example, would be dealing with an issue for the -- well, actually, before the the intermediary was the WCIT. What used to happen is we will ask to, you know, to have access to the document. In this case it was Kenya's position. Kenya at that time didn't have a position, because the African Telecommunication Union had developed an African position and was hoping that each Government would simply endorse it. So that was made available on the KICTANet.
And we encouraged as many people as possible to contribute. One of the things that we noticed, the business sector at that time didn't contribute as much, because we had a different take on some of the provisions that were being proposed.
Civil Society had quite a number of Civil Society individuals and organisations participating and providing input. And what we would normally do is take the document, provide alternative versions to some of the clauses, and then present it to the regulatory authority or to the ministry.
And then ensure that we -- that they are also Civil Society and business and technical community as part of the national delegation. So that's how it works and it's been working since 2004, and continues to work that way, you know, on every piece of be it legislation or a policy that we are discussing. I think if I'm -- GiGi might correct me if I'm wrong -- but we are currently discussing the data protection and we are also -- some of the Civil Society organisations are trying to encourage a decision on the African Union Cybersecurity Convention that is meant to be adopted in 2014.
And the Kenya ICT action network mailing list also has a website. And it has everybody, including International people who are not Kenyans. And so you have everybody contributing to it. And the ministry and Government taking it seriously, including the regulatory authority and some of the stakeholders following up to ensure -- asking where are our contributions, why are they not reflected on the ICT policy document? And if they are not reflected, can you explain to us what logic you used to, you know, to not include this particular aspect of it versus this other particular aspect. And so there is a discussion that goes on. Several times the Government has been taken to court, including the regulatory authority. We have got two or three cases that, for example, that stopped the Government from implementing -- the regulatory authority, for example, from implementing a determination that was going to introduce price caps, new tariffs for mobile. They were taken to court.
You know, hiring a new director general, they were taken to court because Civil Society believed there was a conflict of interest. So it's a pretty active network that has a strong consumer network. And we are seeing trade unions as well as part of it. And that's how it starts. The discussion is started off by an interest group, which is then taken on and ends up in a discussion that says minister, I'm sorry, you cannot employ this person.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: Can you explain how you become a member of KICTANet? It's a pretty institutionalized process with an electoral college. So is it a selection of just joining or is there more to it than that?
>> ALICE MUNYUA: It's just joining. We have a technical person who manages the list to avoid trolls. So we demand that you tell us why you want to join the list and what interest you have.
And also, to make sure that we don't -- that the list doesn't go to somebody calling the minister names. Because everybody is there. So we are selective on who we accept. You have to tell us who you are and where you are coming from and what your interest is. And we don't discriminate for any nationality.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: That's fantastic. In the interest of time, because I want to leave time available for questions and an interactive session, I'm going to hand it over to Bertrand de La Chapelle who will talk a bit about International -- enhanced cooperation on the International level and his thoughts on that.
>> BERTRAND de La CHAPELLE: Thank you. First of all, it's a great pleasure to be here and especially on a very gender balanced panel, for once.
Enhanced cooperation is an expression that has had a life of its own since the WSIS. I like the title, actually, of this workshop, which is "finding workable models for enhanced cooperation."
I won't delve into all the significations or the meanings, sorry, that have been proposed for "enhanced cooperation." There is a Working Group on enhanced cooperation that is underway. What is interesting is to look after the experiences or the examples that have been given at the national level of what we mean by "enhanced cooperation" and trying to look at an element of looking forward. Because finding workable models is identifying what works, but also trying to imagine new mechanisms or ways to work together.
In the expression "Enhanced cooperation," there is a word that is extremely important, which is "Cooperation." And especially at the International level, one of the strong messages that I would like to share is the need for cooperation. If you think about it as was mentioned, I'm the Director of An Internet jurisdictional project, and this is a dialog process to bring the different actors to talk about challenges regarding jurisdictions.
One thing that is striking is many issues that are related to the Internet and particularly to the use of the Internet, not so much the architecture of the infrastructure of the Internet, but the use. What people are doing on the Internet, the good things they are doing and the bad things they are doing. Or the tensions, because of the things that they are doing that some others don't like. This requires a particular amount of cooperation that does not exist in the International space nationally. Not only does it not exist in the International space, but the space fundamentally prevents the cooperation that is needed. Why does it prevent the cooperation that is needed? Because the International and the Governmental relationship is not based on cooperation. It is based on separation. You may have heard me say that often.
The default is separation. The default is the territoriality, which is legitimate. I'm not criticizing it. I'm just stating a fact. The whole architect of the International system is precisely to prevent wars, as much as possible tensions, and establish peace, was to agree that there are territorial boundaries, and that the law within those boundaries were determined by the Government of that country. That the laws of that country don't apply in the territory of other countries, and vice versa. This is not a cooperation architecture. This is a separation architecture, a valid, efficient dsometimes separation architecture.
But the International space and the role of diplomats, I've represented France, my country, as the Ambassador for those Internet issues between 2006 and 2010. The role of an Ambassador is not to define the global public interest.
Let me repeat. The role of an Ambassador and the Government is not primarily to define the global public interest. It is to define and define and defend the national interests. And if there is any tension between the national interest and the global public interest, which may happen, the duty of the Government, elected Government, is to defend the national public interests.
Unfortunately, this is not a basis for cooperation. So the architecture of the international relation is not conducive to cooperation, especially because in any InterGovernmental Organisation, and it is again just a fact, not a criticism, it's a mechanism to put an issue on the agenda. You first need an agreement of all the members to put the issue on the agenda, which means that if for whatever reason the topic is a problem for one of the countries, the issue will not be on the agenda until sometimes it's too late to address it correctly.
So that is one first problem, because it is Civil Society border. The Internet is bringing the type of issues that fundamentally require cooperation among actors and the whole architecture and the whole institutional architecture, the whole discussion mechanism, the whole rules of procedures, are not fostering cooperation as a principle. But the second challenge is that at the International levels there are a few spaces that allow for the discussion of actors other than Government, and in Internet matters the reason why most of us push or believe in the multi-stakeholder approach is not for abstract reasons. It's not because it's a new cult. It's not because we have a principle that we consider absolutely better than anything, although participation is very good for it. But it is mostly because this type of cooperation between the different actors is absolutely needed. If you do not have the different actors around the table, you cannot solve the problem. And I say that not only towards Governments, it is also true towards businesses. And towards society.
And in that regard, I'm extremely happy that if you paid attention on the programme, the theme that is being used for this here, and I give credit to Merv from Finland and earlier in the WSIS meeting in February in Paris, were the first one that I heard utter the expression "enhanced multi-stakeholder cooperation" in order to break this debate that enhanced cooperation is just among Governments. Enhanced cooperation is not among Governments. It is about finding the right, what I call the right "issue based networks" that get together around the table, the relevant stakeholders that are needed to address an issue.
Here I would like to piggyback on something that was mentioned before. The traditional way of doing International cooperation or relations in institutions is to create a single structure, a body, an organisation that deals with all the issues related to X. There is the World Health Organization, the World Tourism Organisation, UNESCO and all the others.
This is nice, but there are certain issues. One of them is that you cannot prevent interagency bickering, one agency says well, that is part of my turf and the other one says no, I should be dealing with that.
But the second thing is that, and it's a well-known secret, when you have one Ambassador for one country that is in one organisation, and another Ambassador for the same country and there is another organisation, the coordination among them is not perfect. And if it were perfect, the dynamics in one organisation may become a different organisation in another one, with the result that the decisions in one organisation may be contradictory with the decisions from the other. Not to mention the notion that, to pick on what Anja was saying, when she is very modestly saying in Civil Society -- and it's probably the same in business -- we are not specialists in everything. When you are a representative in the embassy of one country like Geneva, particularly in Geneva, if you have a small embassy, you are the first or the third secretary, and you are going to meetings that deal with absolutely anything and everything.
One day it will be a meeting at the WTO, the next day it's a meeting at ITU. So it's not even the subtopics in one specific domain, health, which is already enormous. It is on a daily basis. And it's wonderful to talk to these people. They have been my colleagues in the past. And when you talk to people based in Geneva, they tell you it's hard to cope and to keep up with what is happening, which is one of the biggest imbalances. Anybody who says the International system and the UN system is providing a fair representation and the capacity for the small countries to participate, it's true to a certain extent. But the imbalance in the human resources is making it an extreme burden for people who have very limited people on the ground.
Why am I mentioning this? It is not to lambast. The International system has its function, the international system has its function. For most of the International related issues, you need an additional layer or a different type of cooperation. And to give you an example of the mode of functioning, when I was mentioning the International and jurisdiction projects, we started two years ago with a hint or an intuition that Internet jurisdiction was something that was going through a lot of issues, and that it was one of the major challenges, and the tension of the cross-border nature of the Internet and the patch work of national legal frameworks on jurisdiction was drawing attention. Little did we know what was going to happen in the coming year, but never mind.
It turned out that we thought it was necessary to bring the different actors around the table. And at the end of the first year, after a series of discussions with a lot of people and a few meetings, and so on, we spent a lot of time to frame, and I mean spent a lot of time to frame the questions in a way that is acceptable by everybody. It may seem minor, but in terms of models of cooperation, any time you want to build a coalition or a discussion or a dialog around a topic, you need to make sure that you can attract the relevant stakeholders.
And the only way to attract the relevant stakeholders is to, with their help, formulate the common problem in terms that are common to all. It takes time. It's often very quickly bypassed.
To give you a concrete example, we had a workshop yesterday on the Internet jurisdiction project, and during the workshop one of the participants who were in the meeting that we organised in Delhi was looking at the brochure that you found in your Tote bags, and mentioned that we were addressing the issue of domain seizures, content takedown. And as a Civil Society actor, he said the benefit of the project is that you're using neutral wording. We would have said how to prevent surveillance and how to restrain an acceptable censorship. You need to have a space where the activist can come and say "what you're labeling this way isn't acceptable because..."
But "the way we sold it is the following..."
So I just wanted to highlight this, because models of enhanced cooperation start with making sure that you are in an issue-based approach at the International level. That you identify the relevant stakeholders, which is a challenge because it's easy to identify the ones who are usually suspects. But sometimes you have the problem that you have some relevant stakeholders that need to be there and actually they don't want to be. They don't want to be there, because it's going to infringe on their own interests, or they are afraid there will be a Regulation in the private sector. Or if it's the Government, they are afraid that it will infringe on their capacity to regulate and so on.
So finding the way to make sure that the ones who need to be in the room are in the room is one of the most difficult challenges, and it is -- it takes a bit of prodding, but it's important.
The third element is the formulation. Again, sorry, the fact is that when you conduct a dialog, to get people around the table you need to move very progressively because you are constantly under a tension between depth and width, not only on the topic. You need to narrow progressively the topics to make them efficient. But even when you have narrowed your topic and squared it, the multi-stakeholder process and enhanced multi-stakeholder cooperation needs to be effective and inclusive. In order to develop something effectively, you cannot do a rename or framework or whatever by having 300 people discussing all the time what the next law or what the next framework is. It's not practically operational. Then you get into a trouble. Because if you want to be multi-stakeholder, how do you form the smaller group? One solution is to form subconsistencies, so you have different electoral colleges. It usually leads to an interesting battle saying how many electoral clusters and then how many seats per electoral cluster, and this is also power relation. But at least it's one thing that allows the formation, because these are methods that we know.
The second methodology is you get one body, and you get a nominating Committee of sorts that gets suggestions, and then they pick and put in. The ICANN board is composed a bit in the two dimensions by combination of a nominating Committee and constituencies.
But there are probably other models that we haven't explored yet, and it's one of the most difficult challenges that we completely overlooked when we talk about enhanced cooperation. Because making a list or having a broad debate mailing list is okay. It's easy.
Hand picking a small group to steer the process can actually work. When I talk about the Internet jurisdiction project, it's run by two people, Paul Fehlinger and I. So we are not generated by the multi-stakeholder group, but we are steering it as facilitators. So, this is a very important element. There is often a desire to run towards the formation of a board.
To give you a personal anecdote, when I wanted to launch this Internet project it was supposed to be a global exercise with a lot of actors and I wanted to develop a nonstructure in France, and I wanted to manage this and get funding. I couldn't create an association. why not? Because the rules in France say that, one, you need a board. And, two, you cannot be both the manager and receive a salary and be the boss. And I didn't want to do that because I didn't want to have to create, at the onset. It may come in time. But the facilitation was always prime.
So just to finish, because it's already taking long, the reason why I'm mentioning this as an illustration is that these are a certain number of the lessons that I'm taking from the process that I'm running now, which is consider as an attempt at building an enhanced cooperation mechanism. You have to get a framework of cooperation among the different actors next year. But if you hear what I just said, I already spent two years to simply, on the first one frame the problem correctly and in the second year identify the building blocks that will be discussed as a potential framework.
So time is an extremely workable component in multi-stakeholder processes. And actually, when it works and when you have the practice in place, it works in the right way, because the multi-stakeholder approaches allow to surface issues faster than traditional mechanisms for the reasons I mentioned before.
Because it can interface with them faster, you have a bit more time to address them. But if you try to do a multi-stakeholder enhanced cooperation system when the issue is extremely tense, it is much harder.
So these are a few of the issues, the ideas I wanted to share. And as a final point, the articulation between the International and the national actually I think function very nicely from the International to the national, if we do the International well.
And my guess, pure guess, is that there is likely to be more new multi-stakeholder issue-based governance frameworks at the International level than at the national level at first. Because there is a void to fill at the International level on some issues where we do not have anything to deal with them. Whereas at the national level, you have institutions that are already in place. And inserting the multi-stakeholder approach is changing the balances of power.
And I don't know how many times in the last two and a half days you have heard the word "Parliaments" when people are talking about Governments. It's as if the International architecture that we have is only based on the executives. The parliaments seem to be out of the picture in most cases. However, they are very important in the Constitutional architecture, and the challenge of consultations is much more in direct relation or intention with what the Parliaments normally do or what the Governments normally do. So that's just an additional thing.
I think finding good International issue-based things will eventually convince people at the International level that it works.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: Thank you for those interesting comments. You give us a lot to think about. I think we saw some common themes here in terms of issue-based networks, in terms of how to bring the actors to the table, that you need to be at the table, and practically, how do you make this operational. How do you go from having a network like you see with KICTANet than what you do with policymaking.
We have 20 minutes left. If there are some questions in the audience, if we can make this a bit more interactive.
And, Grace, do you have the microphone to do the roaming microphone? We have Lorenzo and a few other hands.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I teach communication and journalism in India at the Delhi University. I'll go back to what Bertrand de La Chapelle mentioned, however briefly, alluded to the idea that Governments, governance and participatory democracies have often been used interchangably when we are talking about enhancing cooperation. I'm so glad that we are talking about increasing multi-stakeholder cooperation. When Governments speak with Governments, very often crucial voices that are central to the core of the Internet get left out. I want Mr. Bertrand de La Chapelle to dwell on that a little more when we are speaking about the difference between multi-stakeholderism and participatory Democracy. It's still a top down process, if you could elaborate on that. Thank you.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: Should we take a few more questions and then answer them at once.
>> AUDIENCE: I have a couple questions. One for the person from Brazil. ICANN is suggesting that this model should be exported to other countries.
My concern is that it's on a historical part of this. I know that when you started this, you know, it's an important role to play. Is this the same -- is this the same thing right now because of what is happening in Brazil at the moment, instead of this -- I have, you know, I have different voice regarding the fact that at the moment it's not working, okay? So I agree totally with you, that the Internet because of the cross-border nature, so it's important to cooperate between all the stakeholders.
The problem is that I'm pretty sure that if you talk about what happened to the model, that they share the responsibility. It means also equal responsibility. It is the right way to go.
We all know that the Government now must may a major role, but not because, you know, they -- they understand now what probably before they didn't think about, you know. So probably in the past, we didn't have, you know, there was a -- the shared responsibility became automatic, because one part of the question, it's very valuable, is the substance.
Now, the situation is different. So I'm asking you for the sake of developing, pushing forward this model, we need to be more flexible in order to allow, also, from some type of involvement, we should allow for not a model of equal responsibility but shared responsibility. As long as this may be over time, all the different players share the leading role.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: Are there anymore questions at this point?
Maria.
>> MARIA: Sorry I arrived late, so if you made comments about that, disregard.
I'd like to pick on the difference between shared responsibility and equal responsibility. When we talk about the role of Government, and Brazil made the proposal about that, and I think it's important that we discuss this point, we have not discussed what is the role of other stakeholder groups. And I have this feeling that not discussing this at this point overlooks the fact that we need all to be on the table for the process to be meaningful. But the reasons that drive us to the table are different. So the sources of Civil Society, of companies, avenue technical communities, are different. And if we overlook that, I think we blur some lines that make the process complicated and we impoverish the process by saying that we have a shared and equal responsibility. And we were in other workshops that we were discussing that there is not an Internet Governance model.
There are several layers. Some layers the private sector has the leading role and sometimes the technical community has a leading role. And it has to do, I think, because of this different sources of legitimacy and different reasons why the stakeholders are on the table. And I think it's only natural, it's normal.
So I would like to elaborate a bit on that. How we could discuss not only focus that much in the role of Governments, but also talk about the role of other stakeholder groups as well.
>> BERTRAND de La CHAPELLE: Well, a few elements, I'll try to go quickly. The first one, regarding participatory democracy versus multi-stakeholderism, the first one regarding participatory democracy, it's a whole debate in itself. It has a bit of an economic dimension. I think it's more important to focus on how to make people work together, and I would half jokingly saying that in the multi-stakeholder approach, it's supposed to be bottom-up. But there is no bottom-up if there is no up.
It seems like a joke, but something that doesn't have a dual component of something that is tiered is responsible and accountable to whatever the bottom large group is, does not function.
As a matter of fact, the model that I personally support is not bottom or up. It's a circle whereby the people are around and there is something in the middle that helps the dialog among those people.
The second thing is, I found myself since the beginning of this IGF in a strange situation of being almost in the position of being the one who defends the Governments, because on most panels we're all Civil Society, businesses and so on. But, surprisingly, we don't invite Governments.
And it's not a criticism, it just that it turns out that I've been in -- I've been in the foreign affairs ministry for more than 15 years. And I want to avoid the situation where it's always "They." It's always "their" battle. "They" don't understand or what "they" do is ridiculous. Some do of course. But the point is that in many cases if you talk to the Governmental representative, if you talk to law enforcement actors, everybody is struggling with the current architecture. That is the reality. the reality is that Government officials, the only tool they have is to adopt laws and Regulations. And if they are all doing it separately, because there is no syncronization, there is no cooperation, we will collectively end up with an architecture or patch work that will be so incompatible that it will make the problem of harmonization harder rather than making it simpler. And so we need to push for cooperation, so that whenever Governments, but also the private sector and also other actors, make their own decisions, they are sufficiently aware of what the others are doing, to avoid making things worse.
The second element -- the third element is regarding what Joana was mentioning on the consultative roles -- but not consultative, multi-stakeholder cooperation and mechanisms can go to decision-making, but there are gradations. One example that is not really decision-making, but this is shaping what is strong, it's what we did with a few others in a small group, in the Council of Europe, that was tasked by the council in the multi-stakeholder matters to conduct the consultation and draft principles. And we did form a group of five people from a group of different stakeholders, we conducted this process, and the end result is that the draft itself was adopted by the Council of Ministers, without modification. But the draft for the proposal for the Internet Governance Forum and the Working Group and WSIS was endorsed and integrated in something that was formally a decision by the ministers.
But it was determined by the multi-stakeholder process. So we have to take that into account. There is not such a great line between decision-making and not decision-making. If the process of consultation and cooperation is sufficiently good and balanced, you don't touch the balance of the results when you are the decision maker, because this is exactly why you have the process in the first place.
Finally, finally, when it comes to shared responsibility, I will repeat a formula that I have used for the last seven IGFS, I guess, which is that the idea that we separate the roles of the different stakeholder groups, according to the paragraphs 35 of the Tunis agenda where people who do something is nonsense. I repeat. It's nonsense. The roles of the stakeholders vary according to the issue, the venue, and the stage of the discussion. And it's a matter of efficiency to understand when, why, who is the convenor, who are the stakeholders, who do you put around the table? If it's an intense law enforcement issue, that is a real thing, you need to have a lot of law enforcement. But a significant number of the other actors as well.
It is something that deals with mostly business relations to interact with the other stakeholders, but that varies according to the issue. It varies according to the venue. Because if a Civil Society initiative, like the one I'm doing, is taking the initiative, it will weigh the participation of the different actors in a different way from an international organisation launching something that tries to be as multi-stakeholder as possible, where they will invite a different balance of people. But it also varies from the stage of the discussion, because the earlier you are in the process, the more open you can be. You want to have as much included as possible in the early agenda setting and issue framing phase. And this is what the IGF is about. It's an issue framing and issue identifying system.
When you get into drafting, as I said before, you get into the challenge of finding less people to do the drafting, and the question of how you select them. So there are less actors, but the balance may be different.
When you get to the validation of the result, as I said, it can be only one stakeholder group. But if it's been prepared in a multi-stakeholder manner, that's different.
So one thing I wanted to stress very strongly, apart from this variability, is we all have, as individual multi-stakeholder relationships, we should not be forced to be stuck in one specific side of it.
I am constantly arguing that as a French citizen, I am interested in the way the French framework functions. I am represented by my Government in the processes now, but I'm also the user of some platforms that when I'm in another country, and sometimes I don't agree with what the Government or the level of the European Union is doing to the platforms because I like those services and how things are being done.
Or on the contrary, I'm also on the board or a member of an NGO, which is actually pushing harder than my own Government for a certain topic. And it is essential that people who participate in processes are not forced to say I am Civil Society, I am business. I cannot find any pots to shake in my present situation and I don't want to --
>> DEBORAH BROWN: Thank you. I think we have a question for Joana.
>> JOANA VARON FERRAZ: So to clarify, I agree with you. CGI.BR is an example of a successful one in which we manage to bring different stakeholders to work together and to bring important new ideas to the scenario. Or for the sake of thinking about finding workable models for enhanced cooperation, I was just pointing out one criticism, which is this part. The decision-making. And also an agreement with others that they had to have the role of decision-making, but they need to be heard.
Unfortunately, until a few months ago, six months ago, before this, there was the scenario, and as there is conflict with the Minister of Communications -- and I talked to the agency once to increase its role just as ITU wants to increase its roles to Internet issues -- and here you have the decision-making power and they are in the Regulation. It has to do with Internet and the CGI.br.
And the scenario change, Internet governance became an issue, and then our President had to pay attention to this in order to figure out what is this enhanced cooperation? And what is the difference of multi-stakeholderism? What are the people talking about? And I think the door was opened for CGI.br to take this step further, to be properly consultative, and for our President and our other Government agencies to consult and to have a look of what they have been proposing.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: Thank you Joana.
Does anyone want to answer Maria's question on the role of other stakeholders?
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Well, just the response, because I fully agree with the point. I think it's interesting, if you look at the Tunis agenda, it kind of lists particular roles. And I think part of the reason why Civil Society sometimes feels it's difficult to be too aggressive is clearly we are not doing, most of us who are actually active at the global level, are not about enhancing cooperation with communities. It's much more often about export input, sometimes also for the presentation, it's much more variety.
And I think that at the moment we have gotten a little bit stuck in this whole political economy around Internet Governance, how there are different kinds of Government, and the fear some Governments have about reopening the Tunis agenda.
So I think perhaps Civil Society has also gone along with that a bit too far as far as we're concerned. I think we have to insist that we open at least that part of the Tunis agenda, because clearly that definition is worthless. So there is a bit of contradiction there.
I think in general, also, you are completely right, speaking for Civil Society, I think we should spend much more time defining our own role and what we can contribute and less time thinking about Governments. I'm not saying it's not an important issue. But I think the way you shift the balance in these kinds of things is by having your own agenda and actually putting that forward and acting on it, not just saying things, but putting your money where your mouth is.
So I completely agree with you on that.
If it's okay, I would also briefly like to go back to what was asked. I think it's -- I mean, people who use Governments, participatory Democracy, they are obviously different. The Government's discourse came into work when the moves to public/private partnerships happened, especially under the push from the World Bank in the 1990s, participatory Democracy has a more complex history. I would say multi-stakeholderism is not a form of participatory Democracy. I would say it's substantially different, even though it's a form of deepening Democracy. But participatory Democracy is about consultative decision-making, not about shared decision making, and that's a qualitative difference. So this idea that different stakeholders can play a different role in different processes is not part of what we see. And that's why I still like to use this term and I keep it separate.
Do we need to be concerned about multi-stakeholderism? Very much. But I'm worried when I think it's important to always mention two things at the same time, which is that we need more diversity and we need more action to actually make sure that multi-stakeholderism is implemented in practice. Because at the moment, Civil Society, for example, has a massive resource issue when it comes to multi-stakeholderism. Try to attend all of these meetings, there are very few people who are able to do that. And we have been lucky in the past year or so that we can. I can tell you actually being present physically makes an enormous difference in terms of how far you understand the process and how you can input into it.
And more participation might sometimes be a solution, but it's not a consistent replacement. And so when we argue for diversity, I think we have to also take the responsibility of thinking how will we deal with that contradiction? It's not a problem for business. It is not a problem for some Governments. It is a problem for other Governments, and most definitely Civil Society. And I think we should be rethinking that.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: I think we have one more question from you.
>> BERTRAND de La CHAPELLE: A very quick comment. There is a distinction about multi-stakeholderism and I want to understand it better. On the last point that you make, I know it's wearing for Civil Society. But I can tell you that I really want you to understand that it's becoming an incredible burden for Governments as well and for the businesses. Everybody is strained. And if I had now an issue of common concern to put on the table that we need to address, it's the structuring of the calendar and the convergence of topics.
I mean, we are now actually overwhelmed. In 2014 and 2015 are going to be a major issue. As a matter of fact, I would almost on the fly suggest that this becomes a major issue of the event in Brazil, which by the way is not a Brazilian summit, it's a nonsummit in Brazil. But I would put that on the agenda of Brazil.
The next two years are going to be a nightmare and anybody who cares about the capacity to participate will be stretched beyond belief.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: It's a very good point to end on, especially if it's something that we can agree on. Desiree, do you have a question? We will take that and then we will wrap up.
>> DESIREE ZACHARIAH: I just wanted to expand on bit on what Marilia said and then I have a question for all the panelists. If I were to stop as a user and what responsibilities I have, I have a technical responsibility to run my network, the political and social organisation as well.
But what I'd really like is to hear more about the thing that Bertrand has said, that it depends on the venue issue and other things. It's got kind of a different role.
Could you expand the equal footing, any of you? How do you foot equal footing participation and the different venue stages in the conversation?
Thank you.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: Should we just send the microphone down the table?
>> ALICE MUNYUA: One example which we use when we speak about the decentralized model of Internet Governance, we would like to see it grow. If you think should we have a privacy Treaty? I think that's a question that is on many people's minds. That's not really clear where the treatment is.
That's not a question I would only want to leave to Governments. So our proposal would be that you set up a multi-stakeholder Working Group that actually defines the problem as narrowly as possible, then looks at different ways that that could possibly be solved. And makes a proposal or a recommendation on that.
Now, let's say that they are actually recommending that it becomes a Treaty. From there, we would say that it's the Government process that takes over. Treaties are negotiated between Governments. But a Treaty is the outcome of a multi-stakeholder process in which that multi-stakeholder group has set a certain set of conditions, and a modality within which that Treaty has to operate is a different Treaty from, let's say, if Governments start negotiating tomorrow.
So for me, that's one example where it's an equal footing in the sense that the decision to follow a certain path for a solution is a common decision. But it doesn't overtake, say, the Government's role. Because it still recognizes that that particular solution that is chosen will give prevalence to Governments to actually implement.
I hope that is a worthwhile answer.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: If I may also just build on Anja's point. I'm glad you mentioned the privacy Treaty. As you look at the human rights, you know, Governments don't have rights. They have responsibilities to ensure rights.
And then in the issue of surveillance, companies play a huge role, but at the end of the day the Government still has to enforce that. And companies have a bit of a different role. So I think if we talk about equal footing, it's when you start at the issue and you start talking about negotiating a new Treaty. You know, there will be a Working Group and an opportunity to start commenting and to work on text. But you have to admit at the end of the day, it still falls on States.
>> BERTRAND de La CHAPELLE: I have a very simple way to define the multi-stakeholder approach, which is that it is premised on a fundamental principle, which is the right of any person or entity to participate in the Government's processes dealing with the issues that it has a stake in.
It's as simple as that. It is as radical as the universal suffrage, which allowed the right for anybody to vote on any issue, which when it was introduced was unbelievably foolish. The notion that anybody respective of education, wealth, whatever, could have exactly the same rights to vote was incomprehensible.
We are now making, because we have the tools that allow different types of participation, an equivalently big deed regarding the right to participate in the processes dealing with the issues that are undertaken. Which means that you have to have a bit of stake. And in the course of the discussions, you may be less acceptable, less involved if there is a need to reduce the number of people who deal with the drafting or validation.
And there is no particular thing at stake for that group. But the fundamental principle is the right to participate in the governance processes.
The second element are for treaties and so on. There are many different instruments for putting down paper agreements, treaties among Governments, guidelines, advocacy pieces for Civil Society, contracts, everything. What is missing today is a type of arrangement that allows commitments by the different categories of actors on respective functions, provided that the others respect the same functions. That is the way a Treaty works. A Treaty works -- basically, a Government says if you behave this way, I will behave that way.
We do not have any kind of existing framework that allows for Governments, businesses, Civil Society actors, and International organisations, and taking from the community, and whatever, to basically agree on the same sheet of paper to say if do you this, I will do it this way and so on. But that's what we need. That's what we're trying to develop with the project.
In the case of ICANN, the tool is Regulation by contract, basically. But the affirmation of commitment is the first attempt at having the sort of arrangement that basically in one document has changed the nature of the relationship between the United States Government and ICANN, transforming the accountability mechanism from accountability from one Government to the accountability from others.
We need frameworks of commitments. I think I share the use of this expression along with others. And the way it evolves is that if there is a framework of commitment of that sort, such a document may include paragraphs that some countries will entirely decide to incorporate in their own national law. Paragraphs that some companies participating in the regime may include in their binding corporate rules, saying that if we are operating in a country that has signed this agreement and incorporated it, this is the way we're going to behave regarding the request. This is something that Civil Society groups may incorporate in some of the documents they produce, or they will decide how the Civil Society group can participate in the processes that were put in place.
We need new frameworks and not rushing into drafting either treaties or guidelines or statements, which are drafted by only one stakeholder.
>> DEBORAH BROWN: We are running a bit over time. So thank you everyone for coming. And I really enjoyed the discussion and I think we should probably get out of the room soon, because our time is over.
(Applause)
(End of session. 4:10 p.m. Bali time)
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