[Mmwg] Mechanism proposition

[Luc Faubert]

Hello all,
 
Here are some rough ideas for a forum governance mechanism that I humbly submit for discussion. They are designed to be used by any forum where global and binding decisions must be made:
 
 
1. Representation
 
A forum is composed of 2 main groups: governement and civil society, each made up of parties.
 
The governement group is made up of governements, i.e. UN-recognized governements. Each government is one party.
 
The civil society group is made up of all the other parties who wish to be represented, whether they are from the private sector, "classic" civil society, academia, ONGs, etc. A party within the civil society group is an organization having at least 1000 members.
 
 
2. Voting
 
Each party nominates one voting delegate. Each party has one vote.
 
Votes are tallied by group. A group's position is ratified when that position has a 2/3 majority within the group.
 
All forum decisions are made either unanimously in plenary, or when both groups vote the same way if the decision requires a vote because agreement cannot be reached on the issue. The steering committee decides when a vote is necessary. 
 
An on-line voting system must be used when a vote is conducted.
 
 
3. Talking time and seating
 
All parties can speak as much as they wish during plenary meetings, subject to logistical constraints imposed by the chair.
 
In plenaries, the number of delegates allowed per party will vary according to the total number of parties and the available seats. Plenary seating must be sufficient to accommodate at least one delegate from each party.
 
 
4. Steering committee
 
A steering committee must be created before any other forum business is conducted. The steering committee is composed of 10 members : one representative of each UN geographic region (Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, GRULAC, WEOG) per group. Each member is elected by the parties in his region. [I need help here. When this votes happens, civil society parties are theoretically not yet accredited (see point 7). How can parties vote for steering committee members if they are not yet accredited? We need a bootstrap loader here.]
 
All steering committee decisions must be ratified by at least 7 of its members.
 
 
5. Forum creation
 
A forum is created when any existing forum decides to create one, or [I need help here. What rules can be used to initiate a forum from something else than another forum?]
 
 
6. Chair
 
The chair is nominated by the steering committee.
 
 
7. Accreditation
 
New parties from the civil society group must be pre-accredited by the steering committee. Final accreditation of newly registered parties is ratified by a vote of the forum parties before any new forum meeting (physical or virtual). Party accreditation can be revoked by the forum.
 
 
 
NOTES
 
Inidividual representation
No individuals representing themselves are allowed in the forum. The forum is a place for communities of interest to negociate and decide on issues. Individuals wishing to be heard will have to either lobby a party or create their own organization and seek accreditation. The requirement of 1000 members is intended to prevent fly-by-nighters and puts an emphasis on the need to organize in order to participate in fora.
 
2/3 majority
I think the UN way to seek consensus is counter-productive. Granted, all negociations have intrinsic inefficiencies, but trying to reach consensus on everything too often dilutes final agreements to gibberish.
 
Division of votes in groups
The idea behind the tallying of votes by group is to prevent a large number of civil society parties to overtake governments in absolute voting power.
 
Civil society
The idea of putting all non-governmental associations in one group is to simplify things and make the mechanism scalable to other types of fora than IGF. Power within civil society is thus reached by having as many parties as possible, since each party has one vote. This could have the pervese side effect of encouraging organization fractioning to increase representation within the civil society group.
 
Binding decisions
I realize that IGF will not make binding decisions, but I wanted to try and put together a mechanism for fora that would also eventually have to make binding decisions.
 
 
 
- Luc Faubert
ISOC Québec
 
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/pipermail/mmwg/attachments/20060113/16fffc7e/attachment.htm