[Mmwg] RE: Mechanism proposition

[William Drake]

Hi,

A few brief comments.

Avri, if I didn't say this explicitly enough, I support the charter.

> Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 13:13:01 -0500
> From: "Luc Faubert" <LFaubert at conceptum.ca>

> Number of groups
> I don't think the idea of merging all parties in one group would
> be palatable to governments. While the number of governements
> allowed to participate in the process would be limited to those
> officially recognized by the UN, the only upper bound on the
> number of potential parties in the CS group would be that imposed
> by accreditation (and I think the principles underlying
> accreditation should be intended to screen out illegitimate
> parties rather than limiting the absolute number of CS parties).
> If the 2 groups are not isolated, the importance of governement
> votes would diminish proportionally with the increase of CS
> parties. I do not think we will get approval of governments to go
> this way.

On the one hand, it's obviously important that we go into this with a clear
anticipation of how governments would react to various formulations, so this
is helpful.  In WSIS, developing country reps were consistently skittish
about the prospect of open ended processes in which large numbers of
(especially Northern-based) CSOs would show up and, in their view, be
disproportionately thick on the ground and loquacious.  Such concerns were
clearly behind Khan's initial language at PC-3 implying that the IGF should
be more like an appointed executive committee than a y'all come thing, and
the resulting and inconsistent clause about balanced representation from
regions etc. remained in the text.  And Geiger noted at the December CONGO
debrief that some of these governments are still pushing behind the scenes
for limitations.  Everyone in leadership positions--Nitan, Markus, Karklins,
etc---recognizes this would make the IGF dead on arrival from the standpoint
of CS and PS participation and have told them so, and the US and other OECD
governments have been clear about it as well, but the problem remains, and
we don't want developing country reps to get disgruntled and disengaged.

On the other hand, if anticipation of developing country concerns pushes us
too far in the other direction, CS folks will rebel.  Saying that CS
participants must be members of large accredited orgs simply will not be
acceptable to many. We have way too many people who participate as
individuals or through small groups; we've been through this many times
before on the governance caucus list.   So I think we have to come up with
some formulation in which the right to participate is fully open but the
actual conduct of participation is somewhat disciplined, e.g. by a clear
understanding amongst CS types about exercising a measure of restraint so we
don't suck up too much bandwidth and run roughshod over DC sensibilities.
This would be very hard to achieve given everyone's desires to talk and the
frequently expressed views of some on the plenary and caucus lists about
supposedly anointed "CS insiders" etc.  If this group were to go to plenary
with suggestions along these lines, the response could be unpleasant.
Ultimately, the UN will probably have to play the heavy on this and other
points.

The architecture of seating will require thought too, as Luc suggests.

> WGIG
> I think we need to come up with a better model than WGIG, because
> its mechanism did not allow for "full and equal participation by
> all stakeholders". Although the spirit was undeniably cooperative
> in WGIG, I don't think we can say that associations and
> governments worked peer-to-peer.

FWIW, I don't think any of us who participated in WGIG would agree with
this.  The only non-peer-to-peer behavior was exhibited by the European
Commission, everyone else rolled with it, surprisingly well.

Cheers,

Bill