[Privsec] Defining transparency

[Gus Hosein]

I really wish I was in Geneva, knowing now that you all are working on such 
issues.

I've made a few edits, and have a couple of points to raise that we may 
want to have at the back of our minds but we probably don't want to commit 
to paper.

The whole point about policy laundering is that governments do forum 
shifting/shopping.  They move from governance-organization to 
governance-organization until they get what they want.  And while some are 
very open and democratic (the CoE, for example) they will push to have a 
closed process within there (and even the Parliament that oversaw the 
convention spent most of its time criticising it for not protecting human 
rights because it didn't ban hate speech).  And if they don't like what 
they get (e.g. retention was refused at the CoE) they go elsewhere (they 
went to the completely undemocratic, closed, unaccountable G8).  This is 
why all important UN decisions tend to be made in the Security Council.

So, by asking for Transparency, Accountability, and Democracy we have to 
acknowledge that governments will find ways to circumvent this unless we 
are strategic and reasonable.  This is why I opposed Bill Drake's attempt 
to include ILETS as a forum for openness -- ILETS is not an IGO 
(inter-governmental org), does not have a secretariat, and is so informal 
that if we forced it open they will just convene a different meeting in a 
different meeting room.

That is why I rant against governance and international co-operation 
generally.  The ailment is not the IGO, but national governments themselves.

Finally, I don't know if democracy and multi-stakeholderism is a good thing 
in these fora.  Not only can governments go to other fora, but I am not 
sure who I want sitting at that table speaking on behalf of 'civil 
society'.  Would I want Amnesty International speaking at the CoE?  Human 
Rights Watch at the G8? Womens' Groups speaking on the need to combat 
organized crime?

At the G8 meetings, the U.S. delegation was the only one to include civil 
society.  At first they included the Consumers Union representative who 
specialised on fraud.  That annoyed us.  Then they put on CDT.  Then they 
put on ACLU.  The Americans got better; but the other delegations did not 
act similarly, so we had the ACLU 'representing' global civil society 
concerns when in reality its mandate cares little about what goes on 
outside of the U.S. (but fortunately the representative was Barry Steinhardt).

So, my point is this:  perhaps the best way to open all these orgs up is to 
make the national governments accountable, the international organisations 
transparent, and recognize that international obligations within democratic 
systems are not necessarily legitimate and should be questioned.

This is what we're aiming for with the policy laundering project.

keep well...

gus.

At 07:35 18/02/2005, karen banks wrote:
>let me know what you think of this, edits, revisions etc..
>
>it's a good start - and criteria we would be aiming to apply to IG 
>mechanisms/institutions
>
>karen
>
>>Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 18:00:59 +0100 (CET)
>>From: "Vittorio Bertola" <vb at bertola.eu.org>
>>To: wgig-discuss at wgig.org
>>Subject: [wgig-discuss] Defining transparency
>>
>>All,
>>
>>while listening to the afternoon discussion, I have tried to prepare a
>>list of possible criteria to describe better what we mean by transparent,
>>accountable, democratic, incorporating my ideas as well as many points
>>mentioned by others.
>>
>>I think that a list like this one could be included in our final report as
>>best practices, if not requirements, for Internet Governance processes;
>>so, if we all like the idea, we could take the attached draft as a
>>starting point and (perhaps through a sub-group of volunteers in the next
>>weeks) work on it to finalize it.
>>
>>Regards,
>>--
>>vb.               [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<------
>>http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Vecchio sito, nuovo toblòg...
>>
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>
>
>
>
>
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