The Internet Governance Caucus comprises a diverse range of individual and organizational civil society actors who are committed to the promotion of global public interest objectives in Internet governance decision-making. The caucus was created in early 2003 and played a leading role on Internet governance issues for the broad civil society coalition that participated in World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process. Some of its members were early proponents of an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and active participants in the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), which formally proposed the IGF’s creation in the summer of 2005. The caucus strongly supported the WGIG’s proposal, as well as the consequent mandate given to the IGF by the November 2005 Tunis Agenda on the Information Society.
The Caucus remains firmly committed to the IGF and very much wants it to realize its full potential. However, we are concerned by the possibility that the IGF cuuld fall well short of fulfilling the mandate established in the Tunis Agenda. We recognize that the IGF is still in its infancy, but do not believe it is premature to raise this concern now. To the contrary, we hope that by doing so we can help to stimulate a much-needed open, inclusive, and constructive dialogue about the IGF’s mission and modalities.
We wish to highlight our views on three issues in particular:
1. The IGF must have the will and capacity to fulfill its agreed mandate.
The Tunis Agenda specifies that the IGF should, inter alia, facilitate discourse between bodies dealing with different cross-cutting international public policies and issues that do not fall within the scope of any existing body; interface with appropriate inter-governmental organizations and other institutions on matters under their purview; facilitate the exchange of information and best practices, and in this regard make full use of the expertise of the academic, scientific and technical communities; strengthen and enhance the engagement of stakeholders in existing and/or future Internet governance mechanisms, particularly those from developing countries; identify emerging issues, bring them to the attention of the relevant bodies and the general public, and, where appropriate, make recommendations; contribute to capacity building for Internet governance in developing countries; and promote and assess, on an ongoing basis, the embodiment of WSIS principles [e.g. transparency, multistakeholder participation, and a development orientation] in Internet governance processes.
These are all critically important, value-adding functions that cannot be performed by any other Internet governance mechanism. But while governments and other stakeholders agreed on them in Tunis, they also cannot be performed by annual conferences that largely consist of presentations by invited speakers. We therefore would welcome an opportunity for open dialogue with other participants on how the IGF could fulfill these and other elements of its mandate.
2. The annual IGF conferences should be programmed and conducted in an open manner.
Members of the IGF’s Advisory Group (AG) should be appointed for one year and then replaced by new members who will program the following year’s conference. The AG’s composition should reflect a fair balance between the major stakeholder groupings, which should be able to select their own representatives. Participation by diverse constituencies from the developing counties should be made a priority, and resources should be allocated to support this objective. The AG’s decision-making procedures should be transparent, accountable, and timely. As for the conference itself, it should be a place where, as the WGIG recommended, “any stakeholder could bring up any Internet governance issue” and have an opportunity to initiate partnerships on related initiatives with other interested parties. While we recognize the constraints of a large group setting, the IGF should strive to maximize opportunities for fully participatory, bottom-up, peer-level multistakeholder dialogue.
3. The IGF should facilitate the formation of issue-oriented groupings alongside the annual conferences.
Here we endorse the views expressed by the Multistakeholder Modalities Working Group in its February 2006 statement to the IGF secretariat. The IGF should establish transparent procedures for the formation and recognition of any dynamic coalitions or informal working groups stakeholders may wish to organize on relevant topics. All stakeholders should be able to create such groups on a bottom-up basis. Any such groups should be open to all stakeholders that may wish to participate, transparent, and based primarily on virtual collaboration. They could engage in a range of activities, e.g. inclusive dialogue, monitoring and analysis of trends, conducting studies, and developing recommendations for action. The IGF also should define transparent procedures under which such groups could present any results of their activities for consideration in the annual meetings. These steps would strengthen the engagement of stakeholders from around the world in the work of the IGF, and could significantly increase the IGF’s capacity to fulfill the mandate it was given.
Once again we express our strong support for the IGF and for the mandate it was given by governments and other stakeholders, and we stand ready to work with colleagues from all sectors to make the Tunis Agenda’s vision a reality.