[WSIS CS-Plenary] BNA article on UNICT

[William Drake]

Different tone to this piece from the "UN seeks to take over the Internet" meme...



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Bureau of National Affairs

No. 59, Monday March 29, 2004,  Page A-31                                                   

ISSN 1523-567X                                                             

                                                                            

United Nations Forum Seen to Advance                                       

 Discussion of Cyber-Governance Issues                                      

                                                                            

UNITED NATIONS--The U.N. Global Forum on Internet Governance

concluded March 26 with officials suggesting that it had

yielded a wealth of information that could assist

Secretary-General Kofi Annan as he prepares to establish a

working group on the subject.

 

Jose-Maria Figueres Olsen, chairman of the U.N. Information

and Communication Technologies Task Force, told BNA that

though the two-day forum was not intended to offer any

conclusions or recommendations, it has nevertheless served

to advance the governance discussion.

 

The forum, which was organized under the U.N. ICT Task

Force, was designed by the secretary-general to bring

together key actors and stakeholders--including member

states, civil society, and the private sector--on related

issues.

 

It was intended to facilitate a dialogue with an eye on

informing the ongoing work of the U.N. ICT Task Force, and

the working group that Annan was asked to establish by the

World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to address

Internet governance issues specified in the WSIS's

declaration and action plan.

 

Annan told the forum March 25 the meeting will help lay the

groundwork for that working group, which the

secretary-general said he will establish soon (58 DER A-39,

03/26/04 

 

"Nobody here has said that the Internet is not working--not

representatives of developed nations, developing nations,

civil society, or the private sector," Figueres Olsen said.

"Everyone has said 'it is working, what's out there is good,

but we can improve it.' Furthermore, they have suggested

ways in which we can improve it [in terms of] inclusiveness,

and transparency without stifling creativity and ingenuity,

and the sense of entrepreneurship, which is what has made

the Internet grow, thrive, and represent what it does

today," he added.

 

Figueres Olsen said that with respect to the technical and

institutional issues the forum examined, all the

participants go home with a much broader understanding of

both what the issues are and how they can be improved.

 

"Of course, the devil is in the details, but my impression

is that through a greater amount of this multi-stakeholder

dialogue, we will create broader understanding with respect

to the issues, and therefore, we will be able to explore

areas of mutual consent-building that will become apparent

in the next months," Figueres Olsen said.

 

William J. Drake, a senior associate with the International

Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, told BNA "It

wasn't imagined that this body would reach any hard

conclusions, or even consensus on anything in particular; it

was really more of a dialogue function."

 

Though the set of concerns set forth by emerging countries

was a key driver of the WSIS process last December in

Geneva, the tone of the discussion at this forum was very

different due at least in part to the differing make up of

participants, he noted.

 

"Here, only about a quarter of the room [represented]

developing countries, and you've got all these Internet tech

and business people from the industrialized world, so the

tenor of the dialogue is very different," Drake said.

 

"So really [this forum is] a bridge building type of thing,

and an effort to try to get some of the people in the

technical and business worlds from the industrialized world

to understand the concerns of the developing countries, who

feel left out by the way a lot of these issues are managed

at the global level," Drake said.

 

On the other hand, it gives those from the developing

countries exposure to some of the technical and business

people, and forces them to recast their arguments in a more

precise and functional way than they are used to doing

through the WSIS process, he said.

 

"I hope the task force, going forward, will be able to build

on the goodwill that's developed here, to then begin to

isolate some particular issues, and have more in-depth

consideration of them," Drake said.

 

Figueres Olsen said a forum report will be prepared and

presented to Annan soon, after which it will be available on

the task force's Web site at http://www.unicttaskforce.org

******************************************
William J. Drake
Geneva, Switzerland
wdrake at ictsd.ch 
http://www.citi.columbia.edu/affiliates/wdrake.htm 
Director, Project on the Information Revolution 
  and Global Governance
Senior Associate, International Centre for Trade
and Sustainable Development www.ictsd.org  
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