[WSIS CS-Plenary] UN Official Document System is online

[Vittorio Bertola]

Il giorno lun, 10-01-2005 alle 11:07 +0100, Georg C. F. Greve ha
scritto:
>  vb> This requires the assumption that, in the end, there will always
>  vb> be a consensus. 
> 
> Yes. That is indeed what Civil Society has been practicing -- not
> perfectly but as well as it could. 

I think we will have to accept that not everyone agrees on everything,
and find a way to ensure that these disagreements are solved in a
democratical way.

> The old structure is that the working groups -- as part of content and
> themes, which itself is part of the plenary -- take responsibility for
> the different thematic areas and are entitled to represent Civil
> Society on these issues.

This is confusing to me, because I thought that the flow of legitimacy
was opposite - there are accredited NGOs and individuals who form a
plenary, which in turn form smaller working groups to deal more
effectively with the specific issues.

Also, in your model it is unclear what do you do when an issue spans
over more than one caucus, or when more than one caucus claims ownership
of the same issue. For example, intellectual property discussions have
been going on not just in the PCT caucus, but also in the IG caucus, in
the privacy caucus, and I guess also in many others. Are you claiming
that no caucus but the PCT can legitimately talk about intellectual
property?

Please don't misunderstand me - I do like the work of the PCT caucus,
but I'm trying to show you that a model conceptually based on
"independent sovereign caucuses" does not work.

But again, your observation shows that we still lack even the basic
certainties on civil society's common values and institutional
principles... and that it's due time to sort that out.

> I am quite surprised that you seem to question this as that would also
> mean that the internet governance caucus is also not representative
> for civil society on internet governance issues and therefore all
> Civil Society participants in the WGIG would lose their
> representativity on any issue.

WGIG is not based on representation. It is not a parliament, nor a
decision-making or negotiating body. It is a group of experts that were
appointed ensuring that there is a rough balance among different
stakeholders and points of view - but also according to other criteria.
The selection process that civil society has put into place was an
additional effort to propose some skilled people that many others
considered to be good candidates, but in my understanding it was not a
formal selection process as if there were "civil society seats" to be
filled - also because no one from the UN ever wrote to any civil society
structure asking for selections.

This said, I must honestly add that, if I had been a member of the final
nominating committee, I would possibly have done some different choices,
and I would have kept in higher consideration the desire to balance the
presence of all caucuses and working groups; I was surprised when I saw
the final list. However, this doesn't mean that the process and the
choices were illegitimate or biased or bad, since you accept to share
the "wise [wo]men"'s decisions in the very moment that you appoint them
to a nominating committee, and since there was no solid ground on which
any selection process of any kind could be founded.

But, again, I do think that we have to build this solid ground so that
we're not in the same situation one year from now for the next UN WG on
whatever issue (assuming that all this movement doesn't fade away after
the Tunis Summit, hopefully).

> That is really most interesting, as the last information that reached
> the PCT working group about this was
> 
>  http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/wsis-pct/2004-November/000653.html

WGIG news are usually reported to this list and/or to the IG caucus
list. Possibly this is not enough, so we should discuss how to make it
better. However, you should know this one:

http://www.wgig.org/docs/inventory-issues.html

It's linked from the WGIG homepage, so it's not very secret :-)

>  vb> otherwise I wouldn't be working on a draft right now.
> 
> Given that the PCT group did not even have knowledge of these issues
> being part of the agenda, that is most disturbing, actually. Have you
> self-appointed yourself as representative of Civil Society on these
> issues now?

No - see above. By the way, if I hadn't volunteered to spend my weekends
and nights on this task, there would have been some private sector WGIG
members quite happy to do so in their paid office time. I think it's
better for us this way, and so I volunteered. For the third time, I add
that I will be happy to collect your feedback as soon as I have a draft
to circulate.

> There was certainly limited room. But unless there was no more than
> one representative of any single group in the WGIG and another group
> also should have been included, that is a non-argument.

As I said above, I share your view on this (maybe not so rigidly), and
yet I must point out that as far as I know no one has ever discussed or
approved the principle you state here. Again, we lack solid ground.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...