Latest Developments in IGF, ICANN and WSIS
Wolfgang Kleinwächter, an Elected Member of IAMCR's International Council who represents the association in UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on matters related to Internet Governance -his main subject of research since more than ten years- has prepared a comprehensive report on the latest developments in IGF, ICANN and WISIS.
Latest Developments in IGF, ICANN and WSIS
by Wolfgang Kleinwächter
In December 2010, the mandate of the Internet Governance Forum, (IGF) comes to an end. The IGF was established by the 2nd UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis 2005. Now the UN General Assembly has to decide about a continuation of the IGF. The evaluation of the four IGFs (2006 in Athens, 2007 in Rio de Janeiro, 2008 in Hyderabad and 2009 in Sharm el Sheik) started already last year among all involved stakeholders: Governments, private sector civil society and the technical community.
The overwhelming majority expressed their support for an enhanced IGF mandate, at least until 2015. Some proposed improvements in the structure, the outcome and the composition of the “Multistakeholder Advisory Group” (MAG), which steers the process of the preparations of the annuals IGFs. Only the government of China proposed to substitute the multistakeholder IGF by an intergovernmental negotiations process on Internet issues within the UN system.
Regardless of a lot of scepticism in the beginning that the IGF would be nothing more than another “UN talking shop”, the IGF established itself as THE meeting point for discussion around global Internet developments. Nearly 2000 high level experts from all stakeholder groups come together annually and discuss cross cutting issues related to global Internet policies reaching from privacy and security to intellectual property, freedom of expression, access to internet infrastructure, net neutrality, the management of critical Internet resources as domain names, IP addresses and root server, cloud computing, social networks, the Internet of things and many others. What people saw as a weak point in the beginning – the fact that the IGF has no decision making capacity – turned into strength. The absence of the pressure to agree on a common document and negotiated language at the end of the meeting opened minds and mouths of both governmental representatives and business leaders to enter into open and free debates with civil society and the technical community and led to stimulating discussions across traditional disciplinary or stakeholder borders on all controversial social, political, economic, cultural and legal Internet issues.
The multistakeholder concept as the basic Internet governance principle, introduced formally by the Tunis Summit in 2005, is seen more and more as the most adequate principle for dealing with Internet issues on the global but also on the local and national levels. This growing acceptance is reflected also in the emergence of numerous regional and national IGFs, like EURODIG in Europe, the Asia Pacific IGF, the East and West African IGF and the IGF in Latin America on the regional level and IGFs in France, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, Ukraine, Russia, the UK, Hong Kong, Germany, the US and many other countries on the national level.
However if the IGF mandate will be extended to 2015, it needs some improvements and enhancements. While it should be continue to have no decision-making capacity, it could strengthen its role as a stimulator for global multistakeholder Internet policy development processes which encourages existing intergovernmental and non-governmental institutions that have a decision- taking mandate – as ICANN, IETF, W3C, ITU, UNESCO, WIPO and others – to do what is needed by taking into account the IGF discussions.
Furthermore, a renewed IGF could include six additional functions to the IGF which are not yet described so clearly in its mandate but could play a greater role in the mid-term perspective: The IGF could become an observatory, a school, a laboratory, a clearinghouse, a scout and a watchdog.
With regard to the observatory function, the IGF is an ideal place to “observe” the broad range of Internet developments, globally and locally. It could be the place where all information about new Internet applications and problems, national and international Internet policies and other Internet related facts and figures can be collected and made available to the broader Internet community.
With regard to the school function, the IGF is a space where people can come to learn and to get all the knowledge they need to understand Internet Governance. It is like a "global school" where participants learn from each other and can listen to high level experts. It is interesting to note that the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GIGANET) has decided to have its annual symposium always at the eve of the IGF. And also the emerging "School of Internet Governance" (SSIG) which will have four branches in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia is linked closely to the IGF.
With regard to the laboratory function, the IGF is a unique place to test and figure out what works and what not in Internet Governance. The workshops create platforms where good and bad examples can be discussed and where stakeholders can learn from each other and get the needed inspiration to translate the global experiences into national and local policies.
With regard to the clearinghouse function, the dialogue among various governmental and non-governmental organizations and institutions can clear the air with regard who has to do what. It could lead to a more enhanced and developed division of labor where governmental and intergovernmental institution can spin a web of interactions, which also can be formalized in informal MoUs, Statements of Intent or Affirmation of Commitments to avoid heavy legal negotiations which need formal judicial processes like the ratification of conventions by national parliaments.
With regard to the scouting function, the IGF is a great place to look into latest Internet developments and to find out what could be the next issues. It is a place where the future can be explored and it can be also an “early warning system” which helps to identify emerging social, political or economic problems before they affect the live of billions Internet users.
The watchdog function works because stakeholders have an opportunity to raise their critical points. If a government or an Internet user is unsatisfied with ICANN or IETF, with the ITU or UNESCO or with policies executed by national governments and global Internet companies the IGF is a good place to raise the issue and to enter into a dialogue to get the point recognized.
Whether the IGF can be turned into such an observatory, a school, a laboratory, a clearinghouse, a scout or a watchdog remains to be seen. But the chances are good that in five years from now, when the IGF becomes a “teenager”, it will have not only found its place in the global diplomacy architecture of the 21st century but that it will also have a growing number of followers from other areas of global policy who try to benefit from the experiences which the IGF has produced in its pioneering work.
In May 2010 the UN Secretary General published his report where he recommended an enhancement of the IGF mandate until 2015. The UN Commission for Science and Technology Development (UNCSTD) has recommended to ECOSOC to draft a resolution for the UN General Assembly which would than make a final decision in December 2010.
In all the IGFs IAMCR members have played an important role as speakers in panels, organizers of workshops or moderators. They are also a driving force behind the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GIGANET) which has annually symposia at the eve of each global IGF. The Call for Papers for GIGANET 5, to be held in Vilnius, Lithuania in September 13, 2010, is still open until end of July 2010. GIGANET was established after a joint IAMCR/ICA expert conference in July 2006 in Rathen, Germany.
ICANN
The most important political decision around ICANN was the end of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) between ICANN and the US Department of Commerce (DoC) in October 2009 which led ICANN into a certain degree of “independence”. The JPA was substituted by an “Affirmation of Commitment” (AoC) which introduced a new decentralized multistakeholder oversight process for ICANN. According to the AoC, so-called review teams, which are constituted by governments, private sector, civil society and the technical community, will review ICANNs performance in four areas (transparency and accountability, competition, security and whois) on a regular basis. Only in the review team for accountability does the US government have a permanent seat. ICANN is now responsible to “the global Internet community”. The first review team started already in December 2009 and will finish its report until the end of 2010. However, ICANN is still linked via the so-called IANA-Contract to the US government which keeps its right to authorize the publication of root zone files for top level domains in the “Hidden Server” of the authoritative root server system, managed on a contractual basis by Verisign Inc., the registry for .com and .net. The IANA contract terminates in October 2011.
The main practical issue within ICANN in the last year was the introduction of internationalized Domain Names (iDNS) on the country code level (ccTLD) in the root server system. After nearly ten years of discussion, ICANNN opened the door to billions of people around the globe who do not use the Latin alphabet in their primary language. Until July 2010 ten countries got their ccTLD in their native script, including Russia (in Cyrillic), China, Hong Kong, Taiwan (in both traditional and modernized Chinese) and Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Dubai (in Arabic).
While this can be seen as a big success, another process is still far behind schedule: The introduction of new gTLDs like .shop, .music, .berlin or nyc (for New York City) into the domain name system was postponed again and again, mainly as the result of interventions by the trademark community and the incumbents who fear that new gTLDs will push them into costly registration practices and will undermine their market domination. The recent ICANN meeting in June 2010 in Brussels however decided to bring the discussion to a close. After a special gTLD summit, scheduled for September 2010, it is expected that ICANNs 39th meeting in Cartagena, December 2010, will start the process by publishing a call for application. Nevertheless it has to be seen whether this will become also a success story. High entrance costs – 175.000.00 $ - and high security standards for a new gTLD registry could work as barriers for the introduction of thousands of new gTLDs.
Another important decision was to enhance the status of the At Large Liaison director into a voting director in the ICANN Board according to the recommendation of the 1st Internet Users At Large World Summit (ATLAS I, Mexico, March 2009). A Nomination Committee has been established by the At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) and will send the first direct representative of Internet users into the ICANN Board of Directors in the first half of 2011.
Open issues for discussion on the ICANN agenda are, inter alia, the future design of the Whois database and the management of private data from registrants in the Registrar Accreditation Agreements (RAA), which is very relevant for the privacy protection of individual Internet users or the handling of applications for new gTLDs which have a so-called “moral and public order” (MOPO) dimension - like .catholic, .jihad or .sex – which is very relevant for freedom of expression.
WSIS
The WSIS Geneva Action Plan from December 2003 established nearly 20 so-called “actions lines” where various commitments by governments should be translated into practical actions until 2015. This included also action lines related to media and cultural diversity. For each of the actions lines, intergovernmental UN organizations like UNESCO, ITU or UNDP, got a leading role to organize multistakeholder actions to implement the Geneva and Tunis commitments. After some years of inactivity, the years 2009 and 2010 saw a growing number of events related to the WSIS actions lines, mainly organized by UNESCO and ITU. Because of the risk that this growing activity could lead to confusion and duplication, ITU, UNESCO and UNDP agreed to bundle the various meetings into a “WSIS Forum” within one week in Geneva. The first “WSIS Forum” took place in May 2010 in Geneva and saw several hundreds of participants from various stakeholder groups in the different action lines. The plan is to continue with this type of meeting to stimulate further the implementation of the WSIS commitments until the year 2015, in particular with regard to bridging the digital divide. One key point which was discussed widely was the recognized need to link closer together activities to implement the UN Millenium Development Goals (IMDGs) with the WSIS objectives.
A restart was noted also with regard to the “Global Alliance for ICT and Development “ (GAID). After the end of WSIS II in Tunis, November 2005, GAID substituted the UN ICT Takes Force (UNICTTF). Unfortunately, GAID remained rather ineffective after 2005. A re-shuffle of its leadership has introduced now a new wave of activities and it is expected that GAID will be play again a greater role in the WSIS implementation debates in the years ahead.
Even worse, the much discussed “Digital Solidarity Fund” (DSF), which was established with big noise on a voluntary basis in 2005, collapsed in 2009 because no stakeholder provided the needed resources so that the DSF could become an effective instrument in helping to bridge the digital divide.
One key idea which was floating around the WSIS Forum in Geneva in May 2010 was the proposal to organize eventually a 3rd UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS III) in the year 2015 to evaluate the results of the Geneva and Tunis commitments. Such a proposal could be made formally by the forthcoming ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Guadalajara in November 2010 which could then enable the UN General Assembly in December 2011 to take a decision with regard to a WSIS III. There is still a lot of skepticism around the idea of a WSIS III, however civil society groups have expressed their support remembering the huge mobilizing factor WSIS I and II had in constituting the civil society and developing the principle of multistakeholderism as a guiding principle for building the global information society as an inclusive, people centered process based on human rights
The author is Special Adviser to the Chair of the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF), Nitin Desai, chairs ICANNs Nominating Committee (NomCom) and is member of the Panel of High Level Advisers of GAID but expresses here his personal opinion