All aboard for IGF 2012

For many IGF 2012 participants, the fun started well before arriving in Baku.

There was the last minute change in hotels due to apparently unforeseen renovations. I have been told this was local host diplomatic language for "oops, we overbooked the hotel".

Only a fortnight or so before IGF, there were major changes to British Airways' entire schedule to Baku, causing people flying from Heathrow to either arrive in Baku extra early or miss the pre-events day.

There was also, of course, the multiplying invitation letters from the local host. However, invitation letters from two different Azerbaijani government departments and the confirmation letter from IGF was apparently not enough for some of the on-arrival visa officials, who demanded that one participant also present an invitation letter from the United Nations.

A taste of the local culture on flights to Baku

It took ten minutes per passenger to check in from Paris on Azerbaijan Airlines. Apparently this was due to the local office being closed on a Sunday. In reality, it was a way to get IGF attendees used to queuing.

On one flight, an Azerbaijani woman told Milton Mueller, "I want your seat". When he looked at her, incredulous, she repeated, "I want your seat". He said no. She asked again, apparently not having heard that Milton can explode when provoked, but Milton stuck to his guns and wouldn't budge.

On the same flight, another Azerbaijani woman poked a sleeping Bill Smith from Paypal, declaring "You swap". Bill, lacking Milton's fortitude, swapped seats.

On another flight to Baku, a fight at the back of the plane was averted by airline stewards. One very drunk local was singing too loudly and long for another local and angry words ensued. This was Emma Frost's (ISOC) introduction to Azerbaijani culture. On landing, the drunk man preferred sitting with the IGF attendees waiting for their visas rather than passing through Customs, and had to be coaxed through by airport staff.

A hint to Azerbaijan Airlines: you might want to edit out the part of your passenger safety video that actually shows a person bobbing up and down in the water with the plane floating/sinking in the background. It frightens small children and IGF attendees. Also, Jason Munyan from UNCTAD would like to know exactly how it is that passengers spontaneously gain massive amounts of weight when opening the emergency exits, as demonstrated in the exit row safety card.

First introduction to Baku fun buses

Please note the man in fur hat in top right corner of photo. More about him below.

On my bus, we dropped a local wearing a Russian-style fur hat off at a bus stop on the way. Which was nice of the driver. We almost lost all our luggage under the cars behind us when the back door of the minibus flung open as we went uphill. Apparently I was the only one who noticed, and it took a while for the others to understand why I was insanely shouting "Stop! Stop! Stop" while lunging over the back seat to grab the handle of the bag closest to the open door. At one point, while the meet and greet staff were helping an attendee into her hotel, the driver took the opportunity to go AWOL for a bit. The IGF volunteers launch a mini manhunt to retrieved him.

It seems that on average, buses took three hours to go between the airport and last hotel, with many pitstops on the way to ask locals for the way to various hotels. IGF attendees on the bus asking how much longer the journey would be got used to the refrain "Ten minutes, not much further, we're almost there".

The upside of long and circuitous bus routes? We got to see more than Baku than we usually see of countries we attend conferences in.

"There will be a bus at 7:00 am this morning"

A hint to future IGF organizers: when deciding to provide bus services for IGF pre-event days in future, please make sure notification comes earlier than 2 am, only five hours before the bus is going to leave. A printed notice posted under delegates' doors in the wee hours of the morning guarantees your bus drivers will get the morning off.

And this was all before IGF officially began. More later on the food (or lack thereof), the headphones, the fragile walls, and a really packed IGF program.

The RIRs in a post-IPv4 world: Is the end of IP address policy making nigh?

IANA's IPv4 pool was officially exhausted in early 2011; Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) are gradually eating through their remaining IPv4 reserves and, although there will always be a trickle of recycled IPv4 addresses coming through as businesses go bust or ISPs move entirely to IPv6, the bulk of RIR IPv4 activity in future will be maintenance of existing allocation records (including associated RPKI certification efforts).

While IPv6 is definitely the way of the future for the Internet, the sheer size of the IPv6 address pool, combined with simplified allocation policies that have deliberately reduced barriers to entry, means there are very few organizations that can't get IPv6 directly from the RIRs these days.

As a response to these changes, an APNIC policy proposal, prop-103, popped up on 9 July 2012 suggesting that there is no need for any more IP address policy development.

Early reaction to the proposal has been mixed. Some have agreed that it is pointless to play around with IPv4 policies any more; some think that IPv4 policy may still need to be changed. There is greater agreement that IPv6 policy may still need to be refined at some point in the future when there has been more experience in IPv6 deployment.

In a larger Internet governance context, however, the APNIC proposal highlights a major challenge facing the RIRs: what is their role in a post-IPv4 world?

Where will RIRs get their income?

Each RIR has a different fee structure, but broadly speaking the current RIR business model means that the majority of RIR income comes from membership fees associated to IPv4 allocations and management.

Looking forward, ISPs are likely to request far fewer allocations in IPv6 than in IPv4 due to the large size of the initial IPv6 allocations made by RIRs. The smallest allocation size, a /32, is likely to be sufficient for a significant percentage of ISPs, meaning that for RIR fee structures based on the graduated tiers of IP address holdings, most members, if judged solely on their IPv6 holdings, will be in the smallest tier. Currently, fee schedules for IPv6 address allocation and management provide a far smaller portion of RIR income, and given the above, will continue to do so, unless member fees associated with IPv6 are radically increased. Given RIRs are membership-based organizations, there is probably going to be little member support for such an increase.

As RPKI is deployed, RIRs may find it possible to turn certification into a non-insignificant source of income by charging "legacy" IPv4 address holders for certificates that regular RIR members receive for free. "Legacy" address holders, by the way, are organizations that received their IPv4 addresses before the RIRs were created, or before RIRs had member agreements that ensured members had to pay regular address maintenance fees. For a recent article on legacy addresses, see Legacy IP Addresses on Janet.

Unless RIRs make significant hikes in their IPv6 fees, or can make RPKI certification a financial success, however, the reality is that RIRs, in the next few years, may find themselves with significantly smaller incomes.

What will happen to RIR community dynamics?

RIR members and stakeholders have traditionally met and developed their sense of being an IP addressing community via RIR mailing lists and RIR meetings.

RIR meetings began for the purpose of developing policy and, to support the ability of RIR stakeholders to participate in policy making, meetings have included presentations and discussions on industry trends and practices. In a sign of the times, however, APNIC has dropped the use of "Open Policy Meeting" in favour of the policy-free title, "APNIC conference". AfriNIC and ARIN are now the only RIRs that call their meetings "Public Policy Meetings", but if the sentiments expressed by Randy Bush in his prop-103 prove true for all regions, it might only be a matter of time before these RIRs change the focus of their meetings, too.

Today, RIR meetings and mailing lists attract a mix of those who want to influence IP address policy development, those who want to understand the policies so they can successfully request resources, and those who are there to build their knowledge on the latest IP address-related industry developments.

With IPv4 becoming less important, both in terms of allocation and policy development, and with IPv6 space large enough and being governed by policies liberal enough to probably need only minor tinkering over time, will the policy-focused community members no longer be attracted to RIR discussions?

With simpler and easier to understand IPv6 policies, will RIRs also find that ISPs don't need to attend RIR training to figure out how to ask for addresses in future?

Will RIRs find themselves with a community that transforms itself to become ISP staff primarily interested in learning more about industry developments? If so, this leads to the next question:

What is the future core business of RIRs?

RFC 2050 states, "Regional Registries provide registration services as its primary function". Over time, to support this primary function, RIRs have developed a range of supporting services. However:

• A post-IPv4 world won't require the current number of trainers, help desk operators or document writers to explain the complexities of multiple-choice policies for IPv4 allocations and assignments.
• A post-IPv4 world doesn't require as many hostmasters to evaluate IP address requests, not only because IPv6 criteria are simpler and easier to meet, but also because the overwhelming majority of organizatons will never come back with an additional request for addresses. Compare that to the last 10 or so years of RIR operations, where ISPs have regularly returned with additional IPv4 requests.

Will RIRs decide that their core function, IP address management and distribution, has become a lighter function that can be met by slimmed down Secretariats?

A world in transition from IPv4 to IPv6 most probably will require more training and documentation on IPv6 deployment and dual IPv4/IPv6 networks. Will RIRs look to these as their new main activities and sources of income? Or will RIRs refocus their central functions to be RPKI certificate authorities, or expand training departments to cover a wider range of technical training (some of the RIRs already offer training courses outside the strict IP address management function that is the RIRs' current core business), or reframe RIR meetings and events as regional hubs that provide a platform for Internet operators to exchange best practices?

To place an emphasis on training services would require RIRs to compete with commercial training providers. If this is the case, the probability is that the training costs will need to be borne by those being trained, rather than being subsidized by member income, as is the case today. To place an emphasis on becoming platform for Internet operators to exchange best practices could work nicely, if RIRs work as partners with existing regional Network Operator Groups.

What does the potential change in RIR focus mean for their role in Internet governance?

If the RIRs do reframe their business models, what does this mean for their place in the Internet governance ecosystem? Currently, the five RIRs occupy an impressive three of the 10 places allocated to the academic and technical community on the IGF MAG.

The RIRs, with their traditional focus on technical policy development, have generally been able to occupy the high ground in Internet governance discussions. For example, while domain name policy and governance is seen to be open to influence from all sorts of conflicting interests (intellectual property advocates, privacy advocates, business entrepreneurs, etc.), criticism of addressing policy is less likely to be about conflicts of interest, and more likely to be about interpretation of statistical distribution of addresses (witness the debate in the recently-closed ITU IPv6 Group where some member states came to the conclusion that RIRs were failing to achieve equitable distribution while the RIRs were able to use the same statistics to conclude the opposite.) or whether something is or is not a technical trend that address policy should be changed to accommodate.

If RIRs cease to be organizations that have policy development as part of the core of their new business models, does this also change their position within the Internet governance world? Do RIRs become more like domain name registrars, focused more on resource distribution (albeit without the focus on profit)? Or, if RIRs reposition themselves to be closer in function to the Network Operator Groups (NOGs), do RIRs embrace a more NOG-like role in Internet governance? That is, NOGs seem to play a role in regional and local IGF initiatives, and similar capacity building efforts, but play little role in the larger political Internet governance sphere.

And tangentially, what happens to the ICANN Address Supporting Organization if RIRs change focus?

Could a change in focus give RIRs the ability to survive removal of their IP management functions altogether?

If RIRs downsize and/or change focus, a possible side-effect is that they will lose the capacity to respond to any future attempts by other organizations to relocate IP addressing activities to another form of institution-most likely intergovernmental. (I'm not going to discuss the pros and cons of moving IP address management into an intergovernmental framework here. There has been a lot written about that already, and I'm sure more will be written in future.)

Right now, with RIRs rightly being well-known for their IP address delegation work, the notion of addressing functions being moved elsewhere seems unthinkable. Not only because the current possible alternative homes for such a function are seen as antithetical to the Internet's multistakeholder, bottom-up approach to governance, but also because to remove IP address functions from the IRs right now would be to remove the beating heart of the organizations. Without that heart, the RIRs would, right now, almost certainly not survive. However, if the RIRs do, indeed, refocus their central activities outside pure address management, perhaps the RIRs could survive removal of addressing functions and become Regional Internet Registries of Internet technical information and practices, instead of registries of address information. And perhaps become homes for the regional NOG activities (AfNOG, NANOG, etc.).

Time for the community to discuss

Randy Bush's prop-103 touches on the most immediate change facing the RIRs: the declining role of address policy in the RIRs. The proposal has sparked off some interesting discussion on the APNIC Policy SIG mailing list. But for me, the larger discussion the RIR communities need to have is what they want the RIRs to become in a post-IPv4 world. RIR surveys have touched on this, but as we all know, there are a couple of drawbacks with surveys:

• As I learned well during a short stint working for a PR company specializing in the oil and gas industry, survey questions are often framed in ways that encourage participants to respond in ways the survey authors find favourable to their own goals.
• Surveys tend to attract a very small sample of the stakeholders, and don't necessarily reflect the true diversity of stakeholder opinions.

Like ICANN, all RIRs have sections of their meetings that encourage the open mic discussions. RIRs have mailing lists for discussion too. I hope RIR communities take the opportunity afforded by Randy Bush's proposal to starting think about what forms they'd like RIRs to take as they move towards a post-IPv4 world. After all, the RIRs are community-based organizations, and it is through the active participation of the community that the RIRs will be sustained, in whatever form RIRs may take in future.

For Craig's Mum

Dear Craig's Mum,

Your son has worked very hard in Geneva over the years. So hard, he has not even had the time to have his photo taken within the Palais des Nations. Since he will be leaving soon, he'd like you to have a photo that you can use when boasting to your friends about how important your son's work is (because we all know that's what parents like to do):

Signed,
A sympathetic friend

Tainted Route: a parody

I'd forgotten I'd written this until I rediscovered it the other day: lyrics for the Internet technical crowd to be sung the tune of Tainted Love. Enjoy!

Tainted Route

Sometimes my CIDR prefix
is preloved, my prefix
is misused
My packets don't get through to the Internet
The routes we share
Seem to go nowhere
And I've lost my fight
To prove the block is mine to route by right

(chorus)
Once I peered with you (I peered)
Now I'll blacklist you
This tainted route you've given
I give you all a geek could give you
Take my 1/8 ("one slash eight") and that's not nearly all
Oh...tainted route
Tainted route

Now I know I've got to
blacklist I've got to
blackhole you
You don't really want IP any more from me
To make things work
You need someone to tell you, jerk
There are things called RFCs
And you surely need to read all these!

(chorus...)

Don't route me please
The Internet, you're killing, Jeez!
I want you though all packets drop
Next thing you'll make the whole Net stop!
Tainted route, tainted route (x2)
Remove me baby, tainted route (x2)
Tainted route (x3)

Gender equality and Internet governance

The recent publication of the 2012 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) initially got me cranky to see that the RIRs are represented on the MAG by three middle-aged white men. Yes, one of those middle-aged white men is based in Dubai, and was born in the Middle East, and so speaks Arabic. Yes, another of those middle-aged white men is from South America and speaks both Portuguese and Spanish. And yes, the remaining middle-aged white man is there because he's representing an Asia Pacific organization. And speaks some Spanish, too, if I remember correctly. So the regional and linguistic representation boxes can be ticked.

But where are the women from RIRs? The one female representative from the RIRs, Cathy Handley, has been rotated off. Let's look at women on the MAG from elsewhere in the technical world. Emily Taylor, who was originally chosen as a representative of Nominet, has been rotated off. Nurani Nimpuno remains one of the technical community's representatives on the MAG. Constance Bommelaer, my colleague on the Commission on Science and Technology for Development Working Group (CSTDWG) on IGF, joins the MAG from ISOC. Overall, there are 23 women in the 56-member MAG for 2012. So there are still 10 more men on the MAG than women. So still not quite gender balance there. But not bad when you consider the following.

Gender balance in the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs)

First, a word of explanation. I am not picking on the RIRs because their gender balance is worse than any other one of the Internet technical organizations. It was simply easier for me to look at five RIR websites (plus the NRO one) than it was to look at around 200 ccTLD websites, 21 gTLD websites, or the wide number of IETF Working Groups. For all I know, gender balance is worse in those worlds. If I have the energy, I'll track those down later. Also, please note that I am not looking at cultural or linguistic diversity here. The RIRs, on the whole, do a pretty good job in that field.

There are five RIRs. The CEOs of all five are men. Four of the five Board Chairs are men. The Boards of ARIN, LACNIC, and RIPE are composed entirely of men. But look a little closer, and you'll find some women the RIRs:

AfriNIC

AfriNIC wins the gender balance race amongst RIRs, but even its figures are depressing. AfriNIC has a female Board Chair, Ndeye Maimouna Diop Diagne, and a female alternate Board member, Lillian Wambui Karanja. So two of its current 13 primary and alternate Board members are female. And one of its past 24 Board members was female.

One of AfriNIC's female staff has the title of manager, and there are two vacant manager positions, so there's a chance AfriNIC will get some more female management in the near future. Out of its current 22 staff, nine are women. But of those nine, only two work in the technical area (the other six in the technical area are men). The rest of the women work in traditionally "female" areas of communications and administration.

Update (Friday 4:24 pm): There is a second female manager at AfriNIC in the role of Registration Services Manager. The website just hasn't been updated to show it yet, although I suspect it will be updated shortly. The total number of female employees, however, doesn't change as an existing female technical staff member was recruited for the management position.

APNIC

APNIC comes second, being the only other RIR to have a woman on its Board, Wei Zhao. APNIC has also had another woman (also from CNNIC) on its Board (known as the Executive Council) in the past. So one out of eight current Board members is a woman, and one out of 22 past Board members has been a woman. It's actually worse than that if you consider a number of the past members served more than one term, meaning that only two women have been elected out of a total of around 40 places on the Board since the late 1990s.

There are two women on APNIC's 11-member Executive Team. But both in traditional "female" roles: human resources and an executive assistant. 29 of APNIC's 68 staff are women, seven of whom are in technical roles. The rest of the women, once again, work in those traditionally "female areas" of communications and administration. I'm including the female trainers within the broad area of communications, but if you want to consider them to be technical, it bumps up the female staff in technical positions to nine.

ARIN

ARIN has no women on its seven-member Board of Directors, and never has, but it does have three women on its Advisory Council (the body that advises the Board on policy matters).

There is one woman in ARIN's three-member executive team. ARIN currently has 50 staff, and two vacant positions. Of the current 50 staff, 20 are female. There are two names where I can't be sure of the gender, so possibly it's 22 female staff. Eight of the women work in technical areas. One other works in public affairs.

RIPE and RIPE NCC

Like ARIN, RIPE has never had a woman on its Board.

Nobody in its six-member senior management team is female. Out of its 137 staff, 51 are female. Of those, 10 are in what I'd consider to be technical positions. If you include the customer services women, it takes the technical total to 15. All the rest are, to be depressingly repetitive, in communications and administration roles. A number of the technical areas at RIPE NCC are completely male, including Research & Development, Global Information Infrastructure and the Database Group. There is one woman in the external relations area.

LACNIC

None of LACNIC's current Board members are women. LACNIC doesn't publish an easy to find list of their past Board members, but I think it's a reasonably safe to assume that past members haven't been female either. I wasn't able to find a staff list on LACNIC's website, so I can't analyze their staff composition either. But I'll give LACNIC the benefit of the doubt and assume that their male/female ratios are no worse than the other four RIRs.

NRO

The Number Resource Organization (NRO) is the coalition of the five RIRs and also performs the ICANN Address Supporting Organization (ASO) function. As such, the NRO Executive Council, which consists of the five RIR CEOs, is entirely male. And the 15-member NRO Number Council, which performs the function of the ASO Address Council (AC) has one female member, from the AfriNIC region. Developed regions of the world, you should be very embarrassed that it is a developing region of the world that is putting forward the single female representative on this international Number Council.

Gender balance in the IGF

Gender balance is one of the goals of IGF MAG composition, along with regional and stakeholder diversity. Likewise, gender balance is one of the items IGF workshop organizers are supposed to address in their list of workshop speakers. Women form just over two fifths of the current 2012 MAG. And a browse through past IGF workshops and main sessions shows that the majority have at least one female speaker. It's often not half male and half female, but at least women are on the panel. It could be far better though. Civil society is particularly adept at including women as representatives.

Comparing gender balance in RIRs and United Nations-related Internet governance areas

In the various moments of crisis over the past few years when it has looked like Internet governance might move into a government-only sphere, the technical community has been very vocal in insisting that Internet governance is at its best when it has multistakeholder input and governance. And the fact that the IGF MAG has almost as many women amongst its members as men shows that diversity is being given serious consideration. The CSTDWG on IGF also had a good number of female members, including three of the five technical and academic community representatives.

So compare the gender balance in Internet governance arenas at the international (UN-related) level with what's happening at the RIR level. Why so few women in key decision-making positions within the RIRs, both within the staff and within Boards? Why is there such a large gender imbalance both within decision-making roles and in technical positions? There are three issues I can see that contribute to this:

• Women traditionally have not chosen technical careers. But this is changing. There are a lot of women who have IT qualifications. And until women can see that other women are able to succeed in the IT world without having to beat off unwanted attention from the stereotypically socially inept male geeks, amongst other things, young girls will remain less likely to choose IT as a career. But if girls can see that being a woman in IT is not only possible, but rewarding, there'll be a greater pool of female IT graduates to be employed by organizations and companies.
• RIR staff appointments are made by RIR staff. Given so many of the senior RIR staff are male, it may not even enter their minds to think that it's important to encourage women in senior or technical roles. Even if it did, I suspect many of them would use the "But no qualified women applied for the position". To that, I say, "See above, about women in IT needing role models" and "Look harder, just like you look harder to find regionally diverse applicants".
• RIR Boards are nominated and elected by RIR members, not RIR staff. It is possible that RIR members, who are usually ISPs, suffer from the same male-dominated senior management and technical staff issues as the RIRs, and therefore, once again, the thought of gender balance doesn't even enter their consciousness during the election process.

The Internet community often talk about the benefits of "bottom-up development" in Internet development. But here, it looks to me like RIRs and their communities need to follow the "top-down" example of international UN-related Internet governance bodies that make gender balance a priority.

I am not having a go at gender balance in the RIRs just because I'm a feminist with a mission (although I am that). There is an additional issue at stake here. If RIRs —and possibly other technical Internet organizations that I haven't looked at here— don't address the current gender imbalance, then they may find it very hard to sit on international Internet governance forums in future. The RIRs currently only have one woman on staff with external relations/public policy experience they could put forward for an international Internet governance forum: Cathy Handley. And she has already served her time on the IGF MAG. Who else can RIRs put forward right now apart from middle-aged white men? Perhaps one of the very few female members of their Boards if they were willing to fund them? If the RIRs don't work to fix this gender situation, they may find themselves on the outer as bodies like the MAG look for gender-balanced member compositions. Other Internet organizations, which may have similar gender imbalances, could also find themselves in the same position.

India finds itself in centre of Internet governance controversy... Again

India has put a lot of effort into Internet governance lately.

There's been its work since 2006 to have a National Internet Registry of India established, its input into the UN's December 2010 enhanced cooperation consultations, its detailed proposal submitted (late) to the March 2011 meeting of the Commission on Science and Technology for Development Working Group on improvements to the IGF (CSTD WG), and its participation in draft IBSA recommendations on Internet governance in September 2011.

Then, at the end of September, at the Internet Governance Forum Critical Internet Resources main session, India explained the reasons it had participated in the initial drafting of IBSA's Internet governance recommendations earlier in the month. In brief, India explained that IBSA countries were concerned that developing countries weren't able to participate on an equal footing in the current Internet governance system. India's representative, Tulika Pandey, finished by stating:

"This is yet a very initial process of a thought process which has caused this. I'm very happy that people have awoken. They're looking at India and Brazil and South Africa. We suddenly are in the center of the IGF. We are happy about it."

Move forward a month, and after India's intervention at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Second Committee on October 26, India is, yet again, in the centre of Internet governance discussions around the world.

India's speech to the Second Committee provided a detailed proposal for how it would like Internet governance to be formalised at the UN level. Under India's proposal, 50 Member States of the UN would form a Committee for Internet-Related Policies (CIRP) that would meet for a fortnight each year in Geneva and report directly to the UNGA. Non-Member State stakeholders in Internet governance would participate via Advisory Groups that provide recommendations to the CIRP. CIRP would not replace IGF, but would take input from it. A research wing would be attached to CIRP to provide members with the detailed information and analysis of Internet issues needed for their deliberations. Oh, and CIRP is to be fully funded by the UN.

India's suggestions, first made public in detail via an article on .nxt, resulted in a wave of hand wringing in Internet governance circles. See, for example, the October archives of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus mailing list. Milton Mueller's article, A United Nations Committee for Internet-Related Policies? A fair assessment, also expressed concern about the details of India's proposal.

But it is very important to note that India's proposal detailed in their Second Committee speech has not appeared as a draft resolution. (Note that it is possible that it has been submitted as a formal draft resolution and just hasn't appeared on the UN website yet.) So why is there so much consternation about a proposal that hasn't been submitted as a formal draft resolution? After all, in its current form, a speech by a Member State (yes, even a speech that comes with an annex), it can't go anywhere.

My totally subjective personal opinion is that the anguish is being exacerbated by two factors: a) ongoing suspicion between various participants in the Internet governance ecosystem and b) amnesia about India's previous statements expressing similar sentiments.

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF), where the focus is on open discussion and exchange rather than decisions, is a great way to address the first factor and has gone a long way to dispel suspicions about different Internet governance participants' motives. But the only way to address the second factor, amnesia about India's previous proposals, is to jog people's memories.

Similarities between India's 2011 UNGA Second Committee and 2010 Enhanced Cooperation consultation statements

In December 2010, India's statement at open consultations on Enhanced Cooperation called for a Working Group to be created under the CSTD to develop the "possible institutional design and roadmap for enhanced cooperation in consultation with all stakeholders, and [...] submit its report to the UN General Assembly in 2011".

Move on almost a year, and with no UN follow-up on its suggestion, India tries again—this time at the Second Committee—having developed its own ideas about the institutional design of the enhanced cooperation body. Below, are similar sentiments India has expressed in its statements made less than a year apart:

1. It's been X years since the Tunis Agenda, and no action yet

In 2010, India has expressed its view that despite the Internet's increasingly important role in the world, the Tunis Agenda mandate for enhanced cooperation had not come to fruition. A year later, feeling that nothing had changed, India's 2011 UNGA speech restates its concerns and refers to a greater range of Tunis Agenda paragraphs to support its views.

From the 2011 UNGA Second Committee contribution:

Indeed, this was already recognized and mandated by the Tunis Agenda in 2005, as reflected in paragraphs 34, 35, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61 and 69 of the Agenda. Regrettably, in the six long years that have gone by, no substantial initiative has been taken by the global community to give effect to this mandate. [...] Meanwhile, the internet has grown exponentially in its reach and scope, throwing up several new and rapidly emerging challenges in the area of global internet governance that continue to remain inadequately addressed.

From the 2010 enhanced cooperation speech:

The Tunis Agenda of 2005 recognized the need for enhanced cooperation "to enable governments, on an equal footing, to carry out their roles and responsibilities, in international public policy issues pertaining to the internet" and mandated the UN Secretary-General to start the process towards Enhanced Cooperation by the first quarter of 2006. Almost five years later, we are yet to meaningfully discuss or operationalise the enhanced cooperation process. [...] In the meantime, the reach and influence of the internet on public policy issues has grown dramatically.

2. Democracy, openness, inclusiveness, transparency

A lot of the same values appear in India's two big Internet governance speeches of 2010 and 2011. Openness, inclusion, transparency are all ideals supported by the many stakeholders in Internet governance.

"Multilateral", which appears in both the 2010 and 2011 speeches, rings alarm bells for many, but unfortunately, that term appears in black and white in paragraph 29—the first paragraph about Internet governance—of the Tunis Agenda. No matter how much people object to governments like India and Brazil using the term, the governmental practice of quoting exact words and phrases from previously adopted UN documents will continue. The lesson? No word in a resolution is ever unimportant. Those weasel words agreed to late at night to get a resolution through will bite you down the line.

From the 2011 UNGA Second Committee contribution:

We believe that the governance of such an unprecedented global medium that embodies the values of democracy, pluralism, inclusion, openness and transparency should also be similarly inclusive, democratic, participatory, multilateral and transparent in nature.

From the 2010 enhanced cooperation speech:

Indeed, the Internet today is universally acknowledged as a powerful catalyst for democracy, openness, inclusion and democratic values like liberty and equality. It is therefore paradoxical that the governance of such a phenomenal global force that transcends borders and welds peoples and communities across national borders, continues to lack equitable representation, transparency and inclusiveness at the international level. It is time for global internet governance to be conducted in line with established UN principles and universally accepted tenets of multilateralism.

3. A CSTD WG to work out details of enhanced cooperation/Internet public policy body

India continues to call for CSTD to develop a roadmap for their proposed UN process on enhanced cooperation. But a year on from its 2010 enhanced cooperation speech, India acknowledges that a year wouldn't be long enough to develop such a roadmap and moves it to an 18-month timeline. My experience with the CSTD WG on improvements to the IGF suggests that an 18-month timeline for discussing the even more contentious idea of enhanced cooperation is incredibly optimistic.

From the 2011 UNGA Second Committee contribution:

In order to operationalize this proposal, India calls for the establishment of an open-ended working group under the Commission on Science and Technology for Development for drawing up the detailed terms of reference for CIRP, with a view to actualizing it within the next 18 months. We are open to the views and suggestions of all Member States, and stand ready to work with other delegations to carry forward this proposal, and thus seek to fill the serious gap in the implementation of the Tunis Agenda, by providing substance and content to the concept of Enhanced Co-operation enshrined in the Tunis Agenda.

From the 2010 enhanced cooperation speech:

We, therefore, propose that an inter-governmental working group be established under the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD), which is the designated focal point in the UN system-wide follow up to the outcomes of the WSIS. The Working Group should be mandated to prepare a report on the possible institutional design and roadmap for enhanced cooperation in consultation with all stakeholders, and asked to submit its report to the UN General Assembly in 2011. The Working Group should also take into account inputs from all international organizations including the ITU, and should recommend on the feasibility and desirability of placing the Enhanced Cooperation mechanism with an existing international organization or recommend establishing a new body for dealing with Enhanced Cooperation, along with a clear roadmap for the process.

Similarities between India's 2011 UNGA Second Committee and other processes

India's 2011 statement is also informed by processes and decisions that have taken place in other forums.

In both India's 2011 statement and the recent ITU Council decision about the Working Group on international Internet-related Public Policy Issues, Member State committees/working groups consider inputs from non-Member States. In other words, the Member States can choose to discard the input if they feel it is not relevant to their deliberations. However, before feeling outraged that the proposed CIRP wouldn't consider non-governments stakeholders as equal partners in a multistakeholder Internet, please do not forget that this isn't so different to how a number of Internet organizations currently operate. For example, the ICANN Board considers the advice of its Advisory Committees, but ultimately has to make decisions that may contradict some of the input from ICANN's various stakeholder Advisory Committees.

From the 2011 UNGA Second Committee contribution:

Links with the IGF: Recognizing the value of the Internet Governance Forum as an open, unique forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue on Internet issues, the deliberations in the IGF along with any inputs, background information and analysis it may provide, will be taken as inputs for consideration of the CIRP.

Compare this to the 2011 ITU Council resolution on Working Group on international Internet-related Public Policy Issues:

[The Working Group will] initiate and conduct open consultations with all stakeholders in an open and inclusive manner; and the output of the open consultations will be presented for consideration in deliberations of the Council Working Group.

India's suggestion in the 2011 UNGA Second Committee speech that the CIRP be funded by the UN is in keeping with India's proposal earlier this year that the IGF be funded by the UN. From the 2011 UNGA contribution:

Budget: Like other UN bodies, the CIRP should be supported by the regular budget of the United Nations. In addition, keeping in view its unique multi-stakeholder format for inclusive participation, and the need for a well-resourced Research Wing and regular meetings, a separate Fund should also be set up drawing from the domain registration fees collected by various bodies involved in the technical functioning of the Internet, especially in terms of names and addresses.

From India's contribution to the CSTD WG on improvements to the IGF:

The accepted norm worldwide is that policy forums can function independently only when they are based on public funding. Indeed, it would be unthinkable for our national policy level institutions to have private funding. In the case of the IGF, this would mean a transition to full UN funding. In addition to predictable and budgeted UN funding, voluntary contributions can be allowed, as is the practice in many UN agencies.

The future of the CIRP proposal

Will India raise its CIRP proposal at next week's CSTD WG on IGF improvements? I hope not. First, because one of the agreements between CSTD Member States in negotiating the extension of the WG was that no new material be admitted for the WG's deliberations. Only the discussions and contributions received up until the end of the second CSTD WG in February were to be considered during the WG's extension through to 2012. Introducing this CIRP proposal to the IGF WG would lead to my second reason for hoping it is not raised: it has taken up until now for the WG members to develop a reasonable level of trust amongst each other. For the new CIRP proposal to be introduced, when India was amongst the Member States who agreed not to introduce new materials, would return the WG to the levels of mutual distrust shown during the first CSTD WG meeting. And this level of mistrust would dash any hopes of reaching agreement on a report of proposed improvements for the IGF. I believe that India's intentions in the WG are sincere, and I believe that it will honour the Member States' agreement not to introduce new material to the WG.

While there is, as yet, no formal UNGA draft resolution by India on the proposal, given its past positions on Internet governance, it is highly likely that permutations of the proposal will be presented again in future. It is possible that if India doesn't feel that the UNGA is listening to its concerns, it will take them to other UN agencies that are holding Internet-related discussions. And which UN agency is holding the greatest number of Internet-related discussions over the coming few years? The ITU. Will India raise its CIRP proposal at ITU's WCIT 2012, WTPF 2013, or WSIS+10? Possibly.

If not the ITU, as the CSTD has WSIS-related outcomes as one of its activities, and given the role India proposes CSTD play in the formation of the CIRP, perhaps a variation of the CIRP proposal may turn up at CSTD or ECOSOC in 2012.

One thing we can be sure of, CIRP, or its offspring, will turn up at some UN-related forum again in the future.

UNGA Second Committee discusses Internet issues

On 26 October 2011, the UNGA Second Committee discussed three documents of interest to the Internet community as part of agenda item 16, Information and communication technologies for development:

• A/66/77-E/2011/103 Report of the Secretary-General on enhanced cooperation on public policy issues pertaining to the Internet
• A/66/67-E/2011/79 Report of the Working Group on Improvements to the Internet Governance Forum
• A/66/64-E/2011/77 Report of the Secretary-General on progress made in the implementation of and follow-up to the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society at the regional and international levels

First, a little bit of context

The Second Committee's discussion was only days before the Working Group on Improvements to the Internet Governance Forum (CSTD WG) convenes for its third meeting in Geneva, 31 October - 2 November 2011). (As a member of the CSTD WG, I'll be blogging about its activities next week, so stay tuned.)

The Committe's discussion on enhanced cooperation comes in the wake of IBSA work on Internet governance in September and earlier this month. Following an IBSA Seminar on Global Internet Governance, 1-2 September 2011, IBSA issued a set of draft recommendations on Internet governance, in which they called for a new UN body to house the Internet governance enhanced cooperation process.

The draft recommendations resulted in a flurry of discussion in the Internet governance community:

• India, Brazil and South Africa call for creation of "new global body" to control the Internet, by Milton Mueller
  
• Long discussions on the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus mailing list (see its September archives)
• Sessions at the 2011 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) at the end of September:
  
  • Critical Internet Resources main session
  • Taking Stock and the Way Forward main session
  • Workshop 10: Reflection on the Indian Proposal Towards an IGF 2.0

Following the large amount of time spent on discussing the IBSA proposal at IGF, the language used by IBSA about Internet governance in its October Tshwane Declaration (paragraphs 52-55) was significantly toned down, but still was the cause of much discussion in the Internet community.

The Second Committee's discussion on World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) follow-up took place after recent decisions by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) 2011 Council to take the lead within UNGIS on a multistakeholder WSIS+10 process, but to keep its own newly renamed Working Group on International Internet-related Public Policy Issues open to Member States only.

Note: While all workings of the Working Group on International Internet-related Public Policy Issues will remain closed to non-Member States, there is the opportunity for other Internet stakeholders to submit input as part of "open consultations" called by the WG.

Discussions at Second Committee on 26 October 2011

Below are some of the more interesting extracts from the long UN press release, with some initial reactions from me:

1. Role of UN in Internet governance

"HAIYAN QIAN, Director, Division for Public Administration and Development Management, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said that five years after the World Summit on Information Society, there was no common perspective on how to achieve enhanced cooperation on Internet-related international public policy issues. However, cooperation would be helpful on a wide range of key policy issues, including cybercrime, privacy and capacity-building, she said, adding that, although opinions differed on the most appropriate mechanisms, there was agreement on shared principles. While authority over Internet-related public policy issues was the sovereign right of States, management of the Internet should continue to follow a multi-stakeholder approach, she said, adding that consultations had reaffirmed the facilitating role of the United Nations in the relevant policymaking."

My thoughts: It's encouraging to see DESA referring to the UN's role as playing a "facilitating", rather than authoritative, role in Internet governance-related public policy issues. This is in the spirit of the multistakeholder approach to Internet governance agreed to at WSIS.

2. Information technology and the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) deadline

"YUSRA KHAN (Indonesia), speaking on behalf of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and associating himself with the Group of 77 and China, said information and communications technology was a key driver of economic and social transformation. With barely four years left to meet the Millennium Development Goals, it was important to harness effectively its full potential as a strategic tool to help in meeting development goals."

My thoughts: Will the looming 2015 MDG deadline, CSTD WG deliberations on how to better help the IGF better accomplish development goals, plus upcoming meetings like the ITU 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) and 2013 World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF) refocus Internet governance discussions in a more strongly developmental direction? The increasingly crowded calender of Internet governance related international events, while aiming to help progress issues, can paradoxically hinder progress. This is because no stakeholder group, whether they be government, civil society, business or technical, have the resources to track all activities at the exploding number of Internet governance related forums. When this happens, it's very possible that balls get dropped. Yes, one of the suggested improvements for IGF being discussed at the CSTD WG is having IGF be the lynchpin for connecting and sharing various Internet governance discussions, for the IGF Secretariat to attend other Internet governance meetings and disseminate IGF materials to all relevant parties. But to achieve this, the IGF is going to have to find a lot more funding in a world where the UN has across-the-board budget cuts, and other stakeholder groups are similarly financially stretched across competing, worthy projects.

3. The future of IGF

"FÁBIO FARIAS ( Brazil), associating himself with the Group of 77 and China, [...] Calling for more investment in broadband infrastructure, he said that in light of the Internet’s standing as a global facility, according to the World Summit, its governance should be multilateral, transparent and democratic, with the full involvement of all Governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations. The Internet Governance Forum should continue to focus on policy dialogue, on Internet governance and on creating mechanisms for greater participation by representatives of different stakeholders from developing countries, he said. It should also produce clear outputs of its discussions in order to fulfil the goal of contributing to the shaping of policies on the various actors involved in Internet governance."

My thoughts: I'm not sure about the use of "multilateral", given, within the same sentence, Brazil talks about involving stakeholders outside government as well. Brazil has been consistently supporting the need for more clear outputs in the CSTD WG, so no surprises here. Also no surprises that the UK and Sweden stated their support for leveraging the multistakeholder IGF for enhancing Internet development. For the UK and Sweden's statements, see the very bottom of the UN press release.

4. The call for a UN Committee on enhanced cooperation

"DUSHYANT SINGH (India) proposed the establishment of a new institutional mechanism within the United Nations for global Internet-related policies, to be called the United Nations Committee for Internet-Related Policies. The goal of such a mechanism would not be to control the Internet, but to ensure that the Internet was governed in an open, democratic, inclusive and participatory manner. The proposed committee would take on the task of developing international public policies to ensure coordination and coherence in cross-cutting Internet-related global issues, and addressing Internet-related developmental issues, among others. He said that his multi-ethnic, multicultural country, as a democratic society with an open economy and an abiding culture of pluralism, emphasized the importance of strengthening the Internet as a vehicle for openness, democracy, freedom of expression, human rights, diversity, inclusiveness and socio-economic growth. The governance of such an unprecedented global medium that embodied those values should be similarly inclusive, democratic, participatory, multilateral and transparent in nature, he said, emphasizing that India attached great importance to the preservation of the Internet as an unrestricted, open, and free global medium that flourished through private innovation and individual creativity. In order create the proposed committee, India called for the establishment of a working group to draw up the detailed terms, under the auspices of the Commission on Science and Technology for Development."

My thoughts: So of the IBSA countries, neither Brazil nor South Africa mentioned the enhanced cooperation body that caused so much consternation after their draft recommendations in September this year. But India still supports it. Being totally selfish, I'm hoping this proposal for yet another CSTD WG doesn't derail the CSTD WG on IGF improvements discussion next week. I also wonder how India's proposal for this new committee interacts with ITU's work on Internet public policy issues through its own Working Group on International Internet-related Public Policy Issues and its discussions on Internet policy at WCIT and WTPF. The last thing any of us need is yet another body that duplicates (even partially) the work of another existing Internet governance body or forum.

5. Critical Internet resources

"XIE XIAOWU (China), endorsing the statement made on behalf of the Group of 77 and China, [...] He stressed that States had the sovereign right to make decisions on any Internet-related public policy issues, adding that though the United Nations should play an active role in Internet governance, the principles of multilateralism, democracy, and transparency, should be respected. Efforts should also be made to include developing countries on an equal footing in the management of key Internet resources, he said, emphasizing that every State and individual was entitled to an information society that benefitted all citizens."

My thoughts: It wouldn't be an Internet governance discussion without someone referring to ICANN/IANA being based on US government contract. China's 2010 Internet white paper states that it "maintains that all countries have equal rights in participating in the administration of the fundamental international resources of the Internet, and a multilateral and transparent allocation system should be established on the basis of the current management mode, so as to allocate those resources in a rational way and to promote the balanced development of the global Internet industry." So the statement made by China at the Second Committee is merely a reaffirmation of its stance.

Where to from here?

The deadline for draft resolutions on item 16, Information and communication technologies for development, is 28 October 2011. Watch this space...