Nairobi Meeting Rejects New U.N. Oversight of Internet, for Now
NAIROBI -- A new U.N. oversight body for Internet self-regulatory organizations was rejected at the U.N. Internet Governance Meeting. Representatives of the technical community, from different governments, the private sector and non-governmental organizations questioned the value of the proposal and warned against undermining the multi-stakeholder model.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Government officials from India and Brazil backpedaled during the debate Friday, underlining the preliminary character of the IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) proposal. Indian government representative Tulika Pandey said “it is a very basic primary draft, not yet ratified by the governments. It is not yet an IBSA statement. It … has not yet been discussed with all the other stakeholders within our country.” She also tried to deflect criticism that the proposal was setting up an intergovernmental only oversight body, saying “it doesn’t state U.N. only. We still talk multi-stakeholder here."
Two problems for developing countries were that there are many venues for Internet governance. Therefore the draft IBSA document was an attempt to see if we could “come out with a mechanism, or maybe a body within the UN system or otherwise,” Pandey said.
Brazilian diplomat Romulo Neves said the main motive was to call for a discussion. “We do give an important role to participation, but we also do give a special role to legitimacy. We really have a lot of work to do to increase these two elements within the global Internet governance system.” Romulo also listed possible remedies for what the IBSA countries think is a lack of developing country participation in Internet governance: “Maybe capacity building, maybe more clear outcomes of the IGF, maybe more accountability of bodies like ICANN."
Neves and Pandey said they never would have put standardization bodies in the same pot with IGF and ICANN. Several regular IETF-participants had questioned the idea of putting standardization under a U.N. intergovernmental oversight body.
NTIA Associate Administrator Fiona Alexander said her office still wants to understand the concerns “as to why people are proposing these specific solutions, but as we read the solutions at face value, I think they are problematic for us.” Alexander pointed to ongoing work to allow governmental oversight over ICANN. The NTIA had been active in making sure that the Government Affairs Committee had an effective role with regard to the new gTLD program, Alexander said. “This is another way to actually internationalize the IANA functions contract, because the contractor, whoever it might be, follows the rules that are developed by ICANN,” Alexander said, of which the GAC was a party. NTIA is planning an open procurement for the IANA functions contract which expires Sept. 30, 2012. The IANA contract, which is the basis for the U.S. oversight over the central root zone, has been a major point of contention.