[Chapter-delegates] ITU conferences

[Veni Markovski]

Well said, Nabil,
And thank you, Alejandro. To respond to your question -

To us, as a chapter, the big issue two years ago (and perhaps today?) 
was (is?) the lack of desire from ISOC HQ to support the chapters' 
ITU-related activities. I am putting the questions in brackets, as I am 
not sure if ISOC has supported any chapter's representative to go to 
Dubai for the WCIT, or is planning to support anyone in the coming 
months to help their governments with expertise. I saw that Lynn 
mentioned in her New Year's wishes that

"A recent example was the U.N. World Conference on
International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai,
where ISOC staff and members played a critical role",

So i guess ISOC might have helped some, but lacking other information, I 
cannot be certain.

Here's an example, though, what treatment three chapters - ISOC Armenia, 
Bulgaria and Poland asked ISOC.org got in 2011, when asking for a very 
small grant, co-funding in fact, related to the ITU. I would be happy to 
get information that ISOC has changed its position, and has decided to 
support chapters in their efforts to educate governments around the 
globe in Internet-related matters. My own observations from the WCIT and 
other ITU-related events, is that governments need a lot of education, 
and the chapters are the perfect organizations to provide it. If we 
don't act today, in 2014 people will be even more concerned about what 
the ITU is doing, and will have even less opportunities to help 
positively to their governments' efforts.

The response was, and I quote:

"In reviewing your application, we felt that your project was very
ambitious in scope and suggest that you target your activities to
national processes."


You can judge on your own if the project was "very ambitious", by 
reading what our colleagues sent to ISOC:

"start quote
*--- background information:*
October 2010 marked the end of a 4-year cycle of the ITU, the UN body 
dealing with telecommunications, and recently with ICT.
 From October 22, 2010, the ITU is in a new situation. It has a clear 
mandate to work with the relevant Internet organizations, which includes 
also the ISOC chapters.
At the October meeting, the ITU managed to accept updated resolutions 
101, 102, 133 and a new one, WGPL/8. They all urge the ITU to 
collaborate and coordinate its efforts with the Internet organizations. 
But this alone does not mean the ITU has "surrendered" to these 
organizations1.The accepted resolutions at the ITU Plenipotentiary 
meeting (PP10) are aimed at a number of Internet-related issues.
(Aside of the above mentioned resolutions, see also these articles from 
the (Tunis Agenda2): 29, 35, 68, which provide the bases for the ITU 
involvement, and were used in the PP-10 resolutions.)
These resolutions answer the question WHY ISOC and the ISOC chapters 
should care about the developments in the ITU policies, having to deal 
with the Internet.
But the ITU resolutions are only part of the task, and there's more to 
be done by the Internet-related3 organizations -- they should a) provide 
information documents to the ITU, b) provide documents to governments, 
to be used in their work at the ITU, and c) support the organization of 
workshops, seminars, tutorials and other forms of education for ITU members.
This is exactly what the three ISOC chapters - ISOC-Bulgaria, 
ISOC-Armenia, ISOC-Poland - that apply with this joint proposal have 
agreed to do.
Without a broader effort to reach to the ITU member states, the above 
mentioned resolutions will not be used for the good of the Internet, and 
the current model of the Internet4 instead of being improved, most 
probably will be harmed.
Further, there are still proposals, suggesting the need for a new, 
alternative internet (with small "i"), which -- when built -- would be 
closely controlled by the governments5. Such an approach continues to 
need to be addressed, because it leads towards neglecting the 
achievements of the Internet, including its current multistakeholder 
governance model, where the governments are just equal partners with 
everyone else6.

*--- and Objectives:*
There are three main objectives of the project :
. Contribute constructively to the work of the ITU member states and 
sector members;
. Engage ISOC and the ISOC chapters more actively in the discussions at 
the ITU about the way the Internet is developing;
. Provide feedback from ITU meetings to the broader Internet community.
Information from the ITU will provide interested parties and members of 
the current project proposal with a stronger empirical basis to make 
policy assessments; inputs into research and policy development from the 
project proposal will provide the ITU members with the essential 
perspective of the people who created, developed, and continue to 
contribute to the innovative nature of the Internet.
Improving the relationship between businesses, civil society and the ITU 
member states will lead to better-informed and more widely accepted 
policy frameworks.
The success of this approach was demonstrated during the PP-10, and 
results in the texts of the Internet-related resolutions.


____
1) See for example the February 14 2001 Xinhua interview 
<http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/business/2011-02/14/c_13730415.htm> 
by Houlin Zhao, ITU deputy SG on IPv4/IPv6.
2) Tunis Agenda: http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/6rev1.html
3) For the purpose of this document, these are businesses, civil 
society, governments, Internet users, who are engaged in ensuring the 
Internet works 24x7.
4) We have accepted the current model as built on the basis of equal 
access, network neutrality, open standards, and with full participation 
of all stakeholders.
5) See for example the joint proposa 
<http://www.itu.int/md/meetingdoc.asp?lang=en&parent=S10-RDG-C-0003>l 
from Syria and Saudi Arabia (password required).
6) See for example this document 
<http://isocbg.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/bg-itu/> , presented to the ITU 
Plenipot 2010 by the government of Bulgaria, which quotes and discusses 
some of the wrong assumptions about the Internet. There are more such 
assumptions, and many of them are in documents already submitted to the 
ITU for discussions.

end quote"

We actually managed to send several people, with our own resources, to 
the WCIT, without any help from ISOC. I wouldn't claim their 
contributions as critical, but they did what they could, talked to 
governments, others, and tried to bring awareness of the issues 
discussed. Julia herself managed to come, too.


-- 

Best,
Veni Markovski
http://www.veni.com
https://www.facebook.com/venimarkovski
https://twitter.com/veni

The opinions expressed above are those of the
author, not of any organizations, associated
with or related to him in any given way.

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