[Chapter-delegates] Call with Chapters in advance of the ITU Plenipotentiary 2018 (18 Oct, 10:00 and 20:00 UTC)

[Richard Hill]

Please see below.


Thanks and best,

Richard

 

From: Alejandro Pisanty [mailto:apisanty at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2018 18:32
To: Richard Hill
Cc: Elizabeth Oluoch; ISOC Chapter Delegates
Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Call with Chapters in advance of the ITU Plenipotentiary 2018 (18 Oct, 10:00 and 20:00 UTC)

 

Richard,

 

SNIP

 

The first type of violation experienced in large ITU conferences is the schedule. There is an evident sigh when the first meeting after dinner is called. It goes from then on. 

 

>RH: I’m not sure what you mean here. Perhaps the fact that, towards the end of conference, meetings are called at night? That’s actually a common feature of many intergovernmental negotiations, it is not just ITU. 

 

The other type of egregious violation consists of suddenly superseding the supposedly tidy, long rules-compliant process of building up text for resolutions through national and regional preparatory processes to drafting and negotiating text on the fly. 

 

>RH: That’s not a violation of the rules. On the contrary, it is exactly what is foreseen in the rules: written inputs are just that, inputs, and the output text is negotiated during meetings, taking into account not just the written inputs, but also the verbal comments from the people present at the meeting.

 

The third thing ISOC representatives attending the Plenipot should be wary of is of consultants who appear to be friendly to the Internet but are actually doing hack jobs for operators and governments; and sometimes both, as some operators are owned by governments or closely allied. This gets to the point of becoming a fifth column against the long-term evolution of a free, open Internet for all. Fortunately just watching who they sit with over sessions - in the middle of enfranchised participants, 

 

>RH: many countries allow non-state actors to sit in national delegations.

 

while ISOC is given one chair in the last table at the end of the room

 

>RH: indeed non-state participants are seated at the back of the room, behind the states whose name starts with the letter Z.  But nothing prevents ISOC members from asking to be part of a national delegation, and indeed some people do that.

 

- is enough to unmask them.

 

>RH: The fact that a person is sitting in a national delegation does not imply that the person holds any particular position. Further, most national delegations do not allow non-government people to speak, so such persons are in fact observers with fewer rights than the people sitting in the ISOC delegation, since the members of the ISOC delegation can ask to speak.

 

SNIP

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