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By
Makane Faye, 21 February 2006
At the
Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society
(WSIS), delegates decided to maintain existing arrangements
for Internet Governance and stressed the need for a transparent,
democratic, and multilateral process with the participation
of government, private sector, civil society and international
organizations. In this regard, the Summit invited UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan to convene by the second quarter of 2006 a new
forum, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), to act
as a neutral process for multi-stakeholder dialogue on Internet
policy issues.
Initial
consultations on the establishment of the IGF were held in
Geneva from 16-17 February 2006. 300 participants representing
government, civil society, private sector and international
organizations met to discuss the IGF''s scope of work, themes
and priorities, as well as aspects relating to its structure
and functioning.
Unfortunately,
Africa’s participation at the consultations was limited,
with only a few countries and two civil society organizations
attending. Hence, in order to bridge the gap caused by the
absence of African delegates, and upon the request from Ghana,
which serves as Chair of the African Ministerial Committee
on Information and Communication Technology (ICT), ECA played
a key role among African delegates and held online consultations
with key African stakeholders in order to prepare a contribution
and make a statement on behalf of the continent.
As there
was still no agreement on some key issues on the last day
of the meeting, principally on the governance structure of
the IGF and the priority areas to be covered, the Chairman
of the consultations and Secretary-General''s Special Advisor
for WSIS, Mr. Nitin Desai, gave stakeholders up to 27 February
2006 to make proposals on the following issues: (i) The name
and possible composition of the multi stakeholder management
group; and, (ii) The possible priority themes to be dealt
with by the IGF. After that date, the Chairman will submit
his report to the Secretary-General and make recommendations
on the various aspects of the IGF.
Participants
in the consultations voiced their concerns on the difficulties
involved in bringing participants from developing countries
to international meetings related to Internet Governance (IG).
Accordingly, it was accepted that the IGF process be decentralized
at the regional level, with the UN Regional Commissions taking
the lead in their respective regions. In this context Mr.
Desai underlined the key role of the Regional Commissions
in the WSIS process and made special mention of the role of
the ECA. Mr. Desai further stated “My own feeling
is that listening to people here, it will not be a bad idea
if one were to suggest -- in fact, I would suggest, to the
U.N. -- that they may wish to get in touch with the regional
commissions to see how, within the resources that the regional
commissions have, they could start thinking about what sort
of regional contribution they could make to this process.
Of course, it''s very difficult till they know what the themes
are, but at least one can start getting them to think about
how they would do it. And we are happy that the ECA is here,
and they should start giving thought to it straight away and
communicate with their fellow regional commissions in this
area.”
In view
of the above statement, an African governance structure will
be established to lead African participation in the IGF process
and may fall under the Bureau of the African Ministerial Committee
on ICT, under the auspices of the African Union and the technical
coordination of ECA. ECA will also revive the IG online discussion
list to target key stakeholders in the process.
The first
meeting of the IGF will be held during the last week of October
2006 in Athens. Since a lack of capacity is considered to
be the major obstacle hindering African policymakers’
participation in the IG process, ECA will develop a curriculum
and organize training courses on this topic for regional policymakers.
The first course is expected to be hosted by the Government
of Rwanda during the first week of May 2006 in Kigali, with
the support of UNDESA and Industry Canada. The same course
will be available online at ECA’s African Virtual Learning
Academy at www.uneca.org/itca/vlac.
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