Fwd: Charter drafts - and the related process so far

[Carlos Afonso]

I've just sent mine as well, but Norbert's is far better! :)

[]s fraternos

--c.a.

Norbert Klein wrote:
> FYI
>
> Norbert Klein
>
> =
>
> ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
> Subject: Charter drafts - and the related process so far
> Date: Friday, 24 July 2009 (Cambodia time - USA: 23 July)
> From: Norbert Klein <nhklein at gmx.net>
> To: gnso-stakeholder-charters at icann.org
>
> Though I have seen that many voices from different parts of the world have
> sent in their support for the original proposal, prepared within the
> Non-Commercial Users Constituency in an intensive process of online and
> international Internet communication, in which we received an overwhelming –
> an almost unanimous consensus – I thought it might not be important to state
> this again.
>
> But I write because I am utterly surprised that – in spite of this process of
> wide and open consultation – the result of this process was sidelined so far.
> The litany of “bottom-up consensus building,” which is in so many official
> ICANN statements, became  more and more hollow over the years.
>
> I say so as a person who was involved in the pre-ICANN efforts – the 1998
> Singapore meeting - and since 1999 – Santiago de Chile – I fairly regularly
> did participate in ICANN affairs, the “ICANN fellowship” as I felt it was, in
> the early years – learning a lot for my efforts to start the first Internet
> connection in Cambodia, creating the country code .kh in 1996 and
> administering it until 1998, and continuing to be involved in the UNICODE
> codification of the Khmer script and then the localization of software etc.
>
> Over the years, our situation seemed to get more and more into the background
> of the ICANN dynamics – but WSIS 1 and 2 were an encouragement, when the
> Declaration of Principles of WSIS 1  said:
>
> “We, the representatives of the peoples of the world, assembled in Geneva from
> 10-12 December 2003 for the first phase of the World Summit on the
> Information Society, declare our common desire and commitment to build a
> people-centered, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society,
> where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and
> knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their
> full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their
> quality of life, premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of
> the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal
> Declaration of Human Rights.”
>
> Instead of a “people-centered, inclusive and development-oriented Information
> Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and
> knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their
> full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their
> quality of life,”  I do not see much of this vision in ICANN's efforts to
> secure the stability and security of the network.
>
> This vision has been held up especially in the Non-Commercial Users
> Constituency and in the At-Large structures, where the people-centered,
> inclusive activities have their representation, and where they hope to be
> supported, so that the purposes and principles of the UN Declaration of Human
> Rights will be kept central in our operations.
>
> The details for this are well stated in what the Non-Commercial Users
> Constituency has elaborated and presented before – as the result of a wide
> participatory process. I do not need to repeat it – I only hope that the
> members of the ICANN Board will really take note of this and not pass quickly
> to some “pragmatic” suggestions which are not based on the principles on
> which we started to cooperate.
>
> I want, however, highlight one aspect where I see a grave failure in the
> process, where the Non-Commercial Users Constituency – on the basis of what
> the organizations and persons here cooperating – thought to be important. We
> raised it repeatedly, but we remained without an answer. When the discussions
> about new gTLD touched on the restrictions to be considered, the NCUC raised
> the question that such restrictions must be included against efforts to erode
> the fundamental rights (as stated above) - the protection of rights for this
> new developments. Many of us live in environments where this is crucial.
> Instead the problem of “generally accepted legal norms of morality and public
> order” became more prominent, and the repeated official requests by the NCUC
> Chair to the staff, how the staff identifies these principles,
> supposedly “recognized under international principles of law,” did never get
> an official response.
>
> Many of those who are not part of the larger technical or economic bodies
> cooperating in ICANN, but who live somewhere “on the periphery,” need that
> ICANN finds again ways to live up to the “bottom-up principle” for our social
> development and – in some cases – for our survival.
>
> The Non-Commercial Users Constituency, built up from the bottom, is an
> important instrument for this. The new move I read a while ago, that a WIPO
> initiative is accepted as the basis for a revision of the UDRP – without
> considering immediately what this means in terms of a bottom-up process – is
> a sign that the fundamental orientation of ICANN – from the point of view of
> its world wide membership – not from those who control it – remains a most
> important task. The non-commercial and the at-large users are the most
> important basis for giving bottom-up orientation.
>
>
> Norbert Klein
>
>
> Open Institute
> Phnom Penh/Cambodia
> Member of the NCUC
>
>