Fwd: Charter drafts - and the related process so far

[Kathy Kleiman]

Mine are in too!
Kathy

> 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
>>
>>
>>