[NCUC-DISCUSS] My Statement for EC Africa Election

[Lorin Bih]

Dear All, I wish tothank Age Care Foundation for nominating me for the EC Africa position. Igladly accept standing in for the elections and wish the other candidates successesas we summit ourselves for service. Below is my statement:

1. Why doyou want to serve on the EC?

My firsteffective contact with Internet Governance was at the Netmundial meeting inBrazil. This contact greatly exposed me and this is why I believe that themedical profession need to be better involved in the process of shaping thegovernance structure of the internet so as to participate effectively and to bringthe medical dimension to the deliberations in the best interest of the healthsector as a whole and those of their clients who most often can’t stand up forthemselves. For this, serving on the NCUC EC will permit me to learn faster andunderstand the internet governance structure better so I can become a betteradvocate for human rights especially the right to Credible information, theright to privacy given that health care provision over the internet is gettingmore and more important.  

Please, I stronglywish to bring to the table the needs of the marginalised population from Africaand especially that of the rural poor with regards to access to reliable andaffordable Internet. When will I Have access to internet let alone good speedinternet when rendering health care to the rural population?  Being in the EC of NCUC will give me theunique opportunity to attend to these problems based on experience. 

I have theadded advantage of being perfectly bilingual speaking and writing French andEnglish fluently. This will enable me to follow most discussions first hand andequally reach out, listen to and communicate with both the English speakingcountries and the French speaking countries of Africa in a language they bestunderstand.   

2. Provide abrief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevantto serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the relevance of your personaland professional experience to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee, andidentify any conflicts of interests you might have.

I see myselfas a good communicator and a consensus builder. I am a perfectly bilingualyoung female ophthalmologist with my feet straddled between two countriesCameroun and Nigeria. I am a Camerounian by birth and a Nigerian by Marriage. Iam from Bamenda (English speaking) I lived all my childhood in French speakingBafoussam where I studied in a French school to have a baccalaureate. I thenpursued my education in English in the University of Calabar teaching hospitalin Nigeria from where I graduated in 2002 with and MBBCH. I am anophthalmologist with the West African college of Surgeons. I am the ProgramManager of the Cross River State Eye Care Program where we collaborate withSightsavers a British non-governmental organization providing free eye careservices, to hard to reach communities in Cross River state. I am also thepresident of the Medical Women Association of Nigeria Cross River State Branch(MWAN- CR) an affiliate of the Medical Women International Association (MWIA). 

I also serveas the Programmes Coordinator of Age Care Foundation Nigeria a member of ConsumerInternational, a non-profit organization, with a vision of building a sustainedhuman empowerment rights in alliance with Consumer International and inconsonance with global charter for consumers’ right. 

I am amember of the Nigerian coalition for affordable internet.

My interestin the Internet governance took me to Brazil and while there even as a firsttimer I contributed effectively and my submission led to the amendment ofNetmundial outcome Document taking into consideration the right of thehandicapped. In section one, the internet governance principals, under the humanrights. I noticed that though in Paragraph 6, persons with disabilities weretaken into consideration they were in actual sense not included in the decisionmaking process and this was obvious from the fact that the proceedings did not providefor those with hearing difficulties, those vision impairment, hearing loss andin fact those with any other forms of serious physical disabilities. For these peoplea well structured and organised internet platform could indeed provide themwith a second chance to attain their full potentials in life. In that samespirit I want to advocate even more for NCUC. Above all, my passion for serviceis the most important thing I bring to the table. 

3. The ECperforms several functional responsibilities for the Constituency.  Whatlevel of time commitment can you bring to your EC role on a weekly and overallbasis?  Describe any concerns or limitations on your ability to attendonline meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN Meetings in person. 

I am basedin Africa, I shall be able to give at least fourteen hours per week and more whenneeded to carry out EC tasks. I have no personal limitations on my ability toattend online meetings but I must emphasise here the problem of connectivity thatundermines Africa and more importantly the rural Africa. If funded I am alwaysavailable to attend ICANN Meetings in person.

4.Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep membersapprised of your EC-related activities?

As a new timerI will follow-up as a fast learner to engage with current members and one thingthat I am personally motivated to do is by basing discussion and decisions ontangible evidence as opposed to “gut feeling” or anecdotal examples, it isexpected that this non-exhaustive list of improvements may be seen in thepolicy development processes (PDP).

·        IssueIdentification/Scoping/Report: The GNSO is able to consider the scope of impact to affected parties inprioritizing its policy development efforts; the most critical and impactfulissues can be prioritized in the queue to be resolved. This is especiallyimportant when considering that community volunteers and staff support havelimited capacity, as well as the length of PDP efforts.

·        Working Group: The EC deliberations anddevelopment of recommendations should be improved by creating right-sizedsolutions to the identified issues.

·        Post-Implementation: The implementation of thepolicy can be evaluated to determine its level of effectiveness. With thatinformation, the community can make informed decisions about allowing a policyto remain as it is, make modifications, or replace a policy entirely.

5. How doyou foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areasof ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why? 

I see NCUC as the major driving force of the Internet governance architecture.This is the only time when the individual rights can be effectively protected. Isee NCUC as the watch dogs empowered with the right teeth to bite whoeverattempts to hijack this common good: the Internet. 

The leasing of health-related TLDs to registrars,who in turn sell domain names to individuals and organizations, is taking avariety of forms, but most are being sold off in open auctions.  A singleorganization, Donuts Inc., is currently in the running for 11 of these TLDs,including .health. This raises concerns that websites with health-related TLDscould spread misinformation or sell unproven medical products, with theimprimatur of a seemingly official domain name. "It is self-evidentlyproblematic to propound online scientifically unfounded information, or biasedinformation, in an era where customers and patients are increasingly using theInternet as their primary source for health information. Although there areobjections from the World Health Association (WHO), World Medical Association,European Commission, International Medical Informatics Association, and theindependent ombudsperson who oversees ICANN's activities.

Presently, ICANN is not capable of enforcing thepolicies that prevent domain name users from violating laws and regulations. Thisis the aspect of ICANN I would like done differently either by collaboratingwith the appropriate enforcement agencies or otherwise. Likewise Health is asensitive area and should be treated with extreme care. The .health domain namesshould be strictly regulated so as to provide reliable information whilerespecting the right to privacy. 

I shall contribute to the enhancement of NCUC'srole through networking beyond ICANN, through lobbying for the creation of new"rules and guidelines, establishing decision making processes,transparency policies, and certification/accreditation processes to create asubset of easily identifiable and protected health-related domains for thepublic interest." A specific suggestion is to make .health, and relatedTLDs, "sponsored" top-level domain names, similar to .aero and .post,which have stronger restrictions on use and are accountable to the specificindustries they serve.


Yours sincerely, 
Lorin Ekpe

 


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