[NCUC-DISCUSS] LAC/Developing countries engagement strategies

[Rafik Dammak]

Hi Renata,

Thanks for the question. as someone from developing countries I understand
the concerns and that was an area of focus for years.

I would like to clarify some things first. For the case of NCUC,  we have
regional representatives in Executive committee and they are expected to
liaise with the members of their region and also doing outreach.  While the
GNSO councillors are more focused on policy work and there is the
geographical diversity in NCSG charter.it is probably not enough nor fully
working, and so things need to be improved to encompass the diversity of
needs.

I don't think the solution would be to focus on specific regions per se but
on working on better wider membership engagement to benefit all. There may
be some differences and specific for each region and we have to find out
how identify them efficiently.
I am not aware about specific regional effort from other groups within
GNSO, I do think that is mostly about outreach and we do that as you know.
there are what is called the regional strategy working group  for most of
the region. They are kind of cross-community groups, for example several
NCUC members and myself are members of the on for MENA region and
adjourning countries.

The idea is to make the the policy discussion more accessible and easy to
digest, sometimes we have either too much information ( long reports during
public comment) or not enough , or with a lot of jargon or details that
make it hard to grasp if you didn't follow the process etc. We got to find
the right balance, format and the yesterday call, there was some agreement
about having the regular briefing and improving the discussion in NCSG
policy call. we can experiment those changes in coming days and say how it
works. by iterations, we would reach the right solution(s) that may satisfy
most the of people. that may help to build the foundations for better
engagement.

by informing better the members, I do think they can identify what are the
topics that interest them and have impact on their region and specific
needs. it would be hard for individual councillors to  identify the needs
of a region by him/herself and s/he needs members support on that matter.
At NCSG, we advocated for the applicant support for new gTLD some years ago
and the topic is gonna be in table soon with the new working group. This is
an example where if we can give better explanation about the context,
background the members from developing regions can provide their input and
their insight and feeling more involved.

We will do more information sharing in appropriate format and manner, do
poll/consultation either formal or informal manner. On another thread I
proposed that we experiment the https://adhocracy.de/ tool again which give
the possibility to poll, track comments etc. Additional way would be to
have some communication channel (mailing list, skype channel, slack channel
etc depending on the widely used tool in that region) to ask members from
one region about their thought for specific topic. but we also need to
avoid creating silos. I would also encourage more bottom-up,
self-organizing efforts from members and councillors would be happy to help
for sure (I am volunteering to help of course :-) ). we all are volunteers
here and any help is welcome to share the workload.

Best,

Rafik

2016-08-19 0:37 GMT+09:00 Renata Aquino Ribeiro <raquino at gmail.com>:

> Hi all
>
> Just wanted to clarify a point of a question I made during the candidates
> call
>
> It is great that both NCSG and NCUC have amazing LAC representatives.
> They not only represent the region but maintain online actions
> engaging civil society in IG which are key to participating in LAC.
> A while ago there was a comment about one of the reps current address
> being in EU. I do not mind and have not heard about any LAC colleague
> that worries about this. It is more important what someone lives as
> coming from the region and doing work for it than actually living
> there. Speaking as a researcher, the few opportunities I had of doing
> work abroad were very impactful for the group and region I come from.
>
> So the point was
>
> Given the low level of participation of LAC and other developing
> regions in policymaking process at GNSO, it is important that the
> candidates keep thinking about strategies to listen to these voices.
> Specifically in LAC's case, the disengagment due to the ICANN's 2 year
> distance from the region will only worsen. Other sectors in ICANN have
> been working on ways to react to this. I have seen no reaction from
> GNSO or NCUC/NCSG.
>
> So without addressing this problem, it does not seem possible that
> there will be new engagement of volunteers in GNSO.
>
> That was just an observation.
>
> Best
>
> Renata
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