[WSIS CS-Plenary] Today's Subcommittee A meeting

[Jeanette Hofmann]

Hi,

as I just learned from Rik, I am supposed to give an overview on the 
meeting of Subcommittee A. While I took some notes, they are not half as 
systematic as those Rik provided on yesterday's plenary meeting. 
Frankly, I would be more sorry about this if anything of great relevance
had happened in this meeting.
Today's meeting was devoted to general comments on the WGIG report. The
governments spoke for a bit more than two hours. None of the statements 
was surprising. Most governments reiterated what they have said all 
along. The perhaps nicest statement came from Norway. While the delegate 
was talking I considered asking him to join the civil society Internet 
Governance caucus :-)

Here are my notes from the Norway statement:

Norway: overarching principle, allow the Internet to grow, need to 
ensure stability, appreciate groups consensus; welcome that IG 
definition is not only about root zone but also security, crime, 
capacity building, human rights.
There is no global forum for dialogue, need for new model, merits ne 
forms of institutional coordination. Need for forum with full 
involvement, governments, private sector, civil society; should be 
linked to UN, allows for meaningful participation of all, incl. 
development areas.
Forum should be designed lightweight, efficient,
IG should build on existing strctures, but with stronger recogniztion of 
public policy issues; welcome working group to recognize freedom of 
expression as one of the most important public policy issues!

China commented almost exclusively, and in a very emotional way, on 
yesterday's plenary discussion on the accredition of the chinese human 
rights group.
The US statement followed the Chinese statement. It didn't respond to 
the Chinese intervention. It was fairly general and didn't contribute 
anyting concrete.

Civil society used its 15 min. time slot today for 5 interventions. Adam 
has already posted them. We will have another 15 minutes, which we can 
divide between Thursday and Friday. We have no speaking time left for 
tomorrow.

 From what we picked up today, the whole week will be devoted to 
statements on several parts of the WGIG report. The actual drafting will 
not start before the weekend. Amb. Khan asked all stakeholders to 
deliver in the coming days written text ("language") for the final Tunis 
document. In other words, the time for comments is more or less over. We 
have to draft input now for the final documents.

The Internet Governance caucus thus asks all other working groups and 
caucuses to deliver text that shall be included in our contribution to
the Tunisia documents. The basis for our contributions should be the 
civil society position paper on the WGIG report.
This position paper can be found here:

http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs2/pc3/contributions/co55.doc

To conclude, what we have to do in the following days is to choose 
speakers and topics for the second speaking slot, and to draft text for 
our contribution for the final documents.

Hopefully, I didn't forget too much and I don't sound too confused,
jeanette