[At-Large] Monika Ermert report from ITU Plenipot

[Joly MacFie]

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/10/27/un-and-internet-governance-next-four-years-better-cooperation-or-bigger-role/

The whole package [All final acts will be available
here<http://confsynch.itu.int/s/2010/pp/apps/final_acts/E/web/flipviewerxpress.html>
> ] [Clarification: The ITU has now said the documents will be freely
> accessible to the general public when ready in publication form, i.e., by
> end February 2011] of internet-related resolutions (Resolutions 101, 102,
> 133 and a new resolution on the new internet protocol, or IPv6) was passed
> at a late hour on Thursday night, close to the end of the three-week meeting
> and it needed re-elected ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Touré’s urgent
> appeal for a compromise. For days, delegations mainly from the Arab world
> and from Russia had fought against a reference to the self-regulatory
> organisations like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
> (ICANN), the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), the Internet Engineering
> Task Force, the Internet Society and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in
> the internet resolutions.

 Proposals to transform ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee (GAC) into an
> “international committee, or create an (ITU) Council working group (…) with
> powers of supervision over ICANN,” or a “progressive cooperation agreement
> between ITU and ICANN and define a mechanism to increase the participation
> of governments” were all struck from the text. Also struck earlier in the
> Guadalajara meeting was a Russian proposal to integrate the Internet
> Governance Forum (IGF) whose future is on the agenda of the UN General
> Assembly this week. The IGF was an outcropping of the 2003-2005 ITU-led
> World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

 How, asked Syrian delegate Nabil Kisrawi, can an intergovernmental UN
> organisation like the ITU be considered to be on equal footing with a
> California-based private company like ICANN? An explanation of the concerns
> of the Arab countries came from the Saudi delegation. Some people just did
> not want the names of ICANN and the other self-regulatory bodies in the
> resolutions because, “we think that in fact there’s a risk of undermining
> the role of the ITU in the internet.” All countries are in favour of having
> ICANN work under international and not under California law, the Saudi
> delegation said.

 Touré’s last-minute compromise for the internet resolutions asked at least
> for “reciprocity” in the cooperative efforts of the ITU, ICANN and the other
> internet management organisations, and this formula is now part of all four
> internet-related resolutions of the ITU work plan for 2012-2015.




Non-governmental organisations have criticised the ITU for many years and
> the internet self-regulatory bodies looked at the ITU as interested in
> “taking over.” With the formal acknowledgement of private domain regulator
> ICANN, the IP-address allocating RIRs, the Internet Engineering Task Force
> and the World Wide Web Consortium – standardisation organisations for the
> internet protocol and the Web respectively – in its plenipotentiary
> documents, the ITU might be seen as giving up its claim as sole
> representative for future networks. But how much will the ITU give up?


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