ITU Council sways back toward member states in final text

The ITU’s annual decision making session closed this week with strong disagreement and a few flaring tempers as the organization continued to struggle with the impact of the Internet on itself.

The end result of 11 days of talk, apart from a widening gulf between Western, technologically advanced countries and mostly Middle Eastern, less advanced nations, was a last-minute sway toward member states and a move backwards from the more open process that the ITU started to embrace at its Plenipotentiary one year ago.

As we reported earlier this week, the decision to turn a “Dedicated Group” that reviews “Internet-related public policy issues” into a more formal Working Group led to days of disagreement in Geneva as countries argued over whether non-governments should be admitted to discussions and even allowed to provide input.

Ultimately, the text provided to the final Plenary session followed the text created at the Plenipotentiary last year that stated the Working Group would be made up only of member states but that there would be open consultations and the working group would “consider the output” of those consultations.

The fat lady warms her throat

As the session moved into the final Plenary session however, there was a strong push back on the wording from those that wished to give governments more control over the process. Rather than solidify the results of the Plenipotentiary, a number of countries, sought to pull the Working Group back into the inter-governmental model by questioning the need to hold open consultations.

There were less than harmonious moments. | Photo: ITU

The desire is understandable – it is very much harder to close an open process than to open a closed processes – but the determined effort to go back on wording agreed a year ago and fought over again the previous 10 days caused tempers to flare. At least one formal statement from Western governments arguing against the final resolutions are expected– a strong symbol of discontent within the ITU.

The end result of the argument may appear inconsequential – it comprises largely of the term “as appropriate” inserted into the final resolutions in relation to the open consultations. However, the inclusion of the term is highly significant as it implies that open consultations need not be required in the discussion of Internet policies, and it means that those opposed to open consultations can start a discussion on whether they are appropriate in any given context.

Likewise, rather than “consider” the results of the open consultations, now the output of the open consultations “will be presented for consideration in the deliberations of the Council Working Group” - providing an extra step’s removal from the process and so pushing non-governments further from the process.

The wording will not help the relationship between the ITU and Internet organizations, both of whom had tentatively started to address one another following the Plenipotentiary last year where the ITU finally recognized the organizations’ expertise after more a decade of managing the extraordinary explosion in the global Internet.

It is also a step backwards from what Western governments saw as a slow but largely productive process of evolution for the ITU into the Internet era. And it will serve as a worrying indication of what may follow at the next two ITU Councils in 2012 and 2013 until the 2014 Plenipotentiary in Busan, South Korea.

Secretary-General Hamadoun Toure addresses the room. | Photo: ITU

Going round in four-year circles

Another main issue under discussion when it came to the Internet was discussion surrounding a meeting in 2013 that would discuss Internet governance.

There was a concerted effort to hold the meeting, despite subject and budgetary concerns, and to ensure that the meeting was a “forum” to give it some official weight. There was push back but again the inter-governmental voices prevailed.

The World Telecommunication Policy Forum (WTPF) will take place in Geneva in mid-2013, be linked with the WSIS Forum, and focus on ITU resolutions 101, 102 and 133 – all the key Internet texts agreed at the Guadalajara Plenipotentiary.

The intent is clear – the ITU Council and Working Group on International Internet-related Public Policy Issues will work at scaling back the move toward a more open, multi-stakeholder model and then using the 2013 WTPF to redraw the resolutions that incorporated Internet organizations into the ITU’s processes, with the ultimate aim of having those resolutions edited in Busan.

The WTPF cannot produce binding, regulatory outcomes but it will produce reports and provide consensus opinions that will then be used to inform the Plenipotentiary discussions.

From the perspective of the Internet organizations that have viewed the ITU with anything from suspicion to contempt, this will be a worrying development.

It will also create an intriguing decision point for Internet organizations. The WTPF is open to ITU sector members to provide formal input and papers, so Internet organizations will need to decide whether to become (or remain) sector members in order to have an influence or to refuse to provide the organization with the additional credibility and refuse to acknowledge the ITU by signing up.

So why the step backwards?

It may seem unusual for an organization like the ITU to step back from decisions reach over a punishing three-week meeting held a year ago, but the reason is the different dynamics of an ITU Plenipotentiary against an ITU Council.

The ITU Plenipotentiary, held every four years, brings together almost all 193 countries of the world. The ITU Council on the other hand meets every year in between Plenipotentiaries and contains a subset of 48 member states.

343 participants from 48 member states, plus 40 observers attended. | Photo: ITU

Due to the weighting of the Council members and the breaking up member states into five different regions, Western nations (which are typically also more technologically advanced) have less influence at the Council than at the Plenipotentiary.

There are, for example, 13 seats for Africa and 13 for Asia and Australasia at the ITU Council but only 8 for Western Europe and 9 for the Americas – which includes both North and South America.

As a result, and due to the a range of global political factors, there is more of an inter-governmental bias in the current ITU Council than at the Plenipotentiary. And that accounts for the change in emphasis and even the effort to push back on agreed texts.

The more open, multi-stakeholder process is also a comparatively new concept in government circles and has not reached far beyond Western nations. On top of that, much of the Internet infrastructure, including many of its key players, and the Internet organizations themselves are based in and around Western nations, most notably in the United States.

This concentration of Internet companies in English-speaking Western countries makes those countries more powerful in terms of their message on the global stage, but less powerful in a defined and closed group of countries. All this eventually led to a step back from the text agreed by the ITU last year.

The global political complexity surrounding the Internet shows no signs of abating.