Global Internet Governance: dream or reality?

After the celebration of the UN World Summit on the Information Society, WSIS (Geneva 2003, Tunis 2005), promoted by the ITU, and the verification of its main outcome, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the global society´s sight is focused on the possibility of generating an Internet regulation capable to cross borders from one nation to other. Put it another way, as far as the Internet is a global phenomena it should be legislated from a global institution in which the decision-making processes could enable the participation of governments, private sector and civil society. However, this theorization in the field of Internet governance seems to be easier "said than done", the fact is that one year ago we attended to the, at least partially successful attempt to shut down the Internet in Egypt carried out by the national Government of Mubarak when trying to stop the social revolution taking place on the country. So, although the aim of the global population is to establish common policies to regulate the Internet on a frame of freedom of expression and self-responsibility, the reality is that still today the ones counting on true power to control the cyberspace are, on the one hand, the national governments, and, on the other, the huge Internet conglomerates.

WSIS: An attempt to democratize the Internet governance landscape.

The preparatory process toward the 2003 WSIS stated in 1998, when UN´s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) proposed it within the UN system in order to challenge to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In December 2001 the General Assembly formally authorized the summit, to be held in December 2003 (Phase 1) and November 2005 (Phase II). Actually, this was the first time that a two-part nature summit took place within the UN and it achieved an important change in the summit form in the sense that the forum´s resources could be used for a longer time and there are more chances for encouraging fruitful implementation processes. Formally speaking, the preparatory meetings for the summit taking place in 2001 (that consisted on both preparatory committee meetings -prepcoms- and regional meetings) served to gather input from around the world and to prepare the documents that would be adopted in 2003. In fact, the summit itself is a ceremony of ratification in which heads of state make speeches and ratify the collective documents that would be adopted after the event. At this point it is interesting to highlight that WISIS formalized the role of civil society to an unprecedented level by creating an official "civil society bureau" that held formal meetings with the bureaus for governments and the private sector. Later on, five years after the summit there is a conference to assess the progress made toward implementing the summit plans.

As we have mentioned before, one of the main WSIS´s aims was to create a new global Internet governance regime in which the powerful ICANN could acquire a less monopolistic role to play. Created in 1998 as a private, U.S.- based corporation under the sole political authority of the United States, ICANN constitutes a nascent global governance regime for the Internet. This institution is unpopular because of its perceived violation of sovereignty through its control of the Internet´s globally-shared core resources. China, South Africa, Brazil, and most Arab States, in an alliance with the ITU, successfully initiated a process to review and possibly change the ICANN regime. This way, between the three classes of outcomes that the summit produced, significant policy action, significant policy inaction and a large set of ambiguous outcomes, taking part in the first class we find both the Internet Governance Forum, that is discussed in greater detail below, and the Digital solidarity fund, which consists on a mechanism to address issues commonly known as the "digital divide" by transferring wealth from the rich countries to the poor ones. These two effective policy-initiatives are the best proofs to conclude that the UN´s summits can make a difference in the sense that they present an opportunity structure that, when combined with advocacy and well -fitting policy proposals, can lead to a real change. (1. Klein H. (2004). Understanding WISIS: An Institutional Analysis of the UN World Summit on the Information Society. Volume 1, Number 3-4)

However, on an attempt to reflect some of the critics made to WISIS and its pretended multistakeholder nature we can attach the idea that, although civil society (mainly represented by NGOs) was supposed to reach the same participatory level than private sector and governments, some details point out that while a large number of NGOs and other civil society actors get involved within the event and created effective mechanisms for lobbying and thematic exchange, they also had to face serious obstacles in accessing the summit stage and in participating meaningfully, particularly with regards to accreditation, funding and exclusion from negotiations. Furthermore, the requirements for receiving accreditation for the WSIS process were geared towards formal NGOs and failed to consider the structural background of those civil society actors that are organised as loose grassroots groups, non-hierarchical networks and temporary coalitions. In addition, several groups, such as Reporters Sans Frontiers and Tunisian Human rights groups, were not allowed to participate at all. Financially, effective participation in WSIS preparatory conferences involved covering flight tickets and two weeks of hotel accommodation, food and drinks in an expensive Swiss city -several times a year. Little funding was provided for civil society delegates by the WSIS organisers. Again, only larger NGOs, which could mobilise sufficient funds could cope with this restriction. Finally, and despite the initial promises by summit organisers, the new non-governmental stakeholders were reduced to the status of "observers" who were allowed to attend only "public" sessions and who were excluded from actual decision-making processes and spaces. Only the Working Group on the Internet Governance (WIGIG) came close to a true multi-stakeholder design. (2. Hintz, A.,& Milan, S.(2009), "At the margins of Internet governance: grassroots tech groups and communication policy". International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 5: 1&2, pp. 23-38 )