What I saw
at the 2018 Plenipot and the impact that politicalization of resolutions has on their success or
failure.
This
note was originally written to accompany the Washington DC Internet Society
event, Plenipot 2018 Debrief: The role and impact of
civil society, https://isoc-dc.org/plenipot-2018-debrief-role-impact-civil-society/.
It was expanded for this article to cover more areas.
Every
four years, ITU member states meet at a three-week conference, the
Plenipotentiary (or Plenipot), to set the priorities
of the organization for the next period and elect its top five leadership
positions. The conclusions of these negotiations determine the trajectory of
policy and standards development on issues that impact the future of the
Internet.
The
Plenipot--a three-week conference which takes
place every four years--is the most important event in the ITU's
calendar. Here, the national governments which make up the ITU's membership agree
on the ITU's Strategic Plan 2020-2023, elect a number of senior positions
within the organization, and consider revisions to core ITU documents, such as
the Constitution and Convention of the ITU and the ITU???s Resolutions, which set
out the mandates of the various ITU bodies. The conclusions of these
negotiations determine the trajectory of policy and standards development on
issues that impact the future of the Internet. The Plenipot
took place this year in Dubai, from the end of October to the middle of
November.
However,
Unlike ICANN or the IETF, the ITU isn???t a multi-stakeholder community: the key
actors at the ITU are Member States. Private industry, technical institutions
such as the RIRs, and other organizations can only participate as non-voting
Sector Members and often cannot speak at ITU events. As such, civil society
finds it difficult to make an impact. It is also why to do so requires much
planning and strategies to make an impact and to have its issues brought to the
table. Meaningful presence in the Plenipot is an
important civil society achievement -- intergovernmental organizations such as
the ITU are not designed to naturally incorporate non-governmental voices, even
though its decisions broadly affect all stakeholders across the internet
ecosystem.
In
recent years, issues including online privacy, cybersecurity, and the gender
digital divide have become significant flashpoints within the ITU work-agenda,
particularly as the focus on the Internet of Things and over-the-top (OTT)
services grows.
As
we have heard, these proposals could have serious implications for the free and
full exercise of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights online--rights which people are entitled to online as well as offline-- as well
as
the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030
Agenda. Several new resolutions and modifications to existing ones sought
to broaden the ITU's mandate and sought to limit the right to privacy, fight
against surveillance and put a halt to any efforts to reduce the protection of
human rights,
For
this year's Plenipot, I was one of four fellows
attached to the ISOC delegation. As I had been to a previous Plenipot I was helping to mentor the other three fellows
who had never been to a Plenipot and several who had
not been to any ITU meeting.
There
are three main working groups at Plenipot, with the
Working Group of the Plenary the largest one. It grouped resolutions under
different themes and had 7 different Ad Hoc and 12 different informal groups.
Additionally, these groups then broke down into 13 smaller groups. Committee 5
and 6 also had 23 different Ad Hocs and 7 informal
consultations. As there are so many adhocs and
informal groups many of them met in parallel sessions which made it difficult
for delegations to cover them, especially when many were less than 5. Despite
Member States asking that there not be parallel session during the Plenipot, as you can see from this very large number of
sub-processes, there was no option except to have parallel sessions in Dubai.
Additionally,
the Working Group of Plenary spun off an additional 13 processes-- one of which
was an additional Ad Hoc Group. In total, the Working Group of the Plenary,
Committee 5 and Committee 6 spun off 49 direct sub-processes in Dubai.
Over
the Top: Several countries put in proposal on
OTT to counter more problematical ones put in by the Arab States and Russia
that aimed to expand the mandate of the ITU and specifically the Internet
issues to cover and regulate OTT services.
The
US and the EU worked put in similar proposals that were aimed not at expanding
the remit of the ITU but to continue to study the the
economic, policy and consumer welfare aspects of the OTTs; to promote a common
understanding among the membership of an enabling policy and regulatory
environment for OTTs; and to foster enabling legal and regulatory environments,
and develop policies that are transparent, stable, predictable and
non-discriminatory; and that promote competition, foster technological and
service innovation and encourage private sector investment, in order to ensure
the continuing growth and adoption of OTTs that will promote socio economic
growth and opportunities at the national and global level.
This
adhoc would likely have broken records in the time
everyone spent attempting to gain to consensus, (as it was we spent over 30
hours) but in the end because the Chair of the Ad Hoc had to leave a week
early, and people were not yet exhausted they were able to compromise and agree
on some consensus text that did not expand the mandate of the ITU but allowed
it to to raise awareness and promote a common
understanding and dialogue among relevant stakeholders for enabling the OTT
environment and ecosystem within the remit of ITU; continue fostering studies
on OTT aspects, taking into account considering d) and recognizing
further d), consistent with ITU's mandate; foster capacity-building programmes among ITU members share best practices.
Connectivity
and Access: There were several resolutions under
the heading of Connectivity and access such as res 203, Connectivity to
Broadband Networks, Bridging the Digital Divide (139), and community networks.
This were also Inter-American Proposals as well.
Community
networks: The Americas region had put together a joint proposal to
showcase how community networks could be another tool to help bridge the
digital divide along with changes in spectrum and licenses could help bring
connectivity to rural and remote areas. It is critical that countries find new
ways to eliminate the digital divide and community networks are another tool in
their arsenal. There was a separate resolution on eliminating the digital
divide and as such the leader within CITEL of this Inter-American Proposal was
asked to merge it with the other with the agreement that several key components
of one resolution would be merged with the other. Very quickly we found out
that this would be a real challenge as despite the resolution focusing on
connectivity every country had a different definition and goal of what they
wanted to achieve.
Unfortunately,
despite the number of community networks in Africa, Asia, and other places,
this resolution got politicized and as such only European countries, developed
countries in the Pacific, the Americas region and Ghana supported the proposal.
Many late nights were spent trying to arrive at consensus and even with the
valiant help of the Ms. Nur Sulyna Abdullah, Chair of
the Working Group of the Plenary who came in often and tried her best to bring
everyone together with powerful and inspiring works, it did not
work. Moreover, agreements that were made on text during an evening the
next day would fall apart and even in the end when it was thought a deal had
been reached hours later it fell apart as countries were pressured to not agree
to a compromise.
What I found shocking was that countries refused to even
recognize the fact that community networks existed and also have worked in
developing countries to help narrow the digital divide. To me this was shocking
since one would think that any proposals involving connectivity would not have
any issues with the existence and usefulness of community networks and that
they are one of the tools that can help bring connectivity to the region, but
as I found out while attending the adhocs, this was
not the case. There were several countries that either could not or would
not support this resolution. I would have thought that all countries believed
in the same fundamental principles, namely Affordability, Universal Access, and
that Community Networks can be another tool to use to close the connectivity
gap, but shockingly this was not the case. These same countries had such
fundamental differences in beliefs from those of other countries and in the
end, these issues were ultimately irreconcilable.
AI:
At the start, it seemed highly likely that some kind
of formal mandate to work on Artificial Intelligence especially since the US,
Europe, and other regions had brought proposals to do so. However, in the end,
there was no consensus on the scope of the ITU???s work in this area, and no
resolution was adopted by the conference. This outcome, however, does not
prevent the ITU from continuing to work on AI issues as it has done until now
through the different study groups and also through hosting global summits on
AI.
Cybersecurity:
ITU member states were sharply divided on the extent of the organization's cybersecurity
mandate. Some wanted the ITU to become the convener of an international
convention on cybersecurity. Others preferred an approach that takes into
account the efforts of specialized agencies such as the Inter-American
Committee against Terrorism http://www.cicte.oas.org/Rev/en/ the Global Forum on Cyber
Expertise, https://www.thegfce.com/ or
the current work that other UN related bodies such as UNODC, https://www.unodc.org are
doing. After much effort and many hours of deliberations, the latter approached
finally prevailed and the ITU will not convene a process for a cybersecurity
treaty.
Role
of States in Internet Governance: It became obvious in the Plenipot that many countries in the Arab States, Russia,
and many African countries were dissatisfied with the multistakeholder
model of Internet Governance and wanted the ITU to change this. However, after
many hours of debate, the current multistakeholder
model prevailed as consensus was not able to be found for that approach.
International
Telecommunication Regulations Treaty (ITRs): The ITRs were
last negotiated in 2012 at the World Conference on International
Telecommunications (WCIT). The ITRs were intended as "the binding global treaty
designed to facilitate international interconnection and interoperability of
information and communication services." However, many countries including the
US, did not signed or ratify the 2012 ITRs as they felt it went too far into
encroaching on the internet governance territory which is better served by multistakeholder institutions. Additionally, many felt that
in today's world the ITRS are no longer relevant or needed. The 2012 conference
was very divisive and was considered by many to be a failure. In the
intervening years the ITU has continued to study this issue and convened a
Council Working Group on the ITRs to study it and decide if a WCIT was needed.
Since the Council Work Group did not suggest the need for another WCIT these
same groups tried to bring the issue to the Plenipot
and achieve their desired results. Fortunately, this issue did not advance and
no new WCIT will be convened.
What
became obvious to all who attended was that there was a stark divide between
the Americas, Europe, Oceania, and a handful of other countries on one side and
Russia, its allied countries, China, countries within the Arab Region, and most
of the countries within Africa in how to approach connectivity, Internet
issues, cybersecurity, and Internet Governance. This basic lack of consensus on
core issues is a threat to the future of the open Internet and we need to be on
guard about this and work to build capacity and awareness to help others better
understand the need for an open and interoperable Internet.
