Posted in European Union, tagged WCIT on 15/02/2013|
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ITU is the new multistakeholder? From an analysis of Alexander Klimburg on the ITU WCIT summit for a ITRs revision:
According to noted Internet governance scholar Wolfgang Kleinwächter, the language in the new ITRs could actually imply the creation of a “new” multistakeholder system for Internet governance, one that ultimately replaces the existing system with something working under the aegis and ultimate control of the ITU.
There are quite a few academics that tried to transform the ITU into a multi-stakeholder governance mechanism. But the reformist approach overlooks in the difficulties of a world organisation as the ITU. The article of Klimburg compares a clash between “Cybersovereignty” and “Multistakeholder” at the WCIT to the Yalta meeting.
The article of Klimburg overlooks that ITU-T is a multistakeholder organisation and European players embark on a cybersovereignty approach, simply because the multistakeholderism of the US does not give them a fair share, still they cannot support an expansion of power for ITU world governance: In a world with more than 200 nations “world governance” leads to hypocrite political corruption, nurtures a political class that at best trickles down the “capacity building and technical assistance” in their nation. There is simply no reason why leading industrial nations would want to let questionable regimes of nations with an irrelevant internet share meddle with the governance of the internet. And also you hardly discover good reason why the expensive closed-shop ITU-T multistakeholderism or the IGF would seem qualified. The US excitement for flat multistakeholder governance was build on an engineer perspective of the kind “railways to the railway people” along libertarian scepticism against the US government capabilities to get it right. The ITU-T exemplifies a more static industrial multistakeholderism that does not suit the internet.
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