Interview with Markus Kummer

Executive Coordinator of the IGF of UN

1.- How did you get involved in this topic of Internet Governance from the beginning?

Well, I was involved to begin with as a member of the Swiss delegation, and Switzerland was the host country of the first phase of the summit and I was chairing various negotiating groups, including the one dealing with the IG and that’s why I was then asked to carry on the same function for the Secretariat of the Working Group on Internet Governance and since it for the IGF.

2.- Which are the main achievements you think that the IGF have reached until now?

I think that this very meeting is one of the achievements. I mean it is not the only one of regional or national meetings, even within the LAC region you have also the Caribbean IGF, they have held four or five editions, you have regional IGF Meetings in Africa, in the Europe you have the European Dialogue on IG, you have national ones in the United Kingdom, in Italy, in Spain. So, I think that the spread of this model proofs the validity of this concept of mutistakeholder dialogue , that it brings people together that would not normally meet, and also the recognition that there is a need for this kind of dialogue; if you want to reach the right decisions, governments need to talk to the technical community and need to listen to civil society so they can make informed decisions on how to go forward, and all these issues we are dealing it up, complex, are interconnected , there is never a single answer, there are multiple possible solutions there is no “one size fits all” solution, and I think that balance of stakeholders is extremely important. The technical community, they know how to do it but they are not necessarily the ones defining the problems. The governments are the ones who have to tell that here we need a solution, then civil society is equally important, it is in a way the conscience of society, who put up a finger of warnings, they say “yes hang on, this sounds good, but there is a problem if you do this because of that” and so, and so. It is important that all the stakeholders talk to each other.

3.- Is participation of the different stakeholders coming to a balance? Is civil society less represented?

I think that on the whole we have fairly balanced participation, If anything, maybe the governments are a little bit in the background, many have noticed that we should make efforts to imply governments more, one of the reasons I see for this is that governments are not used necessarily to this kind of meeting, which is very open, civil society is used, for them there is no problems, but governments are more used to traditional meetings, they have maybe higher tread shows before participating actively.

4.- Which are the main challenges that the IGF is facing for the near future?

Issues related to the critical Internet resources which remain highly politized. The IGF provides a platform to discuss this issues, it is not expected that the IGF produces any significant contributions to changes on this issues, however there are issues related to the use of Internet, also to the abuse of Internet, which are maybe on the forefront of our discussions. The nucleus of issues related to security, openness and privacy which I think will remain an extremely important area of concerns for many years to come. The balance between issues is also shifting, is not a line you can cast in stone, sometimes people feel well we need a little bit more security then swings back to say “no hang on, privacy is more important” , it is not something we can define once and for all. There are also issues related to openness -intellectual property-copyright, we have old business models as well as new business models, again you cannot say it is right or wrong, it is basically of finding the right way, young people don´t necessarily recognize themselves anymore in the old business models, they are file sharing, creating commons, access to knowledge, traditional industry defense old business models and the challenge also will be for the industry of technological progress makes new models possible. It is very difficult to just defend old models so the challenge will be to adapt to the new technology and to find new models.

Another important issue that still remains is access; multilingualism is an important issue: people want to have access in their own language;, it is also accessibility for disabilities: to allow access to people with disabilities, those are very important issues. Just physical access to Internet is not enough, once you have physical access to Internet you need to make sure that everybody has access to the Internet according to its own abilities and also in its own language.

In some of these issues we don’t have any controversy on the principles. Accessibility for people with disabilities I think everybody would agree. We have the instruments, we have the legal instruments, we have the UN Convention on that , is more a question of actually implementing it, of raising awareness, as the session did. When you hear that people, blind people, who can now read through the Internet daily papers in Braille, but the webs might need to be made accessible so actually they can do it, so, there is a lot of people who don´t do it on the websites because they are not aware, so I think it is important that we raise awareness, that you tell people “you need to do this so right people have access”, this is an issue where we are in a way a win-win situation, because people I think is keen to help people with disabilities, is not political controversial, you don’t have to invent new tools, W3C has invented the tools, the engineers so, so is a question of spreading the message.

There are other issues that are more delicate politically, I have mentioned security-privacy, this is always going to be a very delicate issue, where is never possible to find an exact [position]… there is a narrow line, but the important thing is that we have an open discussion.

And new issues may be around the corner with don´t know yet: social networking for instance is there, one of the issues that has emerge is the managing of your own identity, of your own privacy, is an individual responsibility, specially for young people which are not aware of the consequences that this may have. There are also consequences which you may regret ten years or twenty years or later.

The Internet is so fast moving, and there are so many issues that do not requires necessary a solution, but it is necessary that you understand better the performance, to identify the risks and the opportunities

5.- Which is your vision about critical Internet resources? Is the ICANN going to be redesigned?

We don’t know yet what will happen. We know that the project agreement with UEA government is coming to an end next September. We don’t know yet exactly what will happen next. My feeling is that the ICANN model is a very valid model. It was a pioneering model in terms of multistakholder involvement , it is not a model that was enthusiastically embrace by all governments, because it is something new specially also because governments are not in the driving seats, they are implied, they are involved, but they are involved more as an advisory capacity, and for some governments this is not the way they see the world, they see the world in more classical terms, the governments are on top of the pyramid. So, I think this tension will continue, there are those who fear that if governments are on the top of the pyramid in the way of traditional intergovernmental organizations this will slow down technological development. Government processes usually are slower because of need for consultation and so on. The Internet, as we have learnt, is a very fast moving technology. And I think that the private sector- led model has proved to be very beneficial also for this development too. Again, I think the model will also evolve over the time. I think we have seen in recent years an increased interest of governments to be involved. May be just a necessity because they see “if we don’t go to the ICANN meetings things are going to happen anyway without us”, so this will, I think, over the years we have to see how we will find this balance, I mean, there are important big countries such as China and Russia that are not participating in government advisory committee, but China recently returned, which is a significant development. It is a young model the ICANN model, ten years is nothing in history, and the model will further evolve, so is not so that at the end of the IGF we will have something completely new forever.

6.- You think that the IGF, after its first period, will continue or will be turning into something different?

So far we have rather positive feedback on the continuation of the mandate, a possible way forward could be just to extend the probation of mandate for another five years, that is what the European Union has proposed, then review it in a WSIS plus ten overall review conference or whatever the form may it take
RG) Have you reached a consensus about the continuation of the IGF, and the way it may continue?
MK) No, not yet. China for instance has said they don´t think there is a need to extent the mandate. But the decision will be taken by the General Assembly of the United Nations, at the end of next year
7.- What is the situation in terms of multistakeholderism, the participation of the different actors, specially civil society perhaps is the one that has more difficulties to be part of this process?
Well, civil society I think is very active in this process, I think they also see this is a fairly unique opportunity where they can participate on an equal footing.

Related with the risk of having always the same people participating, that those that participate are those that have the resources or the support of their organizations, there is a title bit of that, of course, any process of this kind of groups of insiders passionately interested, but one thing positive is that it keeps moving from continent to continent, second IGF was in Brazil, so there were a strong Brazilian and also Latin American presence, the third one was in Hyderabad India and there was a strong Indian presence, now we are moving to the African Arabic region, I think, I sense that the African are very interested in making that their meeting, so over the years we get also a little bit of over-rotation, so…. I am surprised sometimes, I was there at these meetings and I saw how many people actually go to this kind of meeting. Again, regional meetings and national meetings are as important as the global IGF, as the problems, and the priorities and the perspectives change from region to region.

8.- There is a need to connect the local to the global, there must be a “come and go”

Yes, it goes both ways. It is important for the global meeting to listen to regional perspectives, and for the local meetings to have the global perspective and also to know about the global dimension. Last year in a short space of time I attended an European meeting in [transit/port?….] and an African meeting in Nairobi, and there was a very different perspective: in Europe it was about right space approach -human rights and democracy-, in Africa was mainly about access –what lacks most to them is to have access to Internet, the rest comes later-.

Each region has its own history, and I think you have a very strong portion of the civil society, in particular for democracy, for openness, for privacy, for high democratic standards, which is very interesting

9.- Can you share with us your personal thoughts on what is happening to the people with the Internet and what it represents as a new dimension in their lives?

Well I think that Internet has proved to be a tremendous tool for the empowerment of people, altogether: it is a tremendous source of knowledge, a tremendous source of information, information that might otherwise be difficult to access, information for women for instance, especially maybe in some countries where there are more conservative societies, can be about sexual rights, about health/medical issues, HIV-AIDS, which , in some societies are very difficult to access because they are very conservative. […]. We can see that the Internet changes all that: It opens the doors, it gives access to information and thus also gives access to power. I think we have seen also over the years how the Internet is important in helping social movements, in keeping checks on the governments, in spreading information in something they feel goes wrong. Without mentioning any event but also the very new tools such as Twitter, have proved to be very efficient tools, I mean, this is seen also in a long line, I remember even when the fax was new, it proved to be a very efficient tool in the Soviet Union and the block countries for the spreading of information, even when compare to the Internet the fax was very slow and old fashion technology.

But this is also very much part of a debate, some governments take maybe a different view in this sort of questions, what is legal, what is illegal content, so it is part of a far big debate of democracy, of human rights, well the UN is about promoting democracy, it is about promoting human rights, and the UN is a extremely powerful tool for promoting this ideas.