IGF 2022 WS #67 Testing values of inclusion in Multistakeholderism

Description:

The internet is growing every year with exponential number, there has been various collaboration and funding done in regards to development and capacity building in various region but every year the number of participation has been a major challenge in regards to voicing out the issues, participation in public policy process and other collaboration. Thought there has been various standards developed to facilitate inclusion in the name of participation but the community is still facing the same challenges of see same people raising limited issues in Internet governance hemisphere.

The multistakeholder model is widely accepted as the Internet Governance model by the internet ecosystem. The model has always been a challenge in context of adaptation and mitigation of equal values. The concept of equality and inclusion is a question which has been collectively raised at various levels of implementation. And lack of proper knowledge and wrong interpretation has hugely overdue the bottoms up approach. Similarly, representation and diversity are yet another issue which has been a major challenge in terms of inclusion. The number of limited representations is also subjected to politics and manipulation at various level with limitation of values and awareness campaign. It has been defined that the multistakeholder model should fosters a balance among various stakeholders in Internet ecosystem facilitating inclusion and bottom-up approach in action. It is an effort of implementing the multi-stakeholder democratization process with the possibility of overcoming the gaps and facilitating the overall internet governance process. But at grassroots level the concept and values of multistakeholder concept is politicized and conditioned, creating a matrix of power, control and numbers.

The NETmundial Internet governance process principle states “Internet governance should be built on democratic multi-stakeholder processes, ensuring the meaningful and accountable participation of all stakeholders, including governments, the private sector, civil society, the technical community, the academic community and users.”

Today the evolution of the Internet-based technologies has created a need of control over the system and its policies that support them. In this context the overall multistakeholder process seems to be overdriven and politicized in terms of proper development of values and other dynamics of representation and collaboration. The bottom’s up approach is certainly a key strategy but in lower economies, it is manipulated to create a syndicate of values where lack of openness, transparency and lack of communication creates big problems and challenges.

From the participation and development of policies to running the concept of any kind of technology platform, the sense of control and collaboration that catalyzed in the overall process pushes the developing world aside in saying they have second rights to technology and other aspect of internet development process. May be an abrupt but most of us coming down from the third world scenario or developing country feel different about what technology is all about.

The long practice of the favoritism and nepotism are still seen in big Internet governance platforms where still today the nominations are based on recommendations and power. The big platform have reservation of Big developed nation in terms of decision making roles and leadership where developed nation have been shadowed. Though the concept of Multistakeholderism has been adopted but it radically differentiates in terms of finding its own meaning and interpretation. Multistakeholderism in absence of practice apprehends like a bait that lures us to be part of the whole digital ecosystem but gives us no voice in shouting out the real issues. We are limited within a cocoon where the developed nation leads and govern in majority with the so called technical community’s recommendation.

The so called practice may give voices to very few nations but what about the rest?
Who is going to represent them?