All posts in Statements

We reaffirm the goals and principles of the statement submitted to the ITU Secretariat in November 2012 in which we urged member states to implement inclusive and transparent ITU processes and uphold and protect the public interest and fundamental human rights.

These fundamental human rights must be at the forefront of internet governance and ITU convenings, including the WTPF. Internet policy topics, including but not limited to affordable access, development, multilingualism, openness and access to knowledge, net neutrality, privacy, and security must be considered through the framework of human rights, in particular freedom of expression.

We welcome progress made by the Secretary-General and the Informal Experts Group in achieving consensus on the six draft opinions. These begin to address important goals, including the expansion of key internet infrastructure in order to reduce costs for those in need; the reaffirmation of multistakeholder processes; and the promotion of transparent and inclusive enhanced cooperation. Rather than seeking to address additional issues, we urge the Secretary-General to move forward in engaging all stakeholders to implement these opinions.

Unfortunately, we must disagree with the Secretary-General’s report’s framing of the debate on multistakeholderism. The WTPF has not yet achieved open and participatory internet policy making. In endeavoring to foster multistakeholder consensus, it is critical that the WTPF facilitate civil society’s participation as an independent and authoritative voice. The ITU should, for this and future fora, bring all stakeholders together to work on implementing WTPF opinions at the national, regional, and global levels. This means creating spaces for civil society to express their views, for example through an online platform for comment that is part of the official WTPF record, through speaking rights as was done during the WSIS process, as well as providing for both remote participation and live webcasting of the WTPF meeting. Video, audio, and text transcripts will further enables participation by all, including persons with disabilities.

Open and transparent participation will augment the critical efforts toward broadband connectivity, IXP promotion, enhanced cooperation, and IPv6 deployment that the WTPF is undertaking with these opinions. We look forward to working together with the ITU as it pursues these policies and institutes a multistakeholder structure that can achieve the goals articulated herein in a manner consistent with the public interest and fundamental human rights.

At the World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT) conference in Dubai, ITU member states tried to negotiate new International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs). We as civil society organizations want to express our concern at the lack of transparency, openness, and public consultations that marked the national preparatory processes and the WCIT discussion in Dubai.

Mindful of the upcoming review of the World Summit on the Information Society process we call upon states to recognize the importance of upholding human rights in all spheres, including the Internet

We further call upon governments to recognize the importance of ensuring meaningful and sustainable civil society participation in all internet governance and policy-making processes which should be both transparent and accountable.

• We urge governments to promote universal, affordable, high quality and equitable access to the internet
• Recognizing the necessity of net neutrality for protection of human rights and for innovation we call for the promotion of network equality so that access is free from discrimination, filtering or control on commercial, political or other grounds.
• Noting that the internet is a medium for both public and private exchange of views and information across boundaries, we call on governments and non state actors to respect and protect freedom of expression online.
• Taking into account that privacy is a fundamental human right, we urge the governments and service providers to take all legal, procedural and technical steps necessary to guarantee the right to protection of personal data, including traffic and indirectly identifiable data; the right to secure private communications, including the right to online anonymity and pseudonimity; and the right to be free from unwarranted surveillance and all forms of eavesdropping
• Realizing that the cultural and linguistic diversity should be protected as legitimate speech, but also as common cultural heritage that enriches humankind as a whole, exhort governments and service providers to foster and promote the expressions of such diversity without constraints based on cultural, religious or gender bias.

• Fundação Getulio Vargas, Brazil
• Nupef, Brazil
• Intervozes, Brazil
• Instituto Brasileiro de Defesa do Consumidor, Brazil
• Asociacion por los Derechos Civiles, Argentina
• Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information (CELE), University of Palermo, Argentina
• Via Libre Foundation, Argentina
• Centro de Estudios Legales Y Sociales, Argentina
• ONG Derechos Digitales, Chile
• Colnodo, Colombia
• Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa, Colombia
• Fundación Karisma, Colombia
• Association for Progressive Communications, Global
• Cooperativa Sulá Batsú, Costa Rica
• Fundación Social TIC, Mexico
• Creative Commons Guatemala, Guatemala
• Global Partners & Associates, U.K.
• Open Society Foundation, Global
• KICTANet, Kenya
• Consumers International, Global
• Center for Democracy and Technology, U.S.A.
• Internet Democracy Project, India
• CELS, Argentina
• IT for Change, India
• Open Technology Institute  USA
• OpenMedia.ca, Canada
• Index on Censorship, U.K.
• Global Illuminators, Pakistan

We thank the Secretariat of the ITU for making the opportunity to submit our views.

Nevertheless, the process of the revision of the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) has not been sufficiently inclusive and transparent, despite some recent efforts to facilitate public participation. Fundamental to the framing of public policy must be the pursuit of the public interest and fundamental human rights, and we urge Member States to uphold and protect these values.

We as civil society organizations wish to engage with the World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT) process in this spirit. Member States, in most cases, have not held open, broad-based, public consultations in the lead up to the WCIT, nor have they indicated such a process for the WCIT itself.

In order to address this deficiency, and at a minimum, we would urge:

• All Member States and regional groups to make their proposals available to the public in sufficient time to allow for meaningful public participation;
• All delegates to support proposals to open sessions of the WCIT meeting to the public;
• The ITU Secretariat to increase transparency of the WCIT including live webcast with the video, audio, and text transcripts, as far as possible, to enable participation by all, including persons with disabilities;
• The ITU Secretariat, Member States, and regional groups to make as much documentation publicly available as possible on the ITU’s website, so that civil society can provide substantive input on proposals as they are made available;
• Member States to encourage and facilitate civil society participation in their national delegations;
• The ITU to create spaces during the WCIT for civil society to express their views, as was done during the WSIS process.

Given the uncertainty about the nature of final proposals that will be presented, we urge delegates that the following criteria be applied to any proposed revisions of the ITRs:

• That any proposed revisions are confined to the traditional scope of the ITRs, where international regulation is required around technical issues is limited to telecommunications networks and interoperability standards.
• There should be no revisions to the ITRs that involve regulation of the Internet Protocol and the layers above.
• There should be no revisions that could have a negative impact on affordable access to the Internet or the public’s rights to privacy and freedom of expression.

More generally we call upon the ITU to promote principles of net neutrality, open standards, affordable access and universal service, and effective competition.

• Access (Global)
• Association for Progressive Communications (APC) (Global)
• Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (Bangladesh)
• Bytes for All (Pakistan)
• Centre for Internet and Society (India)
• Center for Democracy & Technology (United States of America)
• Centre for Community Informatics Research (Canada)
• Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) (Eastern and Southern Africa)
• Consumer Council of Fiji (Fiji)
• Consumers International (Global)
• Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles (IRP) (Global)
• Electronic Frontier Finland (Finland)
• Imagining the Internet Center (United States of America)
• Instituto Nupef (Brazil)
• Internet Democracy Project (India)
• Internet Research Project (Pakistan)
• Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) Rio de Janeiro Law School (Brazil)
• Gobernanza de Internet.co (Colombia)
• Global Partners & Associates (United Kingdom)
• ICT Watch Indonesia (Indonesia)
• Instituto Brasileiro de Defesa do Consumidor (IDEC) / Brazilian Institute for Consumer Defense (Brazil)
• InternetNZ (New Zealand)
• IT for Change (India)
• Media Education Center (Armenia)
• ONG Derechos Digitales (Chile)
• OpenMedia (Canada)
• Public Knowledge (United States of America)
• Thai Netizen Network (Thailand)
• Ginger Paque (Venezuela)
• Sonigitu Ekpe (Nigeria)
• Wolfgang Kleinwächter (Denmark)

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