IGF

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is a worldwide organization that supports the United Nations with issues regarding internet governance^[1]. It was announced in July 2006 and first convened in October / November of 2006.

Structure and Function

The group was set up thanks to a common goal formed among various groups like the WGIG that included open consultations. These group's goals were set through meetings that were held prior to the convening of the IGF.

The UN Secretary-General established an Advisory Group and a Secretariat as the main institutional bodies of the IGF.

These organizational divisions should not be considered concrete, instead being malleable with future meetings.

Advisory group

The Advisory Group is a multi-stakeholder entity. It is made up of 47 members from international governments, the commercial private sector and public civil society, including academic and technical communities.

The Advisory Group is co-chaired by Nitin Desai^[2], who also has chaired the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG)^[3], and Brazilian diplomat Hadil da Rocha Vianna^[4].

Secretariat

The secretariat, based in the United Nations Office in Geneva, assists and coordinates the work of the Advisory Group. As of July 2007, it is headed by Markus Kummer^[5], who also has been involved with the WGIG as its Executive Coordinator of the Secretariat^[6].

History

The suggested need of an organization like the IGF was first pointed out in the WGIG Report. After reaching a clear consensus among its members the WGIG proposed in paragraph 40 of the Report that :

"(t)he WGIG identified a vacuum within the context of existing structures, since there is no global multi-stakeholder forum to address Internet-related public policy issues. It came to the conclusion that there would be merit in creating such a space for dialogue among all stakeholders. This space could address these issues, as well as emerging issues, that are cross-cutting and multidimensional and that either affect more than one institution, are not dealt with by any institution or are not addressed in a coordinated manner”.

The IGF was one of four proposals made in the report.

The convening of the IGF was announced on 18 July 2006, with the inaugural meeting of the Forum being held in Athens, Greece from 30 October to 2 November 2006.

The next IGF is scheduled to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 12 to 15 November 2007.

The governments of India and Egypt offered to host the 2008 and 2009 IGF meetings respectively, while the governments of Lithuania and Azerbaijan made a bid for the 2010 meeting.

Mandate and Outcome

The mandate of the IGF is limited to that of a discussion forum for facilitating dialogue between the participants. The IGF may only "identify emerging issues, bring them to the attention of the relevant bodies and the general public, and, where appropriate, make recommendations", but does not have any direct decision-making authority^[7].

The most tangible results of the first IGF in Athens are a number of so-called dynamic coalitions. These coalitions are relatively informal, issue-specific groups consisting of stakeholders that are insterested in the particular issue. So far, there are dynamic coalitions on spam, privacy, an "Internet Bill of Rights" and other topics.^[8]

References

External links

• Internet Governance Forum
• IGF - Greece 2006
• IGF Community Site
• IGF Brazil 2007
• IP Justice IGF webpage
• Internet Governance: The Way Forward. An international conference organised by DiploFoundation discusses the objectives, multi-stakeholder composition, organisation and relevance of Internet Governance Forum.
• International conference presentation:"Internet Governance and Multistakeholder Diplomacy"by Jovan Kurbalija. The presentation reflects on the diplomatic dimension of internet management, the multistakeholder composition and inter-professional dimension of the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG).

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