The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) believes that the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is a vital piece of the internet governance ecosystem as a platform to improve coordination and cooperation in global internet governance and global digital cooperation.
A more empowered IGF should be at the centre of digital cooperation in the UN system and more widely. It is a unique process to place global digital cooperation issues at the top of the political agenda at an international level.
We view the IGF Leadership Panel as one of the many efforts started 10 years ago towards consolidating the IGF as a platform for identifying viable ways to shape, sustain and strengthen global digital cooperation.
It is our view that no separate new structure that determines or shapes the IGF, its processes and procedures, or that takes decisions on behalf of the IGF community, should be created outside of the IGF architecture.
APC believes that the IGF Leadership Panel should contribute to strengthening and raising the profile of the IGF within the UN system, working hand in hand with the Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG), to complement its efforts. The IGF Leadership Panel should build on the lessons learned from years of MAG operations.
Like other civil society groups, APC is concerned about the risk that with the creation of this new structure, a top-down approach to digital cooperation dominated by a few powerful private and political forces could undermine the IGF’s legacy.
We call on the UN Secretary-General to ensure diversity in the composition of the panel and representation of global South perspectives to counteract this risk and to commit to designing all aspects related to the mandate of the Panel in an open and participatory fashion. Genuine and effective democratic global digital governance can only be sustained through high standards of transparency.
APC has been consistently engaged with internet governance issues and processes since the IGF’s inception. We have served in the MAG, we have led intersessional activities, and we are active in regional and national IGFs, bringing human rights, social and gender justice lenses to those processes, from a global South perspective. APC will continue to contribute to making internet governance and global digital cooperation accountable, transparent, inclusive, participatory and effective, building on the IGF’s historical strengths and achievements. It is from this perspective that APC has put forward nominations for the IGF Leadership Panel. Our participation will be contingent on the opportunity that this presents to establish a genuinely democratic governance process.
Acesse este posicionamento em português (tradução realizada pelo Instituto Nupef).