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A submission by the Association for Progressive Communications
(APC) in consultation with African Civil Society Platform on Internet
Governance
Eight years after the
report of the Working Group on Internet Governance was released during WSIS, we
note that much is still to be done to bring down the cost of access for the
African Internet user. In that regard, we are pleased to note that setting up
local and regional IXPs and fostering the creation of local contents are part
of the WTPF proposed course of action this past May. We equally note the
ongoing effort being undertaken by the African Union in collaboration with its
partners to establish national and regional IXPs across Africa.
We request that ITU
works in synergy with the African Union and all interested actors in order to
maximize the sum of the efforts undertaken to fully realize the benefits of the
Internet for people in Africa as active users, not only finding and consuming
relevant contents at the lower possible cost but also creating their own and
thus adding value to the global network.
With a view to providing
increasingly affordable access to all users in Africa, ITU should encourage
member states to move towards new and more dynamic regulatory approaches in
their management and allocation of radio spectrum. African member states should
make use of the full range of dynamic spectrum management techniques – such as
cognitive radio, among others emerging and smarter technologies – in order to
optimize the allocation and use of radio frequencies so as to bring the
Internet within access for many people and communities which are still excluded
in Africa. To that end, TV White Spaces should be added to the pool of means
that shall be used to quicken the pace of Internet access in Africa.
We call on ITU to take a
leadership position vis-à-vis its member states in order to include a gender
balance perspective in all their efforts for Internet access at all levels of
the society. ITU and its members should strive for universal access by also
ensuring that disability challenges be addressed while further infrastructure
is being laid out and technologies are being deployed to increase access or
usage.
Overall, through a
variety of policy mechanisms and provisions, ITU should promote a vision for
smarter and more efficient access. It should make sure African member states
strive to dramatically improve the ratio between investment and user population
in inclusive manners by making sure to reach the highest possible and a diverse
number of users for every access channel possibly available.
Furthermore, we request
the Council to take rapid steps towards operationalizing the enhanced
cooperation process in global Internet governance in cohesion with all
stakeholders involved in various fora such as the CSTD Working Group on
Enhanced Cooperation. While governments have traditionally played a primordial
role in public policy-making in various issue areas, governments should
recognize the particular nature and history of the Internet whereby non-state
actors have played a primordial role in its emergence and its growth. On the
other hand, we as African civil society recognize that the Internet has
globally taken such proportions that decisions made towards the coordination
and management of its unique resources as well as decisions shaping its use may
significantly impact on public life which is of concern for national states in
every country.
Therefore we seek a
clear and stable Internet-related public policy-making framework that ensures:
- Public policy development can
be initiated by state actors as well as non-state actors;
- All stakeholders, regardless of
the originator of the policy proposal, co-develop public policy, on equal
footing, with all proposals and views to be weighed on their merit;
- Balanced representation between
and within stakeholder groups, across the five UN regions, and with best
effort towards equal
distribution between developing and developed countries.
- Input and engagement of
stakeholders via a well-facilitated remote participation platform
Specific roles for
government vis-à-vis Internet Governance processes and structures, if any, as well
as their operational modalities should be clarified and adopted through
consensus among all stakeholders.
We welcome initiatives
such as this public consultation and the Informal Expert Group experiment which
helped draft solid and valuable inputs to this year WTPF in a multistakeholder
approach. However, we want to encourage ITU to go further on this path by
putting in place more systematic and better publicized mechanisms that will
increase an inclusive participation from all stakeholders worldwide,
particularly from Africa, in any ITU policy and regulatory process that may
impact the Internet – such as the Council Working Group on International
Internet-related Public Policy Issues and any other relevant deliberations.
Finally, we commend the
efforts of the ITU towards paperless meetings and its engagement to publish
meeting documents and hope that this engagement will continue and increase in
the coming years.
July
30, 2013
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