IGF 2013 - Workshop Proposal Article
Title of Proposed Workshop: Ten years of the WSIS Declaration of Principles: The
empowerment of Developing Countries
The debate on the reforms of global governance has increased in the last decades.
Challenges such as the inclusion of a wider group of relevant players and the
increasing number of issues to address in complex areas such as climate change,
global health, migration, etc. are at the center of the discussion.
The global governance of the Internet has gained importance in the realm of
multilateral bodies only in the last two decades when the demand for
internationalization of its regime gathered enough critical substance to emerge as a
political issue in the United Nations. In 1998 at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference
held in Minneapolis, The United Nations would take an important step. In its Final
Act, the Resolution 73 resolves to consider and decide on the Union's contribution to
the holding of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The initiative of
holding the Summit was empowered by the growing demand for an international
forum that could address a broader set of issues related to the governance of the
Internet specially the concern of governments of many countries that realized the
Internet had became central to society.
The first meeting of WSIS took place in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2003. The topics
approached in Geneva were also discussed a second time in the city of Tunis, Tunisia,
in 2005. The events were instrumental in defining basic principles, internationally
agreed, which aimed at guiding the development of the Information Society and at
defining and detailing eleven lines of action for supporting the design of policies and
strategies at regional level (countries) and for contributing to the discussion of a
model of global Internet governance.
One important strategy defined during the Summit was the creation of a working
group to monitor the progress of the WSIS targets. In February 2013, the first WSIS
+10 event was held, as an integral part of the process of global revision of WSIS
according to the Resolution 60/252 and the paragraph 111 of the Tunis Agenda for the
Information Society. In the event, participants discussed a preliminary assessment of
the advances in the use of new technologies and in the access to the Internet, based on
the document “Progress made in the Implementation of and follow-up to the
outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society at the regional and
international levels”.
The document highlights that the number of mobile phone subscriptions virtually
triplicated worldwide, with nearly 6 billion subscribers. It also pointed out that
smartphones have transformed mobile telephones into multi-purpose devices, offering
new applications and services. Finally, the document stresses the fact that broadband
networks have become pervasive in developed countries, though they are less
extensive in developing countries.
These results point to a reality characteristic of developing countries. In Brazil, the
use of cell phones is nearly universal. According to the statistics produced by the
Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br), in 2011, 82 per cent of Brazilians
used cell phones1. However, the access to broadband and the use of the Internet via
mobile devices are still challenges to be overcome. The availability of Internet at
home is a privilege of 38 per cent of Brazilian households and, among these, only 36
per cent have speeds above 1 Mbps2. Regarding mobile Internet, among those using
cell phones, only 17 per cent access the Internet through the mobile device.
Broadband access is one of the critical issues present in the WISIS principles. If on
one hand the construction of the principles contributes to empower governmental and
non-governmental organizations for the development of strategies and policies that
allow countries to cope with the challenges of digital inclusion, on the other hand the
effective implementation of such principles in a global scale depends on a substantial
advance of the Internet in developing countries.
Regarding the Brazilian case, the definition of the Internet governance model adopted
in Brazil was instrumental in building an enabling environment for the development
of the principles defined by the WSIS. In May 1995, through an inter-ministerial
decree, the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) is created aiming at
coordinating and integrating all Internet service initiatives in Brazil, as well as
promoting technical quality, innovation and the dissemination of the services
available. The Committee was composed of representatives from government, from
the business sector, from civil society and from the academic sector. With this
initiative, the Brazilian government created a multistakeholder body to address issues
related to Internet governance.
In addition to hosting the Brazilian registry authority the CGI.br began to invest the
surplus arising from the increasing number of .br domains in the development of
infrastructure and of support activities, such as traffic exchange points, researches on
the use of ICT in Brazil, training courses for the IPv6 migration, the measurement of
quality of broadband, the Port 25 management and the creation of the ten principles
for the development and use of the Internet.
In order to put into practice these and other projects, CGI.br members decided to
create the Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br), a non-profitable civil
company, which since December 2005 implements decisions and projects of the
Brazilian Internet Steering Committee. Thus, CGI.br established itself as a reference
in the discussion on the challenges for the development of the Internet. The country
has therefore gained an important promoter of initiatives not only defined by its
council, but also coming from civil society players and from government, both
through its structure organized in NIC.br and through its own members and its
Executive Secretariat.
One of those relevant initiatives was the building of a legal framework for the
Internet, known as the Brazilian Internet Bill of Rights (Marco Civil da Internet). The
1 Statistics from the “Survey on the use of ICT in Brazil” developed by the Center of Studies of ICT – CETIC.br
2 Its important to consider that 30% of respondents did not know their internet speed. The analysis defends that these
households may have low Internet speed. Those who pay for higher speed rates probably know their Internet speed.
More information about this indicator can be found at http://www.cetic.br/usuarios/tic/2011-total-brasil/rel-geral06.htm.
Bill, aims at establishing rights, duties and principles in the use of the Internet in
Brazil. It stemmed from a partnership between the Secretariat of Legislative Affairs of
the Ministry of Justice and the Center for Technology and Society at Getulio Vargas
Foundation’s School of Law, in Rio de Janeiro. The first phase of the process was to
propose to society themes covering the central topics in the debate on the use and
development of the network. For three months, more than 800 contributions were
received, including comments, emails and purposeful references coming from various
sectors of society through a website developed especially for the initiative.
In the second phase, a draft of the bill was formulated and it went back to debate with
civil society. During the first half of 2010, several public debates were conducted. In
August 2011, the bill was finally sent to the House of Representatives.
Initially, a special committee was formed to consider the various bills that were being
processed at the House of Representatives aimed at unifying all the initiatives in a
single bill. The project also included a series of public hearings, in addition to being
made available on the website of the House of Representatives in order to receive
suggestions and queries. The project is currently under debate in the House of
Representatives.
The Internet Bill of Rights was based fundamentally in another important initiative
brought forth by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee: The Principles for the
Governance end Use of the Internet. The process to write the principles has been
formally started in February 2007. It took approximately two years of work and a
huge amount of discussion within the Committee to build a consensus over the
declaration of principles. At the third ordinary meeting in 2009 the 10 principles were
finally approved and released in the resolution CGI.br/RES/2009/003/P3. This is an
example of how a decision making process based on the reach of consensus in an
horizontal and multistakeholder structure has proven to legitimate initiatives that
foster structuring internet projects and important public polices.
The inherent complexity of the process of global governance of the Internet is
reflected in the challenge of designing public policies and strategies for the
development of the Internet at the countries level in accordance with the principles
established by the World Summit on the Information Society. The proposal for the
workshop “Ten years of the WSIS Declaration of Principles: the empowerment of
Developing Countries” is based on the debates over experiences and challenges that
developing countries face in order to consolidate initiatives to build an Information
Society for all. Its important to strengthen international and regional cooperation
around the advancement of those goals established at the WSIS which are critical and
relevant to the goals of the millennium is critical.
3 The declaration of principles is available in English at http://www.cgi.br/regulamentacao/pdf/resolucao-2009-003-pten-es.pdf .