[IRP] Problem of abject poverty and hunger (was Re: Call notes...)

[Graciela Selaimen]

Totally agree.
I'm keen to helping formulate the statement.

best
Graciela

Em 8/11/11 1:27 PM, michael gurstein escreveu:
> I won't be (financially) able to attend in Nairobi but I think that the IRP
> (and the overall IGC) should take the opportunity to make the connection
> between Internet governance, Internet Rights and Principles, economic and
> social development and Internet practice on the ground (including in
> response to emergency relief issues and practices in Kenya and the region
> and longer term developmental initiatives).
>
> My thought is that the best intervention that can be made is to raise and
> pursue the issue of the connection between all of thsese within the context
> of the IGF including vigourously making these connections in all appropriate
> venues.
>
> Developing and circulating an appropriate sign-on statement concerning these
> matters would seem to me to be the most potentially useful form that our
> interest and commitment could take and I would be prepared to spend a bit of
> time with others formulating such a statement if that was the will of this
> group.
>
> Best to all,
>
> Mike
>
> Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
> Director: Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and
> Training (CCIRDT)
> Vancouver, CANADA
> http://www.communityinformatics.net
>
> Now blogging at http://gurstein.wordpress.com/
> Tweating at @michaelgurstein
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: irp-bounces at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org
> [mailto:irp-bounces at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org] On Behalf Of
> Tapani Tarvainen
> Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2011 2:46 AM
> To: irp at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org
> Subject: Re: [IRP] Problem of abject poverty and hunger (was Re: Call
> notes...)
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 10:36:06AM +0200, Norbert Bollow (nb at bollow.ch)
> wrote:
>
>> Tapani Tarvainen<tapani.tarvainen at effi.org>  wrote:
>>
>>> I thought this list was about Internet Rights and Principles, where
>>> development agenda of any kind is not primary at all, certainly not
>>> more so than many other IG issues.
>> Hmm... I would argue that internet rights and principles are not
>> important in and of themselves in some ideological way, but they're
>> important because of their importance for fundamental human rights and
>> needs.
> Of course, I agree with that 100%.
>
> But "development" has a rather different meaning or at
> least connotation in this context, it is not equivalent
> with human rights and their improvement, even though
> there is overlap.
>
>> We cannot engage with every specific local and temporary situation, as
>> it's impossible to achieve anything unless there is focus on
>> something, and this coalition has chosen to focus on the "big picture"
>> aspect of rights and principles.
> Well, rights and especially principles kind of are the big picture. Also,
> the group (as its name implies) is concerned with _Internet_ rights and
> principles, not all human rights&c.
>
>> That is good. But in our focus on this, I believe we still need to be
>> informed by actually engaging, in some genuine way, with the important
>> problems that internet rights and principles can contribute to
>> solving.
> Agreed, again. But they can't necessarily contribute to all important
> problems - Internet is not directly involved in every crisis, even if it can
> be used as a tool in them, and all practical applications of the Internet do
> not have specific relevance to rights and principles.
>
> We should keep our focus narrow enough to keep the work manageable. If we
> move from evaluating the rights and principles, considering their
> applicability and relevance&c, to actually doing everything where they
> matter, we'll have all the worlds problems in our hands, and the group could
> be renamed "do everything good -group".
>
>> ICT can potentially be used to make some of those who are rich and
>> powerful today even more rich and powerful, while exploiting everyone
>> else and increasing poverty and hunger as a side effect. On the other
>> hand, ICT can also potentially be used to empower those who today live
>> in unacceptable conditions to truly satisfactory economic and
>> spiritual development. How can humanity choose the latter path of
>> development over the former? By means of wisely choosing and
>> establishing the right Internet Rights and Principles!
> Yes. We should indeed analyze our rights and principles in
> that light, all the way down to recommending courses of action in various
> practical situations, but actually engaging in them should be left to other
> organizations, which hopefully will adopt our work as their principles (and
> indeed which may be composed of partly same people as this group).
>