[IRP] Organisation and Strategies 2011/2012

Thu Oct 6 21:35:21 EEST 2011

Hi Everyone
I support this plan. Looks good and I look forward to working with all of you. Thank you for your good work!
cheers
Shaila 

The journey begins sooner than you anticipate !
..................... the renaissance of composure !

--- On Mon, 10/3/11, Dixie Hawtin <Dixie at global-partners.co.uk> wrote:

From: Dixie Hawtin <Dixie at global-partners.co.uk>
Subject: [IRP] Organisation and Strategies 2011/2012
To: "irp at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org" <irp at lists.internetrightsandprinciples.org>
Date: Monday, October 3, 2011, 8:55 AM

Hi everyone,
I hope that everyone who was flying home from Nairobi had a safe trip back! At the IGF we had an internal meeting to discuss the organisation and activities for the IRP over the next year. I know that not everybody was at the IGF so not able to express opinions, or volunteer to serve as a chair. Please read this email and send through to the list if you have any comments/nominations.
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Overall we felt that the environment that the IRP is working within has changed quite substantially ? the ideas of principles for Internet governance is now mainstream, and commitment to human rights too is widespread (at least at a lip service level, even if actual compliance levels are low). Therefore the IRP must adapt in order to remain useful and influential. The discussions we had centred around: how to organise the IRP to be more effective, and the need to become more outward facing ? we have already developed a high level of consensus internally about what the appropriate standards are, now we need to engage with the external initiatives and dynamics that are actually shaping the Internet. 
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A summary of organisational changes: 
1.?????? There will now be two co-chairs acting as a secretariat for the Coalition. Each chair will sit for two years (with one ?changing at each IGF, so that every IGF one chair is continuing and one chair is new). At the meeting, we discussed that I would continue to act as chair for a second year, and Mattias Kettemann, University of Graz, would begin as co-chair this year. ACTION POINT: please let us know if you are happy with this decision. If anyone else would like to be a chair (or nominate someone else to be chair) let the list know by Monday 10 October and if so we will organize an election (I?ll get someone independent to organize it!)
2.?????? The steering committee will be streamlined to 8 members: two individuals from each of the multi-stakeholder groups (academia, business, civil society, government). The steering committee will be consulted about IRP activities and asked to give strategic guidance and advice. Some steering committee members have already expressed a desire to stay on in the role, while others have said they would like to step down. I propose to email all members of the current steering committee to see who would still like to serve. At the same time IRP members should nominate others for the steering committee (please check with them first) and send these through to me or the list by October 21. If we have more people than needed we will organize an election. ACTION POINT: let us know if you are happy with this decision. Please send through any suggestions you have for the steering committee by October 21. 
3.?????? For discrete activities we will continue to work as we have in the past, i.e. for each activity a smaller email group will be formed and will be open for all interested IRP members to join.
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A summary of activities for the next year: 
The ?writing? stage is over, and we now have a good set of 10 principles and a strong, if imperfect, Charter detailing our shared understanding about how human rights apply to the Internet environment and what principles are needed in order to uphold the potential of the Internet as a platform for human rights. Now we are in the ?operation? stage ? ?using the Charter and 10 IRPS to shape dynamics in the real world, promoting a human rights approach. In particular we want to act as a human rights filter for other initiatives to develop principles (often by actors with more economic or political power), and increase the influence of our documents. Activities are likely to develop and change as the year progresses, at present a number of activities have been identified as priorities:
1.?????? Council of Europe: Meryem has recently been approached by the CoE to attend a brain storming meeting about how IRP work can feed into their future initiatives. Wolfgang and I have also been asked to appear on a panel at the Council of Europe Strategy Conference in November, talking about the role of human rights in IG. This is an area to develop. Meryem has volunteered to act as the main IRP contact for work in this area.
2.?????? IGC: The Internet Governance Caucus are making their own set of principles, which they hope to feed in to a wider IGF initiative to create shared IG principles over the next few years. As a Coalition we must engage in these processes to uphold strong protections for human rights.
3.?????? Statements: We will continue to make statement drawing attention to issues where human rights standards are being, or risk being, violated on the Internet. We will not try to reinvent the wheel, so where statements are developed by other groups we will sign on to them. Instead, our aim will be to draw attention to issues which are not already publicized.
4.?????? Increasing influence of Charter and 10 IRPs: We need to translate the 10 IRPs into all the most common languages (Russian and Chinese are priorities now) and spread them widely amongst our contacts. Another activity is to catalogue when the Charter and 10 IRPs are referred to in external documents (by IRP members or others) to develop an evidence base around their spread and influence.
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I look forward to hearing any comments, and if you would like to read the minutes of the meeting, they are attached (many thanks to Robert Bodle for keeping notes!).
Many thanks,
Dixie
___________________________________________________________
Dixie Hawtin
Project Manager, Freedom of Expression and Digital Communications Global Partners and Associates
Development House, 56-64 Leonard St, EC2A 4LT, UK
Office: +44 (0)20 7549 0338
mailto:dixie at global-partners.co.uk
www.global-partners.co.uk 
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