[CCWG-ACCT] [Ws2-hr] clarification re Human Right Subgroup work and FOI - Human Rights with "Considerations"

[Mueller, Milton L]

Anne
Weighing in here, I see some confusion:


Her response was (and I paraphrase)  "No, but ICANN is a quasi-governmental organization and has a lot of power to influence Human Rights going forward".  So for anyone who feels that ICANN is a quasi-governmental organization, they will push ICANN the organization in this direction without remembering the applicable law limitation and the fact that ICANN is NOT A QUASI-GOVERNMENTAL organization and its policy development is not the top-down process followed by other non-profits.

The key characteristic of ICANN is _not_ that it is a nonprofit and _not_ that it is a so-called “bottom up multistakeholder” organization. The ICANN feature of relevance to Human Rights is that ICANN makes global public policy regarding domain name registration and use. In this sense, it certainly is a “quasi-governmental” entity, indeed it was created to serve as a globalized substitute for territorial governments because of the Internet’s inherent need for globally coordinated policy for the DNS to avoid fragmentation. We say quasi-governmental because it has exclusive control of an essential facility and thus its policies, like a state’s, are effectively binding on most suppliers and (through them) users of the DNS.

If ICANN makes public policy, then it follows that ICANN’s _policies_ must respect (or not violate) recognized human rights, especially ones like freedom of expression and privacy that are related to Internet use. There is no inconsistency in the requirement that ICANN’s substantive policies respect human rights and ICANN’s limited mission; indeed, they are complementary. ICANN can only make policies in areas authorized by its mission and core values. HR concerns are an additional constraint on what ICANN can do when making policies; e.g. it cannot violate free expression or privacy rights. It is not an authorization to do additional things.

Those of us who have objected to the use of the Ruggie principles have done so because Ruggie misses the target. We want ICANN’s _policies_ to respect Human Rights, we do not think ICANN’s internal operations will violate human rights. That is, we don’t think ICANN has a propensity to use slave labor etc. The problem with Ruggie is that it focuses on  commercial operations of businesses, not on policy makers. The Ruggie principles can serve as a massive diversion from the substantive policy issues that ICANN deals with, and if applied inappropriately it can also push ICANN the corporation to do things outside its mission.

The fact that key players in this discussion still don’t understand – or resist admitting – that ICANN is indeed a quasi-governmental policy maker causes me some concern. The whole HR discussion makes no sense unless you understand that.

Dr. Milton Mueller
Professor, School of Public Policy
Georgia Institute of Technology

[IGP_logo_gold block_email sig]<http://www.internetgovernance.org/>
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