Teivo Teivainen (NIGD), March 15, 2006, to the WSF IC list

Dear IC Friends:

(Abajo un par de lineas en español)

I would like to make a very simple proposal to respond, in part, to the criticism that IC is not sufficiently transparent and that the meetings are held behind closed doors. I personally think this criticism is sometimes justified, and we could have done better in this regard.

The simple proposal is that all IC plenary meetings should as a rule be recorded and made available, both simultaneously and thereafter, through a web site. If possible, both as voice recording and as written transcript (not just synthesis). If there exist recordings of the past IC meetings, they could also be posted through the same mechanism.

I am not the most qualified person to propose what the adequate technological mechanisms for doing this are, but as far as I know it should be very simple and quite inexpensive. I make this as a political proposal, to increase our transparency and democratic openness. If we adopt this rule, we should also communicate it as widely as possible.

One response I have sometimes heard, when I have previously made this proposal informally, is that "who would be interested in listening to our boring debates". Perhaps there are other doubts. For example, it would be interesting to hear if someone is opposed to such proposal because she or he thinks our plenary debates should be confidential. I myself can imagine some potential problems in making our debates publicly available, but I think the pros by far outweight the cons.

I personally think the meetings of the commissions should also follow the same rule, but at the very least it should be applied in the plenaries. More generally, I think we should reflect on the role of the commissions in terms that go beyond their role as technical subdivisions that help organize the IC's decision-making.

Since the commissions are in principle open to wider participation than the IC plenary, they could play an important political role in making the WSF process more democratic and inclusive. In some sense, they could become some kind of "open assemblies", which would also be a partial response to the criticism the IC gets, for example, from friends involved in the European Social Forum process. In this criticism, one argument is that the key decision-making in the ESF is based on a democratic open assembly, whereas in the WSF it takes place in the bureaucratic and closed IC.

Unfortunately I cannot make it to the Nairobi IC meeting, where NIGD will be represented by Mikael Böök (someone, please, offer him a drink on my behalf). And no, my main motivation for the proposal is not simply that this way I personally would be able to follow the meeting even if I am physically not there :-) . To be honest, I am not sure how many would really be all that interested in following our debates, but nevertheless I consider it a political problem (perhaps not a huge problem, but problem in any case) we have not adopted this rule earlier. It can, of course, be that there are good reasons for not recording the meetings, in which case it would be useful to hear them.

In solidarity, with warm hugs from Lima,

Teivo Teivainen
Network Institute for Global Democratization (nigd)

Muy brevemente en español: propongo que todas las sesiones del plenario del Consejo Internacional estén siempre disponibles a traves de la Internet, tanto en forma escrita como grabación.