I’d forgotten I’d written this until I rediscovered it the other day: lyrics for the Internet technical crowd to be sung the tune of Tainted Love. Enjoy!

Tainted Route

Sometimes my CIDR prefix
is preloved, my prefix
is misused
My packets don’t get through to the Internet
The routes we share
Seem to go nowhere
And I’ve lost my fight
To prove the block is mine to route by right

(chorus)
Once I peered with you (I peered)
Now I’ll blacklist you
This tainted route you’ve given
I give you all a geek could give you
Take my 1/8 (“one slash eight”) and that’s not nearly all
Oh…tainted route
Tainted route

Now I know I’ve got to
blacklist I’ve got to
blackhole you
You don’t really want IP any more from me
To make things work
You need someone to tell you, jerk
There are things called RFCs
And you surely need to read all these!

(chorus…)

Don’t route me please
The Internet, you’re killing, Jeez!
I want you though all packets drop
Next thing you’ll make the whole Net stop!
Tainted route, tainted route (x2)
Remove me baby, tainted route (x2)
Tainted route (x3)

The recent publication of the 2012 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) initially got me cranky to see that the RIRs are represented on the MAG by three middle-aged white men. Yes, one of those middle-aged white men is based in Dubai, and was born in the Middle East, and so speaks Arabic. Yes, another of those middle-aged white men is from South America and speaks both Portuguese and Spanish. And yes, the remaining middle-aged white man is there because he’s representing an Asia Pacific organization. And speaks some Spanish, too, if I remember correctly. So the regional and linguistic representation boxes can be ticked.

But where are the women from RIRs? The one female representative from the RIRs, Cathy Handley, has been rotated off. Let’s look at women on the MAG from elsewhere in the technical world. Emily Taylor, who was originally chosen as a representative of Nominet, has been rotated off. Nurani Nimpuno remains one of the technical community’s representatives on the MAG. Constance Bommelaer, my colleague on the Commission on Science and Technology for Development Working Group (CSTDWG) on IGF, joins the MAG from ISOC. Overall, there are 23 women in the 56-member MAG for 2012. So there are still 10 more men on the MAG than women. So still not quite gender balance there. But not bad when you consider the following.

Gender balance in the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs)

First, a word of explanation. I am not picking on the RIRs because their gender balance is worse than any other one of the Internet technical organizations. It was simply easier for me to look at five RIR websites (plus the NRO one) than it was to look at around 200 ccTLD websites, 21 gTLD websites, or the wide number of IETF Working Groups. For all I know, gender balance is worse in those worlds. If I have the energy, I’ll track those down later. Also, please note that I am not looking at cultural or linguistic diversity here. The RIRs, on the whole, do a pretty good job in that field.

There are five RIRs. The CEOs of all five are men. Four of the five Board Chairs are men. The Boards of ARIN, LACNIC, and RIPE are composed entirely of men. But look a little closer, and you’ll find some women the RIRs:

AfriNIC

AfriNIC wins the gender balance race amongst RIRs, but even its figures are depressing. AfriNIC has a female Board Chair, Ndeye Maimouna Diop Diagne, and a female alternate Board member, Lillian Wambui Karanja. So two of its current 13 primary and alternate Board members are female. And one of its past 24 Board members was female.

One of AfriNIC’s female staff has the title of manager, and there are two vacant manager positions, so there’s a chance AfriNIC will get some more female management in the near future. Out of its current 22 staff, nine are women. But of those nine, only two work in the technical area (the other six in the technical area are men). The rest of the women work in traditionally “female” areas of communications and administration.

Update (Friday 4:24 pm): There is a second female manager at AfriNIC in the role of Registration Services Manager. The website just hasn’t been updated to show it yet, although I suspect it will be updated shortly. The total number of female employees, however, doesn’t change as an existing female technical staff member was recruited for the management position.

APNIC

APNIC comes second, being the only other RIR to have a woman on its Board, Wei Zhao. APNIC has also had another woman (also from CNNIC) on its Board (known as the Executive Council) in the past. So one out of eight current Board members is a woman, and one out of 22 past Board members has been a woman. It’s actually worse than that if you consider a number of the past members served more than one term, meaning that only two women have been elected out of a total of around 40 places on the Board since the late 1990s.

There are two women on APNIC’s 11-member Executive Team. But both in traditional “female” roles: human resources and an executive assistant. 29 of APNIC’s 68 staff are women, seven of whom are in technical roles. The rest of the women, once again, work in those traditionally “female areas” of communications and administration. I’m including the female trainers within the broad area of communications, but if you want to consider them to be technical, it bumps up the female staff in technical positions to nine.

ARIN

ARIN has no women on its seven-member Board of Directors, and never has, but it does have three women on its Advisory Council (the body that advises the Board on policy matters).

There is one woman in ARIN’s three-member executive team. ARIN currently has 50 staff, and two vacant positions. Of the current 50 staff, 20 are female. There are two names where I can’t be sure of the gender, so possibly it’s 22 female staff. Eight of the women work in technical areas. One other works in public affairs.

RIPE and RIPE NCC

Like ARIN, RIPE has never had a woman on its Board.

Nobody in its six-member senior management team is female. Out of its 137 staff, 51 are female. Of those, 10 are in what I’d consider to be technical positions. If you include the customer services women, it takes the technical total to 15. All the rest are, to be depressingly repetitive, in communications and administration roles. A number of the technical areas at RIPE NCC are completely male, including Research & Development, Global Information Infrastructure and the Database Group. There is one woman in the external relations area.

LACNIC

None of LACNIC’s current Board members are women. LACNIC doesn’t publish an easy to find list of their past Board members, but I think it’s a reasonably safe to assume that past members haven’t been female either. I wasn’t able to find a staff list on LACNIC’s website, so I can’t analyze their staff composition either. But I’ll give LACNIC the benefit of the doubt and assume that their male/female ratios are no worse than the other four RIRs.

NRO

The Number Resource Organization (NRO) is the coalition of the five RIRs and also performs the ICANN Address Supporting Organization (ASO) function. As such, the NRO Executive Council, which consists of the five RIR CEOs, is entirely male. And the 15-member NRO Number Council, which performs the function of the ASO Address Council (AC) has one female member, from the AfriNIC region. Developed regions of the world, you should be very embarrassed that it is a developing region of the world that is putting forward the single female representative on this international Number Council.

Gender balance in the IGF

Gender balance is one of the goals of IGF MAG composition, along with regional and stakeholder diversity. Likewise, gender balance is one of the items IGF workshop organizers are supposed to address in their list of workshop speakers. Women form just over two fifths of the current 2012 MAG. And a browse through past IGF workshops and main sessions shows that the majority have at least one female speaker. It’s often not half male and half female, but at least women are on the panel. It could be far better though. Civil society is particularly adept at including women as representatives.

Comparing gender balance in RIRs and United Nations-related Internet governance areas

In the various moments of crisis over the past few years when it has looked like Internet governance might move into a government-only sphere, the technical community has been very vocal in insisting that Internet governance is at its best when it has multistakeholder input and governance. And the fact that the IGF MAG has almost as many women amongst its members as men shows that diversity is being given serious consideration. The CSTDWG on IGF also had a good number of female members, including three of the five technical and academic community representatives.

So compare the gender balance in Internet governance arenas at the international (UN-related) level with what’s happening at the RIR level. Why so few women in key decision-making positions within the RIRs, both within the staff and within Boards? Why is there such a large gender imbalance both within decision-making roles and in technical positions? There are three issues I can see that contribute to this:

• Women traditionally have not chosen technical careers. But this is changing. There are a lot of women who have IT qualifications. And until women can see that other women are able to succeed in the IT world without having to beat off unwanted attention from the stereotypically socially inept male geeks, amongst other things, young girls will remain less likely to choose IT as a career. But if girls can see that being a woman in IT is not only possible, but rewarding, there’ll be a greater pool of female IT graduates to be employed by organizations and companies.
• RIR staff appointments are made by RIR staff. Given so many of the senior RIR staff are male, it may not even enter their minds to think that it’s important to encourage women in senior or technical roles. Even if it did, I suspect many of them would use the “But no qualified women applied for the position”. To that, I say, “See above, about women in IT needing role models” and “Look harder, just like you look harder to find regionally diverse applicants”.
• RIR Boards are nominated and elected by RIR members, not RIR staff. It is possible that RIR members, who are usually ISPs, suffer from the same male-dominated senior management and technical staff issues as the RIRs, and therefore, once again, the thought of gender balance doesn’t even enter their consciousness during the election process.

The Internet community often talk about the benefits of “bottom-up development” in Internet development. But here, it looks to me like RIRs and their communities need to follow the “top-down” example of international UN-related Internet governance bodies that make gender balance a priority.

I am not having a go at gender balance in the RIRs just because I’m a feminist with a mission (although I am that). There is an additional issue at stake here. If RIRs —and possibly other technical Internet organizations that I haven’t looked at here— don’t address the current gender imbalance, then they may find it very hard to sit on international Internet governance forums in future. The RIRs currently only have one woman on staff with external relations/public policy experience they could put forward for an international Internet governance forum: Cathy Handley. And she has already served her time on the IGF MAG. Who else can RIRs put forward right now apart from middle-aged white men? Perhaps one of the very few female members of their Boards if they were willing to fund them? If the RIRs don’t work to fix this gender situation, they may find themselves on the outer as bodies like the MAG look for gender-balanced member compositions. Other Internet organizations, which may have similar gender imbalances, could also find themselves in the same position.

I’m now writing articles for .Nxt, so this blog will be fairly quiet for the foreseeable future.

India has put a lot of effort into Internet governance lately.

There’s been its work since 2006 to have a National Internet Registry of India established, its input into the UN’s December 2010 enhanced cooperation consultations, its detailed proposal submitted (late) to the March 2011 meeting of the Commission on Science and Technology for Development Working Group on improvements to the IGF (CSTD WG), and its participation in draft IBSA recommendations on Internet governance in September 2011.

Then, at the end of September, at the Internet Governance Forum Critical Internet Resources main session, India explained the reasons it had participated in the initial drafting of IBSA’s Internet governance recommendations earlier in the month. In brief, India explained that IBSA countries were concerned that developing countries weren’t able to participate on an equal footing in the current Internet governance system. India’s representative, Tulika Pandey, finished by stating:

“This is yet a very initial process of a thought process which has caused this. I’m very happy that people have awoken. They’re looking at India and Brazil and South Africa. We suddenly are in the center of the IGF. We are happy about it.”

Move forward a month, and after India’s intervention at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Second Committee on October 26, India is, yet again, in the centre of Internet governance discussions around the world.

India’s speech to the Second Committee provided a detailed proposal for how it would like Internet governance to be formalised at the UN level. Under India’s proposal, 50 Member States of the UN would form a Committee for Internet-Related Policies (CIRP) that would meet for a fortnight each year in Geneva and report directly to the UNGA. Non-Member State stakeholders in Internet governance would participate via Advisory Groups that provide recommendations to the CIRP. CIRP would not replace IGF, but would take input from it. A research wing would be attached to CIRP to provide members with the detailed information and analysis of Internet issues needed for their deliberations. Oh, and CIRP is to be fully funded by the UN.

India’s suggestions, first made public in detail via an article on .nxt, resulted in a wave of hand wringing in Internet governance circles. See, for example, the October archives of the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus mailing list. Milton Mueller’s article, A United Nations Committee for Internet-Related Policies? A fair assessment, also expressed concern about the details of India’s proposal.

But it is very important to note that India’s proposal detailed in their Second Committee speech has not appeared as a draft resolution. (Note that it is possible that it has been submitted as a formal draft resolution and just hasn’t appeared on the UN website yet.) So why is there so much consternation about a proposal that hasn’t been submitted as a formal draft resolution? After all, in its current form, a speech by a Member State (yes, even a speech that comes with an annex), it can’t go anywhere.

My totally subjective personal opinion is that the anguish is being exacerbated by two factors: a) ongoing suspicion between various participants in the Internet governance ecosystem and b) amnesia about India’s previous statements expressing similar sentiments.

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF), where the focus is on open discussion and exchange rather than decisions, is a great way to address the first factor and has gone a long way to dispel suspicions about different Internet governance participants’ motives. But the only way to address the second factor, amnesia about India’s previous proposals, is to jog people’s memories.

Similarities between India’s 2011 UNGA Second Committee and 2010 Enhanced Cooperation consultation statements

In December 2010, India’s statement at open consultations on Enhanced Cooperation called for a Working Group to be created under the CSTD to develop the “possible institutional design and roadmap for enhanced cooperation in consultation with all stakeholders, and […] submit its report to the UN General Assembly in 2011”.

Move on almost a year, and with no UN follow-up on its suggestion, India tries again—this time at the Second Committee—having developed its own ideas about the institutional design of the enhanced cooperation body. Below, are similar sentiments India has expressed in its statements made less than a year apart:

1. It’s been X years since the Tunis Agenda, and no action yet

In 2010, India has expressed its view that despite the Internet’s increasingly important role in the world, the Tunis Agenda mandate for enhanced cooperation had not come to fruition. A year later, feeling that nothing had changed, India’s 2011 UNGA speech restates its concerns and refers to a greater range of Tunis Agenda paragraphs to support its views.

From the 2011 UNGA Second Committee contribution:

Indeed, this was already recognized and mandated by the Tunis Agenda in 2005, as reflected in paragraphs 34, 35, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61 and 69 of the Agenda. Regrettably, in the six long years that have gone by, no substantial initiative has been taken by the global community to give effect to this mandate. […] Meanwhile, the internet has grown exponentially in its reach and scope, throwing up several new and rapidly emerging challenges in the area of global internet governance that continue to remain inadequately addressed.

From the 2010 enhanced cooperation speech:

The Tunis Agenda of 2005 recognized the need for enhanced cooperation “to enable governments, on an equal footing, to carry out their roles and responsibilities, in international public policy issues pertaining to the internet” and mandated the UN Secretary-General to start the process towards Enhanced Cooperation by the first quarter of 2006. Almost five years later, we are yet to meaningfully discuss or operationalise the enhanced cooperation process. […] In the meantime, the reach and influence of the internet on public policy issues has grown dramatically.

2. Democracy, openness, inclusiveness, transparency

A lot of the same values appear in India’s two big Internet governance speeches of 2010 and 2011. Openness, inclusion, transparency are all ideals supported by the many stakeholders in Internet governance.

“Multilateral”, which appears in both the 2010 and 2011 speeches, rings alarm bells for many, but unfortunately, that term appears in black and white in paragraph 29—the first paragraph about Internet governance—of the Tunis Agenda. No matter how much people object to governments like India and Brazil using the term, the governmental practice of quoting exact words and phrases from previously adopted UN documents will continue. The lesson? No word in a resolution is ever unimportant. Those weasel words agreed to late at night to get a resolution through will bite you down the line.

From the 2011 UNGA Second Committee contribution:

We believe that the governance of such an unprecedented global medium that embodies the values of democracy, pluralism, inclusion, openness and transparency should also be similarly inclusive, democratic, participatory, multilateral and transparent in nature.

From the 2010 enhanced cooperation speech:

Indeed, the Internet today is universally acknowledged as a powerful catalyst for democracy, openness, inclusion and democratic values like liberty and equality. It is therefore paradoxical that the governance of such a phenomenal global force that transcends borders and welds peoples and communities across national borders, continues to lack equitable representation, transparency and inclusiveness at the international level. It is time for global internet governance to be conducted in line with established UN principles and universally accepted tenets of multilateralism.

3. A CSTD WG to work out details of enhanced cooperation/Internet public policy body

India continues to call for CSTD to develop a roadmap for their proposed UN process on enhanced cooperation. But a year on from its 2010 enhanced cooperation speech, India acknowledges that a year wouldn’t be long enough to develop such a roadmap and moves it to an 18-month timeline. My experience with the CSTD WG on improvements to the IGF suggests that an 18-month timeline for discussing the even more contentious idea of enhanced cooperation is incredibly optimistic.

From the 2011 UNGA Second Committee contribution:

In order to operationalize this proposal, India calls for the establishment of an open-ended working group under the Commission on Science and Technology for Development for drawing up the detailed terms of reference for CIRP, with a view to actualizing it within the next 18 months. We are open to the views and suggestions of all Member States, and stand ready to work with other delegations to carry forward this proposal, and thus seek to fill the serious gap in the implementation of the Tunis Agenda, by providing substance and content to the concept of Enhanced Co-operation enshrined in the Tunis Agenda.

From the 2010 enhanced cooperation speech:

We, therefore, propose that an inter-governmental working group be established under the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD), which is the designated focal point in the UN system-wide follow up to the outcomes of the WSIS. The Working Group should be mandated to prepare a report on the possible institutional design and roadmap for enhanced cooperation in consultation with all stakeholders, and asked to submit its report to the UN General Assembly in 2011. The Working Group should also take into account inputs from all international organizations including the ITU, and should recommend on the feasibility and desirability of placing the Enhanced Cooperation mechanism with an existing international organization or recommend establishing a new body for dealing with Enhanced Cooperation, along with a clear roadmap for the process.

Similarities between India’s 2011 UNGA Second Committee and other processes

India’s 2011 statement is also informed by processes and decisions that have taken place in other forums.

In both India’s 2011 statement and the recent ITU Council decision about the Working Group on international Internet-related Public Policy Issues, Member State committees/working groups consider inputs from non-Member States. In other words, the Member States can choose to discard the input if they feel it is not relevant to their deliberations. However, before feeling outraged that the proposed CIRP wouldn’t consider non-governments stakeholders as equal partners in a multistakeholder Internet, please do not forget that this isn’t so different to how a number of Internet organizations currently operate. For example, the ICANN Board considers the advice of its Advisory Committees, but ultimately has to make decisions that may contradict some of the input from ICANN’s various stakeholder Advisory Committees.

From the 2011 UNGA Second Committee contribution:

Links with the IGF: Recognizing the value of the Internet Governance Forum as an open, unique forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue on Internet issues, the deliberations in the IGF along with any inputs, background information and analysis it may provide, will be taken as inputs for consideration of the CIRP.

Compare this to the 2011 ITU Council resolution on Working Group on international Internet-related Public Policy Issues:

[The Working Group will] initiate and conduct open consultations with all stakeholders in an open and inclusive manner; and the output of the open consultations will be presented for consideration in deliberations of the Council Working Group.

India’s suggestion in the 2011 UNGA Second Committee speech that the CIRP be funded by the UN is in keeping with India’s proposal earlier this year that the IGF be funded by the UN. From the 2011 UNGA contribution:

Budget: Like other UN bodies, the CIRP should be supported by the regular budget of the United Nations. In addition, keeping in view its unique multi-stakeholder format for inclusive participation, and the need for a well-resourced Research Wing and regular meetings, a separate Fund should also be set up drawing from the domain registration fees collected by various bodies involved in the technical functioning of the Internet, especially in terms of names and addresses.

From India’s contribution to the CSTD WG on improvements to the IGF:

The accepted norm worldwide is that policy forums can function independently only when they are based on public funding. Indeed, it would be unthinkable for our national policy level institutions to have private funding. In the case of the IGF, this would mean a transition to full UN funding. In addition to predictable and budgeted UN funding, voluntary contributions can be allowed, as is the practice in many UN agencies.

The future of the CIRP proposal

Will India raise its CIRP proposal at next week’s CSTD WG on IGF improvements? I hope not. First, because one of the agreements between CSTD Member States in negotiating the extension of the WG was that no new material be admitted for the WG’s deliberations. Only the discussions and contributions received up until the end of the second CSTD WG in February were to be considered during the WG’s extension through to 2012. Introducing this CIRP proposal to the IGF WG would lead to my second reason for hoping it is not raised: it has taken up until now for the WG members to develop a reasonable level of trust amongst each other. For the new CIRP proposal to be introduced, when India was amongst the Member States who agreed not to introduce new materials, would return the WG to the levels of mutual distrust shown during the first CSTD WG meeting. And this level of mistrust would dash any hopes of reaching agreement on a report of proposed improvements for the IGF. I believe that India’s intentions in the WG are sincere, and I believe that it will honour the Member States’ agreement not to introduce new material to the WG.

While there is, as yet, no formal UNGA draft resolution by India on the proposal, given its past positions on Internet governance, it is highly likely that permutations of the proposal will be presented again in future. It is possible that if India doesn’t feel that the UNGA is listening to its concerns, it will take them to other UN agencies that are holding Internet-related discussions. And which UN agency is holding the greatest number of Internet-related discussions over the coming few years? The ITU. Will India raise its CIRP proposal at ITU’s WCIT 2012, WTPF 2013, or WSIS+10? Possibly.

If not the ITU, as the CSTD has WSIS-related outcomes as one of its activities, and given the role India proposes CSTD play in the formation of the CIRP, perhaps a variation of the CIRP proposal may turn up at CSTD or ECOSOC in 2012.

One thing we can be sure of, CIRP, or its offspring, will turn up at some UN-related forum again in the future.