ITU Remains Divided Over Transparency Issues

There’s no consensus on the level of transparency there should be for ITU procedures. At an ITU Council meeting in Geneva, member countries only agreed to publish the draft version of the future International Telecommunication Regulations. An initiative heavily pushed by Sweden to grant open access to all contributions to the World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT) was not accepted, confirmed Anders Jonsson, head of the Swedish delegation.

The draft ITR document, TD64, leaked some time ago. “We are not happy,” Jonsson said after the meeting Wednesday. “We think that more open and transparent procedures are very important, especially with regard to the Internet.” Sweden had earlier presented a proposal to allow open consultations and an observer status to all deliberations of the Council Working Group on Internet public policy issues.

Support for more transparency came from EU countries, the U.S., Canada, Australia, and some Asian and African countries. The Japanese delegate said a planned national multi-stakeholder consultation would be difficult if only the summary document, but not the original country proposals and reasoning, are available.

The delegations fought over a potential new formal group to prepare for next steps in opening up document access in general. WCIT host United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Russia wanted to postpone such work, pointing to the Plenipotentiary Conference of the ITU as the only body able to decide about it.

ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré has proposed steps for more transparency in order to avoid ratification problems for treaties due to secrecy in negotiations, as has happened in the past. The core ITR document TD64 will be published in the next weeks on the ITU website.