From: The Diplomat
Last year ended with some positive developments in cooperation on Internet governance.
By Greg Austin
After sharp controversy at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai in 2012, we can usefully take considerable comfort from the confluence of two related but more positive events late in 2014. On October 23, a Chinese citizen and international civil servant for the previous 28 years, Zhao Houlin, became Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the parent body for the WCIT. Both the ITU and the WCIT had been riven by divisive and polarizing debates about the future of Internet governance. Then, on November 7, the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference (Plenipot for short) that elected Zhao concluded with the Busan Consensus, which encompassed a number of critical aspects of Internet governance.
According to the U.S. lead at the Plenipot, Ambassador Daniel Sepulveda, who is the State Department’s Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, the meeting represented an important contrast to the WCIT. “Instead of votes, there was deliberation. Instead of acrimony, there was negotiation,” he reported. The outcome was the result of hard work by those states that had opposed each other at WCIT. This was a reference to both China and the United States. Sepulveda noted that “Representatives from states with diverse policy perspectives played critical linchpin roles in the ups and downs of a dialogue that allowed us to reach agreement and work productively.”
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