The ​“CS pre-NM” is a gathering of over 90 civil society groups from around the world involved in internet governance and broader internet-related public policy debates regionally and globally. This is an action-oriented group with the aim to facilitate the expression of civil society views and feed them into the discussions at NETmundial and beyond.

The agenda is focused on setting points of consensus, discussing strategic action and distilling key messages for members of civil society that are able to pursue common goals, based on 1) defending fundamental Human Rights; 2) ensuring the Open, Decentralized and Interoperable Architecture of the Web and 3) fostering an Open, Inclusive, Democratic and Decentralised Multistakeholder model of Internet Governance.

Based on these three pillars, in order to have a clear mapping of the state of consensus within Civil Society, we are convening 3 working groups (Principles, Roadmap and IANA transition) of resource persons that will be focused until the day of our meeting on analyzing CS contributions and comments posted at NetMundial platform to deliver: a) a set of bullet points of possible ground of consensus and b) a set of questions around key issues that will require us to have agreement on during our meeting. Our hope is to honor different CS points of view presented so far, and quickly air disagreements and the arguments for each approach.

Motivation

Well-funded and well organized interest groups from within the technical and business communities will be advancing their agendas at the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance, with the intent of securing outcomes that favour their perceived interests. Civil society’s responsibility is to ensure that these outcomes do not conflict with the broader, long-term public interest. Our challenge is therefore to be equally well organised as the other stakeholder representatives, even though we do not enjoy the same funding and staffing resources that they do.

Organisers

This meeting is a joint initiative of

Association for Progressive Communications – APC , Global

Article 19, Brazil

Best Bits, Global

Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression – CELE, Argentina

Center for Technology and Society (CTS/FGV)

Derechos Digitales, Chile

Global Partners Digital, UK

Institutito de Defesa do Consumidor – IDEC, Brazil

Instituto de Tecnologia e Sociedade – ITS, Brazil

ICANN’s Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC)

Web We Want, Global