Mike,
I do NOT agree that this is the venue to address ICANN's diversity (or
lack thereof), this is the forum for us lazy Africans to whine about
things we could easily fix ourselves.
As I have said, NOTHING, prevents anyone to observe or participate in
the ongoing Workstream 2 of the Cross Constituency Working Group for
Accountability which, unless I am mistaken, has a track on diversity.
Nothing DID prevent anyone from volunteering to be a member of said
CCWG Accountability to his/her constituency Council. But that would
then mean actual work (some 20000 Emails, 6 F2F meetings (3 of which
at ICANN meetings) and sometimes weekly or even more phone conferences
at inopportune hours.
Disclaimer, I have been a member of said CCWG Accountability until
completion of Work Stream 1 (June 2016) when one colleague and I
accepted the offer by the ccNSO Councils to the appointed members of
being replaced.
Disclaimer, Dr Nyirenda has put his name forward to serve as a ccNSO
appointed member on NomCom in the past, so he was indeed willing to
work for his stated goal. I do however challenge him to ask the
currently serving ccNSO appointee to the NomCom to give his
perspective on things (in as far as confidentiality permits).
Finally, cross posting to lists to which participants of the debate are
not subscribed is less then lazy. (I have removed them as soon as seeing
bounces)
greetings, el
On 2016-09-01 10:32, Mike Silber wrote:
Paulos
On 31 Aug 2016, at 16:48, Dr Paulos B Nyirenda <[email protected]>
wrote:
Walu, Mike,
Although racial diversity is a well recognised form of diversity,
academically or otherwise, that is not the lever that I want to go
down to in this case for ICANN Board Members, I am talking about
regional diversity as defined in the ICANN system
I think the issue is that regional diversity is not defined in the
ICANN system in the manner you are suggesting. (Actually, I think
the only system that goes that route is the UN system, of one
representative of every government of every country and then
political jockeying for leadership positions.)
Now I think there may be merit in bringing that subtle distinction
to the attention of the ICANN community and trying to create
awareness that regional diversity is not just at a continental
level, but also intra-continental.
This is what a multi-stakeholder process is all about, raising
awareness, doing the work, making proposals, getting support from
others for your views and effecting change. It is NOT throwing
rocks over the wall and then ducking - especially if you are
throwing rocks at the Nominating Committee (who have done a pretty
good job IMO) and in so doing are also indirectly imputing two very
fine individuals.
I am not instigating for a quota other than what is already in the
bylaws BUT I am asking for some reasonablenes in aclaimed ICANN
diversity which I do not see in the current NomCom selection, that
is the observation that I am making.
So let us look at some issues diversity that you seem to ignore:
* 19 elected or selected board members and post October only *THREE*
women. 15% when women make up 51% of the population; *
post-October, there will not be anyone of the board of Chinese
origin (about 1,5 billion people); * no-one from the sub-continent
on the board (though there are with origin or ancestry ties, but
no-one living in the sub-continent - about 1,8 billion people); *
three Africans (population of about 1,1 billion) of whom two live
there permanently; * only one person from the LAC (Latin America and
the Caribbean) region on the board and he is from Central America
(so South America, the Caribbean and Portuguese speakers have no
representation) (about 0,7 billion people); * quite a few Europeans,
but none from Southern or Eastern Europe.
So the ICANN board has a slew of diversity issues. I would suggest
that the “blackness” of the Africans or the under-representation
of certain parts of Africa is worth considering but not the biggest
issue we face.
Please also remember that the Nominating Committee is selecting for
both skills and diversity. There has to be a mix, you cannot have
people selected with limited or incompatible skills, simply to be
more diverse. As pointed out previously - the way to deal with that
is to get more SOIs from the very many well qualified and suitably
skilled people in our region through to the NomCom as well as the
SOs and ACs.
So I am fully supportive of doing work on diversity and as Dr Lisse
has pointed out, there is an opportunity to engage now in the WS2
work to have your views aired. What I cannot abide is criticism
without any indication of solutions or work being proposed.
So, like Walu, I am partly attracted to the ICANN system partly
because it tries to be adequately representative on the global
scene
The ICANN board is *NOT* a representative forum. I was appointed by
the ccNSO, however if do not *REPRESENT* the ccNSO on the board. I
think you miss the point of the multistakeholder model. It is
focussed on contribution and not representation. Anyone from
anywhere can (in theory) contribute.
To improve it, we need to focus on making sure that voices are heard
from areas which whose voices were not previously heard (like women,
developing countries, users). There needs to be focus on diversity
of views, *NOT* being representative.
Personally, I think if you want representation, then you need to go
to the ITU.
Mike
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