Latin America Internet Governance Experts

After my recent visit to Montevideo in Uruguay to discuss the eLAC initiative led by ECLAC, I realized that there is a quite strong basis of Internet Governance experts in the region. It was really a wonderful experience to see that these experts come not only from government representatives but also from the (so called) technical community, civil society and the private sector.

When we first met in Geneva for the prepcom meeetings of WSIS only very few people around the world were acquainted with the concept itself. No government or stakeholder knew where the discussion or debate should focus. Perhaps that is why we were only able (sounds easy..but it was not)to come out with these 4 principles of internet governance: multilateral, democratic, transparent and multistakeholder.

The priniciples still hold and everyone in the negotiating table were really involved and had a deep understanding of them. Some (unaware) tried to raise old discussions on the subject but automatically (not really) things were back where they belong.

Needs to be said that ECLAC at a very early stage of the post WSIS process made a substantial contribution in building a theoretical framework to understand all of the sectors and concepts involved in the information society.

By the way digital agendas are also evolving well...