Children surf the net in a remote island community in the Philippines where fishing is the main source of income. Credit: eKindling/Lubang Tourism.

By Branislav Gosovic *
VILLAGE TUDOROVICI, Montenegro, May 21 2015 (IPS)

More than four decades ago, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) launched the concept of a New International Information Order (NIIO).

Its initiative led to the establishment of an independent commission within the fold of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), which produced a report, published in 1980, on a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO).Incomprehensible to the general public and not suitable for consideration in multilateral policy forums, the Internet governance deliberations have largely been under control of the world superpower and its cyber mega-corporations from Silicon Valley.

The report, titled “One World, Many Voices,” is usually referred to as the MacBride Report after its chairman.

The very idea of venturing to criticise and challenge the existing global media, namely the information and communication hegemony of the West, touched a raw political nerve, apparently a much more sensitive one than that irked by the developing countries’ New International Economic Order (NIEO) proposals.

A determined, no-punches-spared counteroffensive was launched by the Anglo-American tandem, which silenced UNESCO, effectively banning the MacBride Report and excluding the concept of NWICO from the international discourse and U.N. agenda.

The neo-liberal globalisation and neo-con geopolitics tide was on the rise and reigning supreme on the world scene.

The common front of the South was wavering and unsure vis-à-vis the well orchestrated challenge from the North and its multilateral arsenal deployed via the Bretton Woods and WTO troika – and, indeed, via the global media it controlled.

On the defensive and in retreat, with individual countries and their leaders targeted, pressured and tamed, the Global South lowered its profile and, facing stonewalling developed countries, it effectively shelved much of its 1960s/1970s agenda, including its quest for NIIO.

A decade ago, at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the developing countries did not have the collective will and were not prepared and organised to raise and press these broader issues.

They focused on the “digital divide”, as their key concern, which, although important, was not politically sensitive and did not represent a challenge to the existing global information order.

The rise and evolution of the Internet found the South ill-prepared to deal in a comprehensive manner with its implications, challenges and opportunities that it presented, not only for the developing countries individually and collectively, but also for the world order – economic, information and political – and for humankind in general.

The U.N. was marginalised and not allowed in depth to analyse and in an integrated, cross-sectoral and sustained way to deal with the Internet, and as a result did not provide a focus and platform that could have prompted and assisted the Global South in building and evolving its own case and vision.

The Internet-related debates and analyses have largely been focused on and limited to highly specialised and technical, often esoteric, acronym-dominated questions of its governance, which, though of vital importance, has helped to conceal or bypass many fundamental concerns.

Incomprehensible to the general public and not suitable for consideration in multilateral policy forums, the Internet governance deliberations have largely been under control of the world superpower and its cyber mega corporations from Silicon Valley, and the US-centric nature of the Internet has been defended tenaciously and preserved.

The WSIS+10 Review will be taking place shortly. There is an apparent attempt by the West – assisted by its transnational corporations (TNCs) dominating and providing key services on the Internet – to minimise the political importance and limit substantive outputs of this event.

The Group of 77 (G77) and NAM have to focus not only on the non-implementation of the Tunis agenda, but also to work out their position concerning the basic, underlying issues, including the linkages between the Internet and the international development agenda, and, more broadly, the Internet’s relevance to the international economic and political order and world peace.

There is the risk that WSIS+10 Review may turn out to be a missed opportunity for the South, and yet another encounter forced to remain within the parameters drawn and preferred by the traditional, well-entrenched masters of the global information and communication order.

Waiting one more decade for the next WSIS+20 Review may not be a recommended approach given the global economic and geo-political trends.

This relative circumspection of the Global South regarding the nature and future of the Internet is compensated in part by the voices coming from some sectors of the civil society that dare stray beyond what is allowed and permissible under the reigning global paradigm.

Thus, for example, the workshop “Organizing an Internet Social Forum”, held at the 2015 World Social Forum (WSF) in Tunis, articulated an alternative vision of an Internet and its directions for the future radically different from the current dogma.

And, an international conference on the Internet as a Global Public Resource was recently hosted by government of Malta and DiploFoundation.

“Global public resource” is a term akin to “global public goods”. The latter is a concept first launched by the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) but expurgated from its work and the U.N. discourse during the recent period, probably seen as unsuitable and a threat to the ideological purity of the privatisation gospel, a move to accommodate the political predilections of dominant elites and the current doctrinaire aversion to anything “public”.

To move the global debate and multilateral negotiations in a desired direction largely depends on the developing countries as a collectivity, the Global South.

These countries need to grasp the gravity of the systemic issues involved, on par and indeed in some ways more important than those of the traditional international economic, financial, political and social agendas.

The moment is ripe for them to brush up on the original NAM NIIO initiative and the Report of the McBride Commission on NWICO, and consider their relevance in the age of the Internet.

They should work on an alternative vision of the Internet, its functions and governance, which should evolve into the backbone of a future global information and communication order needed in a multipolar world of the 21st century.

Currently, the Internet remains a prisoner of the dominant neo-liberal paradigm and its mantras forced upon the planet by the Western powers and in the service of their global, geopolitical and corporate interests. It needs to be liberated from these shackles.

Debate and study that view the Internet from humankind’s point of view need to be launched. This will require the Global South to do its homework in depth and fully on the implications and potential roles of the Internet, in order to prepare its platform and press for the initiating of all-inclusive multilateral negotiations and debate.

The BRICS countries together possess the necessary expertise, experience and power to provide the leadership and motor force for mobilising the Global South’s collective stand and action on the Internet.

With the high likelihood that the core countries of the West will react negatively, pressure individual developing countries (as appears to have been the case with Brazil, which has lowered its traditionally forceful public stance on Internet issues), and that obstacles within the U.N. system will persist, doing something concrete independently, via South-South cooperation will be required, and indeed is the only way out of the current impasse.

Here many options exist, including creating supporting institutions and expert bodies and organising regular deliberations, at both technical and political levels.

Bridges should be built with the progressive civil society and possibly with some like-minded countries in the North that are not too happy with the existing system.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

When Cuba chaired the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) back in 1979, Western nations dismissed the world’s largest single political coalition as lacking legitimacy since Havana was considered a close ally of the then-Soviet Union.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has not yet declared his intention to attend or skip the summit. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

Taking the cue from the West, even some of the mainstream news organisations, as a matter of editorial policy, continued to cynically describe NAM as the “so-called” Non-Aligned Movement right through Cuba’s four-year chairmanship, which ended in 1983.

Still, both Cuba and NAM survived the name-calling and political vituperation, despite an organised campaign to discredit the coalition as covertly pro-Soviet.

With Iran taking over the chairmanship later this month – for the first time in the history of the 120-member NAM – the Western world is expected to react as negatively as it did to Cuba.

Israel, which has threatened to unilaterally attack Iran on the ground Tehran is developing nuclear weapons, has urged Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to skip the NAM summit scheduled to take place in the Iranian capital Aug. 26-31.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported last week that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has personally appealed to the secretary-general not to attend the NAM summit, describing Iran as “a regime that represents the greatest danger to world peace”.

But Ernest Corea, former Sri Lankan ambassador to the United States and author of “Non Alignment: The Dynamics of a Movement,” told IPS that if Ban visits Tehran for the NAM summit, “he will be following precedent and reaffirming the bond between the United Nations and the 120-member NAM”.

Of course, he should attend the summit, said Corea, but should keep clear of bilateral discussions with the Iranian leadership on matters within the purview of the U.N. Security Council – unless he is encouraged or authorised to do so by the Council.

In an editorial titled “U.N. Chief Should Boycott Tehran Conference,” the Washington Post weighed in Wednesday, pointing out “the conference promises to be a festival of resistance to the United States, the U.N. Security Council and Israel.”

The editorial said that Ban may be hoping he can single-handedly persuade the Iranians to end their quest for nuclear weapons.

“That assumes the United Nations leader has more clout than anyone else who tried. We’re told that Mr. Ban sees this as a crucial moment for a diplomatic last ditch effort. But it doesn’t seem even remotely likely to succeed.”

If these concerns are related to Iran’s nuclear programme, an Arab diplomat told IPS, “why has the West continued to diplomatically avoid the question as to why Israel should have nuclear weapons but not Iran?”

Iran insists that its nuclear programme is related to its growing energy needs, and not aimed at making weapons of mass destruction.

Chakravarthi Raghavan, a veteran journalist who has covered the United Nations both in New York and Geneva for decades, told IPS whether one likes it or not, NAM is a political gathering, and represents the largest group of nations, and members of the U.N.

“Whatever the views and policies of the host, it would be a folly for the head of the U.N. Secretariat not to go there to present a U.N. view – and not act as a partisan of U.S.-Israeli interests or Israeli lobbying groups in the U.S.,” said Raghavan, who has covered NAM summits from the very inception.

He also pointed out that the secretary-general “is only the head of the U.N. secretariat in terms of the U.N. charter, although U.Thant (a former secretary-general) said at a press conference in the 1960s that the U.N. chief also acted as the conscience of humanity.”

Asked if Ban has plans to attend the summit, his Deputy Spokesperson Eduardo del Buey told reporters last week, “Well, we see reports coming out of Jerusalem, and we have no trip to announce.”

“If and when the secretary-general has something to announce, we will announce it,” he added.

Pressed for an answer Wednesday, he said: “The media is full of reports and a lot of issues. We are not commenting on any proposed trips for the time being. I can continue repeating that if you like; I’ve been doing it for the past few days.”

In a statement issued Monday, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a strongly pro-Israeli lobbying group, urged Ban “to make clear that he does not intend to travel to Iran later this month”.

In a letter to the secretary general, the ADL said: “Your presence in the Iranian capital at this time will be counterproductive to the efforts of the international community to bring Iran into compliance with its obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions. ADL has not received a reply.”

NAM, which was created in 1961, has been chaired by 12 countries from the global South, including the former Yugoslavia, Algeria, Sri Lanka, India, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia, Zambia, and currently Egypt, which formally hands over the chair to Iran at the Tehran meeting.

Corea told IPS that non-alignment as a foreign policy option predates the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement.

As the late Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru once explained, non-alignment is the means by which newly-independent states retained independent control of their foreign policy in the same way that they were – post-colonialism – able to manage their domestic affairs.

“The Non-aligned Movement (NAM) is a coalition of countries that follow a non-aligned foreign policy or profess to do so,” said Corea.

Their founding principles remain intact and relevant in today’s world: mutual respect, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference, mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence, he said.

NAM’s relevance has to be assessed in relation to how closely its members uphold these principles in practice, he declared.

“All countries holding NAM chairmanship seek clout for themselves while doing so. Some succeed, some don’t,” said Corea.