The UN Secretary-General has been invited to "convene a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue." Everyone can see his/her hearts' desires in the WSIS deal: ICANN can believe that it has survived for another day; governments can belive that they will have "an equal role and responsibility for international Internet governance"; and there will be an enormous meeting in Greece by the second quarter of 2006 to start the Internet Governance Forum going.
Here's the "oversight" paragraph:
77. The IGF [Internet Governance Forum] would have no oversight function and would not replace existing arrangements, mechanisms, institutions or organisations, but would involve them and take advantage of their expertise. It would be constituted as a neutral, non-duplicative and non-binding process. It would have no involvement in day-to-day or technical operations of the Internet.
ICANN needs to strengthen its legitimacy so that it is apparent to the world that ICANN doesn't need oversight from a UN body or any other multi-government institution. This will take a lot of work -- we're barely at the beginning. I'm focused on paying attention to the steps that are necessary to get there.
