[Community-Discuss] Issue with non-AFRINIC Fellowship to Meeting -

[Andrew Alston]

My issue is this...

On the one hand - it has been stated on this list that if all delegates sponsored by organization X it is corruption. Firstly that is a totally specious argument that has zero basis in reality.  If an idea is bad and multiple people disagree with it and oppose it - that may just be because all those disagreeing think it’s a bad idea - there is no correlation to corruption.

However - if we assume that corruption - which I still do not see how we get to - then let us look at the argument from the other perspective - if 100% of the delegates sponsored by an organization that is the arm of government from outside the region oppose something - by the logic that declares unanimous consensus to be corrupt - this to has a term - it is called colonialism.

One definition of colonialism is found below:

Colonialism is the policy of a foreign polity seeking to extend or retain its authority over other people or territories

There is no question that the OIF is an arm of the French government - their website says as much - there is no question that they are a political advocacy body - again - it is all but stated.

The question then becomes - if all the delegates sponsored by a corporate entity agree on a position - is it because the position is merely one that makes sense to those delegates or were they coerced - if the latter it is corruption, if the former, there is no problem.  Same thing applies to state sponsored delegates, if the former,  no problem, if the latter, that is a foreign entity attempting to exert control and 100% colonialist in action.

Andrew
Liquid Telecommunications - Group Head Of IP Strategy

________________________________
From: Dabu Sifiso <dabu.sifiso at yandex.com>
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2018 02:12
To: community-discuss at afrinic.net
Subject: Re: [Community-Discuss] Issue with non-AFRINIC Fellowship to Meeting -



Great idea Mr Manga,

We need to have guideline for sponsoring attendance in forms of fellowship.
However much I like the idea, I don't believe it can be enforced as a mandatory practice, but seeing it as a general guideline would be good a good thing and with some help can even be promoted.
I cannot afford traveling myself, but I would love to be able to apply to the various groups offering fellowships, AFRINIC, ISOC, OIF, ICANN, LARUS, for some, I know who they are and how to apply, I have just not yet been lucky.
Having a page with "How to attend?" would be great:
List of official fellowships:
Fellowship Website A
Fellowship Website B
Etc...

Attendees badges could have the logo of the sponsors, great publicity for the sponsors and full disclosure of who paid for their trip.
That would be a great step in transparency and promoting chances of attendance for everyone.
organizations that want to be seen would sign up for such programs without hesitation as it would only increase their presence and prestige, organizations with "sinister" goals would not want to be openly disclosed and would stay under the radar as they already do today.

Like Mr. Borg said earlier, removing the consensus from the public session would in itself remove any possible criticism on who attends the policy meeting and their affiliations/sponsors.
I never quite heard of this LARUS foundation, but the name has been mentioned on the lists a few times.

LARUS has sponsored events of AFRINIC in the past:
https://twitter.com/afrinic/status/741305950267543553<https://twitter.com/afrinic/status/741305950267543553>

So LARUS indirectly and openly has been sponsoring AFRINIC meetings and attendees for a few years already.


I had never heard of OIF involvements in the AFRINIC community until recently.

OIF apparently silently sponsors people for a long time already for what I understood from the exchanges on the list, they even paid money directly to AFRINIC in the early stages of AFRINIC.
I could not find the MOU between OIF and AFRINIC, I would love to see it just to have an understanding of what made them get involved in the first place.

I searched the OIF website for their goals and motivations into AFRINIC, I cannot find much, last big news are from 2014 when Mr Adiel Akplogan was invited to an OIF internet governance meeting at the headquarters in Paris along with Mr Fadi Chehadé from ICANN:
https://www.francophonie.org/Vers-une-nouvelle-gouvernance-de-l.html<https://www.francophonie.org/Vers-une-nouvelle-gouvernance-de-l.html>
(Google translate does a good job to translate the content.)

A government sponsored organization that specializes in promoting French agenda has enough power to invite the AFRINIC CEO and ICANN CEO to attend their own private events created on the side of official internet governance meetings, this is shows a strong and powerful organization is at play here within the AFRINIC community.

Full disclosure on their participation and the affiliates they sponsor he attendance of, I believe would be appreciated by the community and provide a much needed clarity on their goals.

/Dabu



10.12.2018, 02:19, "Willy MANGA" <mangawilly at gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> Le 10/12/2018 à 07:23, Chevalier du Borg a écrit :
>>  I have hear of
>>
>>  - Larus Foundation Fellowship
>>  - OIF Fellowship
>
> From my humble point of view, if there is a fellowship-like program in
> these organizations (and others) a better transparency will be to
> clearly state on their website:
>  * what is the objectives of the program ?
>  * criteria to apply ?
>  * a public list of people selected at each meeting ...
>
> --
> Willy Manga
> @ongolaboy
> https://ongola.blogspot.com/<https://ongola.blogspot.com/>
>
> ,
>
> _______________________________________________
> Community-Discuss mailing list
> Community-Discuss at afrinic.net
> https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo/community-discuss<https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo/community-discuss>
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