Page History
Position - EC Africa
| Question | Answer | |
|---|---|---|
Why do you want to serve on the EC? | My first effective contact with Internet Governance was at the Netmundial meeting in Brazil. This contact greatly exposed me and this is why I believe that the medical profession need to be better involved in the process of shaping the governance structure of the internet so as to participate effectively and to bring the medical dimension to the deliberations in the best interest of the health sector as a whole and those of their clients who most often can’t stand up for themselves. For this, serving on the NCUC EC will permit me to learn faster and understand the internet governance structure better so I can become a better advocate for human rights especially the right to Credible information, the right to privacy given that health care provision over the internet is getting more and more important. Please, I strongly wish to bring to the table the needs of the marginalised population from Africa and especially that of the rural poor with regards to access to reliable and affordable Internet. When will I Have access to internet let alone good speed internet when rendering health care to the rural population? | Being Being in the EC of NCUC will give me the unique opportunity to attend to these problems based on experience. I have the added advantage of being perfectly bilingual speaking and writing French and English fluently. This will enable me to follow most discussions first hand and equally reach out, listen to and communicate with both the English speaking countries and the French speaking countries of Africa in a language they best understand. |
Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. to serve on the NCUC Executive Committee,
| I see myself as a good communicator and a consensus builder. I am a perfectly bilingual young female ophthalmologist with my feet straddled between two countries Cameroun and Nigeria. I am a Camerounian by birth and a Nigerian by Marriage. I am from Bamenda (English speaking) I lived all my childhood in French speaking Bafoussam where I studied in a French school to have a baccalaureate. I then pursued my education in English in the University of Calabar teaching hospital in Nigeria from where I graduated in 2002 with and MBBCH. I am an ophthalmologist with the West African college of Surgeons. I am the Program Manager of the Cross River State Eye Care Program where we collaborate with Sightsavers a British non-governmental organization providing free eye care services, to hard to reach communities in Cross River state. I am also the president of the Medical Women Association of Nigeria Cross River State Branch (MWAN- CR) an affiliate of the Medical Women International Association (MWIA). I also serve as the Programmes Coordinator of Age Care Foundation Nigeria a member of Consumer International, a non-profit organization, with a vision of building a sustained human empowerment rights in alliance with Consumer International and in consonance with global charter for consumers’ right. I am a member of the Nigerian coalition for affordable internet. My interest in the Internet governance took me to Brazil and while there even as a first timer I contributed effectively and my submission led to the amendment of Netmundial outcome Document taking into consideration the right of the handicapped. In section one, the internet governance principals, under the human rights. I noticed that though in Paragraph 6, persons with disabilities were taken into consideration they were in actual sense not included in the decision making process and this was obvious from the fact that the proceedings did not provide for those with hearing difficulties, those vision impairment, hearing loss and in fact those with any other forms of serious physical disabilities. For these people a well structured and organised internet platform could indeed provide them with a second chance to attain their full potentials in life. In that same spirit I want to advocate even more for NCUC. Above all, my passion for service is the most important thing I bring to the table. | |
The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the Constituency.
| I am based in Africa, I shall be able to give at least fourteen hours per week and more when needed to carry out EC tasks. I have no personal limitations on my ability to attend online meetings but I must emphasise here the problem of connectivity that undermines Africa and more importantly the rural Africa. If funded I am always available to attend ICANN Meetings in person. | |
Communication with the membership is critical. | As a new timer I will follow-up as a fast learner to engage with current members and one thing that I am personally motivated to do is by basing discussion and decisions on tangible evidence as opposed to “gut feeling” or anecdotal examples, it is expected that this non-exhaustive list of improvements may be seen in the policy development processes (PDP). · Issue Identification/Scoping/Report: The GNSO is able to consider the scope of impact to affected parties in prioritizing its policy development efforts; the most critical and impactful issues can be prioritized in the queue to be resolved. This is especially important when considering that community volunteers and staff support have limited capacity, as well as the length of PDP efforts. · Working Group: The EC deliberations and development of recommendations should be improved by creating right-sized solutions to the identified issues. · Post-Implementation: The implementation of the policy can be evaluated to determine its level of effectiveness. With that information, the community can make informed decisions about allowing a policy to remain as it is, make modifications, or replace a policy entirely. | |
| How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why? Be concise (200 words maximum). | I see NCUC as the major driving force of the Internet governance architecture. This is the only time when the individual rights can be effectively protected. I see NCUC as the watch dogs empowered with the right teeth to bite whoever attempts to hijack this common good: the Internet. The leasing of health-related TLDs to registrars, who in turn sell domain names to individuals and organizations, is taking a variety of forms, but most are being sold off in open auctions. A single organization, Donuts Inc., is currently in the running for 11 of these TLDs, including .health. This raises concerns that websites with health-related TLDs could spread misinformation or sell unproven medical products, with the imprimatur of a seemingly official domain name. "It is self-evidently problematic to propound online scientifically unfounded information, or biased information, in an era where customers and patients are increasingly using the Internet as their primary source for health information. Although there are objections from the World Health Association (WHO), World Medical Association, European Commission, International Medical Informatics Association, and the independent ombudsperson who oversees ICANN's activities. Presently, ICANN is not capable of enforcing the policies that prevent domain name users from violating laws and regulations. This is the aspect of ICANN I would like done differently either by collaborating with the appropriate enforcement agencies or otherwise. Likewise Health is a sensitive area and should be treated with extreme care. The .health domain names should be strictly regulated so as to provide reliable information while respecting the right to privacy. I shall contribute to the enhancement of NCUC's role through networking beyond ICANN, through lobbying for the creation of new "rules and guidelines, establishing decision making processes, transparency policies, and certification/accreditation processes to create a subset of easily identifiable and protected health-related domains for the public interest." A specific suggestion is to make .health, and related TLDs, "sponsored" top-level domain names, similar to .aero and .post, which have stronger restrictions on use and are accountable to the specific industries they serve. |
