Ger­ard Best

This year could be the year to kick some Caribbean stereo­types to the curb. The re­gion has been pro­gres­sive­ly pip­ing up on the glob­al stage, break­ing long-held cul­tur­al par­a­digms in the process, in some fair­ly un­like­ly ways. Across the Caribbean, the words "glob­al In­ter­net gov­er­nance," for ex­am­ple, are be­com­ing a mean­ing­ful catch­phrase for col­lec­tive ac­tion through new chan­nels of col­lab­o­ra­tion, as Caribbean states ham­mer out their own spaces to dis­cuss their own tech­nol­o­gy de­vel­op­ment is­sues rel­e­vant to their na­tion­al and re­gion­al agen­da.

This type of dis­cus­sion was once un­com­mon across the re­gion. But that is now chang­ing, ac­cord­ing to Al­bert Daniels, Caribbean-area stake­hold­er en­gage­ment man­ag­er at the In­ter­net Cor­po­ra­tion for As­signed Names and Num­bers (ICANN).

St Lu­cian-born Daniels should know. Part of his job is to find ways to stim­u­late and har­ness this new­found en­er­gy for dig­i­tal self-gov­er­nance that is emerg­ing in the sub-trop­i­cal re­gion's small-is­land states. In fact, ICANN is one of sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions now ramp­ing up ef­forts to bring to­geth­er a broad spec­trum of Caribbean stake­hold­ers from busi­ness, gov­ern­ment, tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ty and civ­il so­ci­ety to dis­cuss is­sues re­lat­ed to In­ter­net gov­er­nance.

In Feb­ru­ary, Daniels co-led a vi­brant mul­ti-stake­hold­er dis­cus­sion in Port-of-Spain, in which re­gion­al del­e­gates di­a­logued about the steps re­quired for Caribbean coun­tries to es­tab­lish an in­ter­net gov­er­nance fo­ra at the na­tion­al lev­el.

Along­side him were rep­re­sen­ta­tives from oth­er ma­jor bod­ies in the re­gion­al tech­nol­o­gy space: Bevil Wood­ing, out­reach man­ag­er, Pack­et Clear­ing House; Kevon Swift, ex­ter­nal re­la­tions of­fi­cer for the Caribbean, Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean Net­work In­for­ma­tion Cen­tre (LAC­NIC); and Sh­er­non Os­epa, man­ag­er, re­gion­al af­fairs for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean Bu­reau, In­ter­net So­ci­ety (ISOC).

"By hav­ing these na­tion­al dis­cus­sions in­volv­ing all of the stake­hold­ers, you then have a ba­sis for form­ing na­tion­al po­si­tions, which can then feed in­to the glob­al de­bate and glob­al pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment. This is a con­cept that ICANN has been dis­cussing for a long time," Daniels said.

The ses­sion was part of a week-long con­fer­ence for­mal­ly com­mem­o­rat­ing the 25th an­niver­sary of the Caribbean Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union (CTU). Hun­dreds of del­e­gates gath­ered for the high-pro­file event in Port-of-Spain from Feb­ru­ary 2-6, among them Caribbean gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, re­gion­al reg­u­la­tors and pol­i­cy mak­ers, se­nior pri­vate sec­tor of­fi­cials, aca­d­e­m­ic re­searchers and in­ter­na­tion­al tech­ni­cal ex­perts.

Oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions rep­re­sent­ed among the speak­ers and del­e­gates in­clud­ed Cari­com, the Com­mon­wealth Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion, the Amer­i­can Reg­istry of In­ter­net Num­bers, the In­ter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Union, Con­gress WBN, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and the World Bank.

Bernadette Lewis, sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the CTU, de­scribed the 25th an­niver­sary ICT Week as "a cul­mi­na­tion of sev­er­al months of ac­tiv­i­ties cel­e­brat­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion's achieve­ments and on­go­ing work in the re­gion."

Daniels praised "all the work that has been done over the last 25 years by the CTU, and by the sec­re­tary gen­er­al and her team, in par­tic­u­lar."

ICANN and the CTU have part­nered in a num­ber of ar­eas, such as the es­tab­lish­ment of crit­i­cal In­ter­net in­fra­struc­ture, and sup­port­ing the tran­si­tion to the the next gen­er­a­tion of In­ter­net Pro­to­col.

"ICANN's most re­cent ini­tia­tive to es­tab­lish the na­tion­al-lev­el In­ter­net gov­er­nance fo­ra is a tip of the hat to the CTU, which has "the longest stand­ing re­gion­al In­ter­net Gov­er­nance Fo­rum, and was the first glob­al­ly to have an In­ter­net Gov­er­nance Fo­rum at the re­gion­al lev­el," Daniels said.

"ICANN con­tin­ues to look for­ward to col­lab­o­rat­ing with the CTU and with oth­er part­ners."