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• Thoughts for Rio : A bureau for the IGF
• Pensées pour Rio : Un bureau pour l'IGF
• A Legal Analysis of the IGF process - - -
• A follow-up note ( 31 may 2007 ) - - -

At this meeting, the IGF process began and ended in a legal vacuum. The Multistakeholder Advisory Group ( MAG ) has ceased to exist and its mission cannot be renewed. The Bureau, as mandaded by the Tunis Agenda has not been created. The host country has not formed a Program Committee. The IGF secretariat is acting without any defined mandate or authority.

In this surrealistic legal context, very strange meetings occurred on the following days : May 24 and May 25. It appears now confirmed that some stakeholders were very hopeful, until the very last moment, that the Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) would be reconvened in its very same composition by the UN secretary general before May 23. This did not happen. This was to be expected from the UN secretary general who must follow, with legal care, the WSIS texts. This renewal would have also contradicted previous statements by Nitin Desai himself. On May 24 and May 25 was planned an unannounced closed two-day meeting of the renewed MAG. Therefore, without previous warning, this MAG closed meeting was turned into a very informal ad hoc consultation meeting that was open only at the very last moment, resulting for all practical purposes into a semi-closed two-day meeting. Many civil society stakeholders ( that were not among the happy few that were aware of those secret preparations ) made travel plans only to attend the May 23 meeting, or made other schedule arrangements in Geneva. The outcome of those meetings, of an undefined nature, on May 24 and May 25, is legally null and void. No transcripts were made.

• Chronolgical selection of excerpts of the transcript - -