Global Multistakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance

The NETmundial Initiative (NMI) was a controversial effort to create a new platform for internet governance issues. The NMI was named after an internet governance conference held by the Brazilian government and DNS overseer ICANN in May 2014; it was intended to help turn the conference's final principles into action.

Despite the backing of both the US and Brazilian governments, the initiative ran into trouble almost immediately when it was revealed that the three lead organizers had decided to award themselves "permanent seats" on its 25-member council, leading to comparisons with the United Nations' Security Council. Despite efforts by the organizers to respond to criticism, the initiative was rejected by a number of key internet organizations including the Internet Society and the Internet Architecture Board. As a result, two of the five proposed permanent seats were never taken up.

The initiative ran for 18 months until its "mandate" ran out in July 2016. Just prior to that deadline, both ICANN and the World Economic Forum said they were withdrawing from the project. At a planning meeting, the US government representative called for the NMI to be shut down. ICANN and the WEF had contributed $200,000 each. Plans for re-election of council members were postponed and then cancelled. The remaining member - CGI.br - initially suggested it would continue the initiative in some form but in August 2016, the initiative announced an open call for a new group to take over the "solutions map" that was its most significant work product.

The NETmundial meeting held in São Paulo, Brazil, in April 2014 saw 1,480 people from 97 countries come together to discuss internet governance issues in light of mass surveillance by the US government revealed by Edward Snowden. Attendees came from a wide range of sectors: government, private sector, civil society, technical community and academia.

Its concluding, non-binding Multistakeholder Statement contained a shared set of Principles and a Roadmap to guide the evolution of Internet cooperation and governance. Months later, DNS overseer the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) funded an "initiative" named after the conference with the goal of working together to apply the NETmundial Principles to address Internet issues in concrete ways.

The NMI was launched in on 6 November 2014 as an "open source platform" and a "shared public resource" that would provide help to any "calls for assistance on non-technical issues." ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade said: "If there is a cybersecurity issue, or someone who has figured out how to protect children through a browser," then they could use the platform to connect with others as well as crowdsource and fund their efforts.

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