The 14th Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF 2019) took place in Berlin, Germany, from 25 to 29 November 2019, within the framework of the overarching theme: One World. One Net. One Vision.
During the course of five days, 3,679 delegates participated in-person in 200 sessions. Berlin welcomed participants from 161 different countries. 53% of these were the first-time comers and 42% of them were female.
Approximately 3,000 people participated online. 111 different countries were represented online, with the majority coming from Nigeria, Germany, Brazil, China, India and UK.
In addition to 37 thematic pre-events, Opening and Closing Sessions, the IGF 2019 programme featured 10 main thematic sessions; 64 workshops; 36 open forums; 4 individual best practice forum (BPF) sessions; 14 individual dynamic coalition (DC) sessions; 6 individual national, regional, and youth (NRIs) collaborative sessions; 16 sessions classified as “other”; 6 introductory & concluding sessions; as well as a dedicated track for legislators, for a total of 200 sessions in the overall programme. The reduced number of sessions in the programme compared to previous years is the result of the MAG’s new ‘programme shaping approach’, which aimed at having more concrete, focused discussions, and fewer parallel or duplicate sessions, with a clear thematic orientation to three key themes: (1) Data Governance; (2) Digital Inclusion; and (3) Security, Safety, Stability & Resilience.
Organizations from five different continents joined the IGF Village with 50 booths to share their work missions with the Forum’s participants. The Village included representatives from all key stakeholder groups: governments and intergovernmental organizations, private sector, civil society and technical community.
There were also 55 remote hubs organised around the world. These included all regions: 54% from Africa, 14% from the Asia-Pacific region, 7% from Eastern Europe, 6% from Latin America and the Caribbean and 19% from the group of the Western European and Others countries (WEOG ), with an active online presence, video-sharing and live-comments. There was more than one hub in Nigeria, Ghana, Chad, Benin, Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, India, Russia, Canada and Germany.
Over 120 National, Regional, and Youth IGFs (NRIs) participated onsite or online in the IGF 2019 compared to 112 NRIs in the 2018 annual meeting. Since the 2018 annual meeting of the IGF, 6 more countries have established IGF processes, increasing the number of national IGFs to 87, and 4 communities established Youth IGFs, increasing the total number to 17. The total number of regional NRIs did not change during this time. Of the 120 NRIs, 56 were physically present at the Paris IGF and over 35 actively participated at the NRIs main session on the Emerging Technologies. Over 28 different NRIs were involved in preparing 6 NRIs collaborative sessions during the IGF 2019 which focused on: access, cybersecurity, data protection and privacy, human rights and harmful content online.
The IGF 2019 was followed by more than 95 journalists and covered by major global media outlets.
Social media activity is estimated to have reached more than 10,000,000 people, with above 1,000 contributors and about 90% of a rather positive sentiment.
Below are the visual breakdowns of the overall participation at the IGF, as well as the thematic balance within the agenda.
| Onsite Participants by Stakeholder Group |
| Onsite Participants by Regional Group |
| Onsite Participants by Gender |
| Onsite Newcomers |
| Remote Hubs |
| Sessions per Theme |