Main Session: Internet Governance for Development

Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum
27 -30 September 2011
United Nations Office in Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya

September 27, 2011 - 11:00am

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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Sixth Meeting of the IGF, in Nairobi, Kenya. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

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>>CHENGETAI MASANGO:   Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

We are about to start the session.

Okay.  Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  This is the Internet Governance for Development main session, and I would like to introduce to you the chair, Laurent Elder, who is from the International Development Research Center.

I'll hand it over to the chair.

Thank you.

 

>>LAURENT ELDER:   Thank you very much.

So excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, let's resume the meeting and open this morning's session, the first main session of the IGF on Internet Governance for Development.

I am really looking forward to this session because IDRC, the International Development Research Center, is an institution that focuses on international development.  So the relationship between what we're talking about during these three days and international development is at the core of what I'm really interested in and what I think a lot of us should be interested in.

And I should actually start by saying that it's kind of ironic that I'm chairing this session, because I used to be quite a skeptic of the relationship between Internet governance and development, especially when you see the magnitude of the issues that we're dealing with in international development.  But history, I think, has proved me wrong, if you take into account the issues with WikiLeaks, if you take into account the Arab Spring and the importance of technology in the Arab spring, and even if you take into account the fact that a company like Facebook has become one of the biggest companies in the world.  These issues have put development and international development at the forefront of the types of issues that we should be discussing at the IGF.

So the main question that this session is meant to attempt to answer is what are the examples of specific global Internet governance issues that may have particular relevance to development.

To help us with this session, we have two moderators.  One is Mr. Ben Akoh, who is the project manager for one of our co-Canadian institutions called the International Institute for Sustainable Development, and Ms. Olga Cavalli, who is the Advisor for Technology, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the government of Argentina.

So their task is to keep us in line, to keep the flow of the conversation going.

The moderators for remote participation are Mr. Fouad Bajwa, who is the co-founder of the Organization for Internet and Innovation, and Mr. Barrack Otieno, who is a former IGF Secretariat.

We also have six expert panelists, and the moderators will be introducing them.

Now, before we get started, I wanted to make sure that two things were kept in mind by both the panelists and the people in the audience.  We need to be brief.  The translators are only here until 12:30, so the session must end at 12:30 no matter what.  We are already slightly late, so that means we have a shorter session.  So keep your comment as brief and to the point as possible.

I like to -- I have often bothered my team with the idea of focus on the nugget, the golden nugget that you want to convey to people.

Second, in the spirit of all IGFs, please be respectful.  Please be constructive in your comments.  Let's try to not make any ad hominem attacks or any naming and shaming.

So with that, over to Ben and Olga.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   Thank you, Laurent.  It's a pleasure to be here.

The session that we have this morning is titled IG for development, Internet Governance for Development.

The development agenda has been on the Internet governance agenda for the past few IGFs.  Previous discussions have explored the possible effects of global Internet governance arrangements on the development of the Internet, and people-centered information societies in developing countries.

IG4D was workshop program in the previous IGFs, but it has assumed a key theme in 2011.

It is hoped that the development agenda will be a cross-cutting focus in each of the other key themes that we run throughout the next three days.

Today we shall be discussing these development and Internet governance-related issues, and perhaps we will be seeking answers to some key questions.  One of them is, which is our overarching question, is what are examples of specific global Internet governance issues that may have particular relevance to development?

The subquestions that we have to ask today, and we have a wonderful panel which will address some of these concerns, and of course you on the floor as well, would be how are Internet governance decisions at the national and international level related?

How can Internet governance be integrated into development approaches?

How can IGF foster the development process?

What are the development issues/concerns that to date have not received sufficient attention in the IGF?

And a few more questions.

My name is Ben Akoh, as the chair has said.  I work as a program manager for the International Institute for Sustainable Development.  We're based in Winnipeg in Canada.  And together with me this morning is my beautiful host, co-host, Olga Cavalli.  I will let Olga introduce herself.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:   Thank you very much, Ben, and especially for the "beautiful" word.

Hello again.  I saw some of you in the previous session, which was introductory.

This one is the first main session that we will have.  And it's very interesting because it's about development, which is something I personally have been studying and investigating for many years, especially with focus in Latin America where I come from.  I'm advisor of technology of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Argentina.  I am a university teacher, and I also run the South School of Internet Governance in Latin America to bring new leaders to this fantastic space for debate about Internet governance.

So the next session that we will have, it's about Internet governance and development, and we have organized it such as each panelist -- one of each of the five panelists will address one of the main issues of the IGF.  But the idea is that you get this as an introductory session, and you get these ideas throughout all these four days, and maybe you can address or ask other questions or you follow-up with other main sessions and workshops throughout all the program of the IGF.

So I would go now to present you our distinguished panelists who are -- I will start with my friend Bill Drake from United States and Switzerland.  He is an international fellow in the media change and innovation division of the institute of mass communication and media research at the University of Zurich where he teaches courses on Internet governance and Internet and social change.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   On the panel as well this morning is Dimitri Diliani.  Dimitri is the head of the African region, Nokia Siemens Networks.

He has over 22 years of experience in telecommunications.  He was the assistant professor of an electrical engineering department at Bell Labs, and has worked for Lucent technologies.  You're welcome, Mr. Dimitri.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:   And also we have Joy Liddicoat from APC.  She is from New Zealand.  She coordinates Internet and human rights projects.  She was a commissioner with the New Zealand Human Rights Commission for eight years and has experience in the Asia and Pacific region, women's rights, sexual orientation, gender identity, and human rights and the Internet.

Welcome, Joy.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   We have Romulo Neves.  Romulo is with the government of Brazil.  You're welcome, Romulo.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:   We have my friend Katim Touray from ICANN board.  He is an independent development consultant based in Gambia.  He serves on the council of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa, FOSSFA, and immediate past member of the Board of Directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   We finally have on the list of our panelists today Khaled Fourati.  Khaled is from the International Development Research Center, IDRC, and works there as a senior program officer.

Khaled has a lot of experience working in the southern African region, helping countries apply ICTs to social and economic developments.  You're welcome, Khaled.

We are going to go straight into the session and we will ask the first question.  And the question is to Bill.

Bill, what is IG4D?  Why is it an important concept in global Internet policy dialogue?  And why are we even talking about it?

 

>>WILLIAM DRAKE:   Thank you very much, Ben, for asking me the simple question to start with.

It's actually an interesting question that we spent quite a lot of time on over the past few years.  During the Rio through Vilnius IGFs, I organized a series of four workshops on the notion of a development agenda for Internet governance, in which we, inter alia, lobbied for the establishment of a main session on IG4D, which we finally realized in Vilnius.

And in the course of all of these discussions, I had to say that I felt, often, like I was restarting the conversation over each time.  I would work through to a certain level of consensus with the people in the room about how to think about these things again.  Then the next time, I would go to the next meeting a year later, a different group of people would be in the room and we would start over and we would get different kinds of ways of thinking about this.

And I remember just before the Vilnius session, when we were doing the main session, a prominent person from the Internet technical community came up to me and said, "What the heck is this about?  I don't understand what this session is about.  What are you doing?"

So a lot of people find this very obscure.

That puzzles me in a way, because it shouldn't be obscure.  Perhaps it's just we're not used to thinking about things in this frame.

You know, the reality is that if you work in any kind of a policy arena around ICTs, both at national level and at the global level, you will find that there's a substantial dialogue among many people about how to make policy frameworks more optimized to the promotion of development.  At the national level, people who work in telecom, ICT and so on, spend all their time talking about what is an enabling environment, what types of regulations or hands-off approaches towards ISPs best lead to the roll out of infrastructure, et cetera, et cetera.  Similarly, if you spend much time around Geneva and international organizations like I do, you know that in the World Trade Organization there is a committee on trade and development, in UNCTAD, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.  They explore in detail the links between trade relations and development.  In the World International Property Organization, there's a development agenda which tries to look at how global rules of the game impact development.

So linking developmental dimensions to policy frameworks, either at the national level or global level, is not necessarily an obscure activity.  It's one that I shouldn't be, I would think, something that's so hard for people to get their minds around.

Now, of course, we don't all have to agree to exactly one consensual way to thinking about development when we do this.  Development is a contentious concept.  It has many dimensions, can be viewed in many different ways from many different angles.

And so, also, the way it's linked to Internet governance is going to yield similar kind of diversity of views.  That's fine.

For me, at the end of the day, then, the simple point is to ask the question.  That is to say, when I think about IG4D or I think about a development agenda more ambitiously, I think about a holistic program of analysis and action that mainstreams development considerations into decision-making across the range of Internet governance mechanisms.  And I'm particularly interested in global mechanisms here.  I think the national level issues are somewhat different, and others here on the panel will speak more to those than I will.

In the first instance, that's an analytical enterprise.  It means aggregating information, it means pulling things together, monitoring trends, making them formatted and accessible in a way that people can internalize and draw lessons from.  And then, you know, essentially taking any given issue and saying, hmmm, is there a developmental dimension to this. In many cases the answer may well be no.  In some cases you may find that there is something there and that might merit some consideration and taking it forward a bit.

So first there's an analytical thing, and then secondly, you try, if you can, to identify and generalize good or best practices.  And, where necessary, perhaps to identify consensual tweaks or enhancements to the processes that would enhance the development awareness of Internet governance procedures and policies.

So at the end of the day -- and I'm timing myself.  I have 30 seconds left.  At the end of the day, I'm not suggesting an approach that says Internet Governance for Development means we go into U.N.-based negotiations and treat Internet issues in the same manner that we negotiate over trade and who is giving up what for what, et cetera.  I am saying that I think we could have a multistakeholder process, an open one that is very information intensive, that simply surfaces and aggregates information about how these -- what these linkages might be and how we might encourage members in the international community in different institutional environments to enhance their actions to make them more sensitive to developmental considerations.

So for me, in closing, that means three things.  That means looking at capacity building activities in particular, and how to systematize those and make them more widely available, and attuned to developing country needs.  It means looking at institutional procedures and identifying any informal barriers or difficulties that developing countries, both governments and nongovernmental stakeholders, might experience, in participating in Internet governance processes, and then finally looking at actual policy outcomes and saying do these policy outcomes take on board the possibility that this could impact development, either in a positive or a negative way.  And if so, can we think about ways to do that more effectively.

So that's what I mean by IG4D.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:   Thank you very much, Bill.  And I would like to stress the fact that Bill has been the one to bring this issue about Internet governance and development first through workshops and then through the organization or leadership of this Internet governance and development essential.

So I think this is very important and remarkable.

And I have a question for Dimitri.  Nokia has seen increasing growth in the mobile market in Africa in recent times, and I think all over the world.  With the mobile Internet being the access of choice, what are some of the development issues that have emerged in your operations in the continent and perhaps in other developing countries across the world?

Dimitri.

 

>>DIMITRI DILIANI:   Thank you.

Good morning.

Mobile Internet now is becoming mainstream technology today.  There is more than 500 million users today that are using mobile Internet, broadband mobile Internet services across the world.  And the demand is accelerating every day.  It's driving more and more traffic through our networks as we speak.

We estimate that there will be a tenfold increase in the number of subscribers of broadband mobile Internet this decade, and there will be a hundredfold in terms of the usage per subscriber per day.  Again, we estimate roughly around one gigabit of data per day is going to be driven by user.  This is huge, huge volumes compared to what's happening in our networks today across the world.

Mobile Internet presents the greatest opportunity for growth for the Internet availability across all countries, and especially in developing countries, in developing countries.

The cost of the initial deployment of mobile Internet is extremely flexible, extremely cheap and flexible compared to other technologies around the world, wireless technologies.

However, they are very challenged today in terms of deployment, especially deployment in continents like Africa or in most developing countries.  There are three challenges I would like to talk about.  The first one is spectrum challenges.  Both in terms of utilization and allocation.  We still have a lot of places today in the continent where 3G spectrum is not allocated.  We don't even have the broadband services in a lot of countries in Africa.

We need some policies across the continent, across the world to ensure harmonization and -- harmonization of frequency, and limit the fragmentation across the bands.

This will drive our costs -- from a manufacturing perspective, it's going to drive our costs significantly down, allow the operators to deploy much more cost effectively than what we are doing today.

We simply have too many spectrums today, too many bands, making it very difficult to make it cost-effective to deploy networks.

The second one is the device ecosystem.  We need some policies to allow developing countries to migrate from low-cost devices -- mainly voice-centric devices -- into high-end, feature-rich, Internet devices or devices that allow you to access the Internet. 

 And finally, we are having challenges in the continent, especially here in Africa, in terms of power and transport.  Power -- or lack of, especially when you get out to rural Africa -- to be able to deploy and provide the Internet to everybody in the continent, we need to have power or alternative means of power, at least, reliable power, and transport.

We have dropped undersea cable to the continent so now we have good connectivity to the entire world.  Where we are challenged still is in the last-mile connectivity.

We just simply don't have enough more spaces on the towers to keep putting microwave dishes to back the track from the tower back to the networks itself.  That's going to require some vision on behalf of governments, and strategies on how to allow operators to share the transport networks to make it cost-effective for everybody, especially the consumers across the continent.  Thank you.

 

>>BEN AKOH:  Thank you very much, Dimitri.  Those were very useful comments.  Policy-specific where relation to spectrum, the migration from low-end to high-end systems, and access to the Internet, last-mile connectivity.

Joy, we would like to pose some questions to you.

As the Internet becomes more pervasive, especially as mobile devices have contributed in the increase in access to the Internet have become available and are in the hands of the majority of the earth's people, certainly there must be some privacy, security, and -- concerns around openness.  What are some of these concerns that have emerged in your work, both at the global and local level?  Joy?

 

>>JOY LIDDICOAT: Jambo.  Thank you.

Very briefly, in response to the question also of how are Internet -- is Internet governance related to development, I would say firstly, my view is that human rights are as fundamental to Internet governance as Internet protocols are to the DNS.  Internet governance cannot be effective, sustainable, and democratic, for all multistakeholders in their respective roles unless it's based on fundamental human rights.  So I think the two are two are inextricably linked. 

 In terms of development, also we must simply first acknowledge that the United Nations has itself framed development as a right, and the right to development is being engaged with by many developing countries and many other forums, and one important aspect for this forum is to make those links.

In terms of security, openness, and privacy, I think there are some emerging issues.  The first is that while the Internet is becoming an indispensable tool for realizing human rights and accelerating sustainable development, we are seeing that access to infrastructure and access to content and staying online has resulted in new forms of human rights violations.

So for example, we've seen that restricting access to infrastructure, while it may be partly a resource question for some states, in other states it may be a strategy to restrict democratic participation.

So slow uptake, slow implementation of infrastructure, is itself a security and openness issue because without access, we cannot have fully democratic participation.

And in addition, new forms of control are emerging in terms of Internet and information control techniques.  Astroturfing.  The creation of fake grass-roots movements.  No longer are states shying away from asserting the right to control information and content, especially in development context.  Rather, they're asserting their rights as -- their obligations as states to do so, and this raises new issues for development because what does that mean when states and private sector are working together on these issues?

So in our view, Internet governance must remain transparent, predictable, and based on human rights and other good governance principles.  And they must also uphold women's human rights and take into account the multiple and intersecting ways in which gender and development are also affecting women's human rights.

We think that finally, in terms of Internet for -- Internet governance for development, that there's really a need to hear multiple voices from diverse developing contexts, including civil society participation in more and more diverse places.  Thank you.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Thank you very much, Joy. 

 Romulo, I cannot see you.  I go here.  Romulo, I have a question for you and it's good to have you on the panel because you come from a country that has similar challenges like mine.  We live in developing countries with big territories, very big cities, very populated cities, and rural areas.

So my question to you is:  Which are the challenges for access and diversity emerging in your country with the development of the Internet now?

 

>>ROMULO NEVES:  Good morning, Olga.  Thank you.

First of all, I'm replacing a friend of mine that should speak here about a very narrow on thing, that was intellectual property, so we decided in Brazil to change our point to the debate, and Olga, sorry for -- if I don't address directly your question.  Of course Brazil has a national broadband plan of universalization of access, but I would like to change a little bit of the -- the point to discuss -- to broaden a little bit the discussion, because we don't believe development taken as access covers the entire question posed by the organization.

I would like to talk very briefly about the very nature of the Internet that provides room for creativeness to talk about Internet governance for development.

First of all, it's a new phenomenon.  It's, let's say, a 30 years phenomenon.  That's the oldest we can imagine.  It's an international phenomenon, in its very first beginning.  Or it was not international, but the idea was to be -- to become international.

It's a sharing phenomenon.  The sharing nature of the Internet is, in itself, since the beginning.

It was chaotically, let's say, generated, and in a certain way, it was generated in a romantic way that was based in this sharing nature.  And it is -- it has a fast development, very fast development, based on technology.

Well, saying that, I would like to point out some questions, and in the end, I would like to put them together.

So maybe in the following four minutes, the phrase could appear not connected, but in the end I would like to put them together.

Besides the very nature of the Internet that I just talk about, we have a very important character of the Internet that is -- within this issue, we have the important participation of a variety of multistakeholders, because of the very nature of the Internet, the beginning of it.  So we have the governments, but we have within the governments -- we have the developed countries' governments and we have developing countries' governments.  We have the intervenors, of course, and within this group, we have the providers, we have the companies that use the Internet, and we have the Internet companies related to the very new model of economic activity such as Facebook or Google that didn't exist in the past.

We have the civil society, and then also in this group we have the developing countries civil society and developed countries civil society, and within the developing countries civil society, we have those countries within the civil society that has freedom, that has -- is organized, and we have those countries within the civil society that aren't organized and don't have, let's say, too much freedom.

And we have the academy that played a very important role in the beginning of the Internet.

So Brazil, as you may know, supports the multistakeholder model because we have -- we carry out, inside the country, a very successful multistakeholder model, so we understand that.

Besides that, we have an existing diversity of fora of decisions.  We have IGF, we have IETF, we have ICANN that -- whose mandates are very different but complementary.  And we have groups -- different groups in the continents that take care of different aspects of the Internet.

So the variety of fora also reflects the variety of issues on the stage.  So we have technical issues, we have political issues, we have Internet governance directly related issues.

So this is an important thing that we need to put on the stage.

And we have the actual flow of decisions that -- in respect of this diversity of fora that are also very different.

Within this diversity of flow of decisions, we have money interests, we have power interests, and I would call them the extreme of the spectrum.  Money interests includes commercial, economical, and infrastructure interests.  And we have the power interests that includes arms, money, sovereignty, history.  And we have within these extremes the public interest that is also within the money extreme and within the power extreme.

Two minutes more, my -- sorry?  Okay.  I will try to cut it very short.  Okay.

We have a complexity of themes related to Internet governance that you may know.  Human rights, intellectual property, and so on.

And putting this together, we have two possible outcomes.  We can increase traditional inequalities through the Internet or we can maybe make the Internet nature through the redistribution of resources, both physically and conceptually.

So global organizations.  It doesn't matter their mandate.  And already participant countries should think about this redistribution.  It's our responsibility with development and with the sharing Internet nature, the very nature of Internet that includes sharing.

And should discuss a very new model of Internet governance, taking advantage of the fast -- of the past experienced mistakes.  It's a new phenomenon.  We have the opportunity to create a new thing.  And this is our task, Internet providers with this opportunity.  And thank you.

 

>>BEN AKOH:  Thank you very much, Romulo.  Katim, we're going to come to you quickly.  We don't have that much time. 

 Could you please tell us if there is a development dimension to managing critical Internet resources?  Katim?

 

>>KATIM TOURAY:  Thanks a lot, Ben.

Let me start off by saying that just a slight correction here in the introduction that was made.

As a matter of fact, my term on the ICANN board actually ends next month, so I'm not quite yet an immediate past member of the ICANN board.  Just for your information.

And secondly, to mention, Ben, that what I have in front of me is a question slightly different from the one that you've just posed, and the question that I have here is to address the need or whether there should be a development dimension to the management of critical Internet resources.

And if I have your permission, kind permission, I'll just basically address that.  It's similar to what you've asked, but it's not precisely the same thing.  Is that okay with you?

Okay.  And very briefly, I am from the Gambia.  I'm based in the Gambia.  I always like to tell people that I come from a village.  I am not a city boy; I'm a village guy.

My family, my friends, my relatives, most of them are in the village doing, you know, farming, and those kinds of things that you can expect people in rural Africa to be involved in.

So developing country issues are very dear to me, and that's what my life pretty much is all about.

And so it's no question to me as to whether or not we should involve developing countries or have a development dimension to the management of critical Internet resources.

And I say this for a variety of reasons.  Number one, of course, is the fact that there is a need to -- that the developing countries have, both from a capacity perspective and also from the perspective of getting them to be more involved and participating in the development of the Internet and the management of critical resources.

Of course a lot of us involved in development activities have always addressed and discussed the issues of the capacity gaps that many developing countries face, and I think this is one of the most important reasons why there should be a development dimension to the management of critical Internet resources.

There's, of course, also the fact that we all know, that the Internet as we knew it 10, 15 or so years ago, has changed dramatically in the past 5 or so years.  It was just yesterday at the high-level meeting of -- ministerial meeting that was organized that we heard a presentation, an intervention from the delegate from China mentioning that in China alone, they have 450 million Internet users.  That's easily way above the population of the United States, which is just about 350 or so million.

And I think demonstrating the fact that we have seen in the past 5 or so years a significant shift in the center of gravity of the Internet, a significant shift in the languages that are spoken on the Internet, and the users in the various countries that are getting on the Internet, and I think most of those countries basically are going to be from the emerging and the developing world, and for that reason, I think it will be well worth our while to get developing countries more involved in the management of critical Internet resources.

Of course the other reason is that developing countries, like any other Internet users, are also profoundly affected by the use of the Internet and also the management of critical Internet resources.

We're talking here about various aspects.  For example, the generic top-level domain name programs, and indeed, the new generic top-level domain name programs -- program that ICANN is going to be introducing hopefully early next year.  We are also talking about the issues of content, for instance, governance of -- you know, Internet governance, and various other issues that really have a significant bearing on the Internet experience and how people in the developing world interact and use the Internet.

The developing countries also have something to offer, so it's not like they are passive users of the Internet.  They also do have, you know, initiatives and creativeness that they frequently put to the disposal of the larger Internet population.  I can mention, for instance, Ushahidi, which is software that was developed to use in Africa that's pretty much blossomed into a platform that's used all over the world, and so that's one example. 

 And there is, then, of course the example that we've given so many times of M-Pesa, which was developed -- a platform in Kenya, developed in Kenya, to facilitate the transfer of money using mobile telephony and that's also something that's being used more and more in different and various parts of the world.  Something that certainly originated from the developing world.

So that's one more reason why developing countries should be more involved or should be involved in the management of critical Internet resources, and there should be a development dimension to the management of critical Internet resources.

And finally, I'll give a fifth reason why there should be a development dimension to the management of critical Internet resources, and that's what I call the moral imperative, that as I've said before, that the world, we have to understand, is only going to be a better place if it's better for everyone, because it's -- it's -- if you think about it for a second, think of Nairobi.  I mean, where we are now, if you close your eyes for a second and, you know, just forget about the real estate out there, we could for all I know be -- have been in this room.  This room could be in New York.  It could be in Tokyo.  It could be in Paris.  It could be in -- name any developing country, for that matter.  But the fact of the matter is, Kenya is a developing country simply because of the fact that a significant part of its population has lives that live -- live below poverty, and, so for instance, Nairobi is a developing country simply because of the fact that there is a huge slum called Kibera that's known worldwide for the fact that the population in those parts of the city have a lot, you know, to be desired in terms of their lives.

So in the same vein, if we expand that to extend that argument to the global Internet space, to the global space of Internet users, I think we have to understand that the Internet experience is going to be better for all of us if it is going to be -- if it's -- if it's better for everyone.

In other words, when we talk about access problems in the Gambia, the quality of life of access that the Gambians get is also going to affect directly or indirectly the Internet experience of people trying to access the Internet from Tokyo, for instance, or from Germany, for the simple reason that the richness of the Internet is going to be influenced by the abilities of each and every one of us to contribute to it, and that ability is compromised by the diversity of the challenges of that -- that various people face around the world.

So there is, like I said again, the moral imperative that we have to make sure that we ensure that everybody has the fullest access and experience on the Internet.  Thank you.

 

>>BEN AKOH:  Thank you very much, Katim.  I think we have raised quite a number of issues from the panel, but we do think that there may be a number of emerging Internet governance for development-related type issues from the floor.

We would like to, at this point, give the floor to three people that have very pointed questions or developing concerns to raise.  Just three quick people.  We will also turn around to our remote participation and see if there are any questions coming from there.

But if you do have a comment or a developing concern to raise, please raise your hand quickly.  We can only take three at this point, and then we'll create a space for more dialogue as we go along.  I see a hand here.  I see one hand over there.  And I see one hand right in the middle.

All right.  So we're going to start from you, sir, in the brown jacket.

 

>> Thank you.  My name is (saying name).  I'm coming from Tanzania.

Do we have anything to do with nonsense and the useless SMS coming from mobile operators enticing their subscribers on various competitions which completely are useless, hopeless, making people winning nothing, losing a lot of money?

 

>>BEN AKOH:  All right.  Thank you very much.  Spam SMS.  We will try to address those questions, if we can. 

 To you, sir.

 

>> Thank you.  My name is Morris (saying name) from Cameroon.

I was impressed by my friend from the Gambia who said he's a village guy.  Me too.  I'm a village guy.  And I'm involved in developing software in African languages for schools in the rural areas, and that's a big challenge.

I wonder whether, as a village guy, he's also confronted to similar issues.  I will be talking about the challenges that face in a forum on the 30th.

 

>>BEN AKOH:  Okay.  Thank you very much.  Over to you, sir.

 

>> Thank you very much.  I am Hasanul Haq Inu, chairman of the Parliamentary standing committee on post and telecommunications in Bangladesh.  Thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Finance is a great issue in the application of ICT to bridge the digital gap and the digital divide, so last conference, I raised the issue of debt swapping or debt relief for financing ICT development.  It was at Tunis Agenda.  I think the Internet governance forum and the world community should need to check this issue very seriously, so that the developing countries who are having -- who are financing debt financing, so if debt swapping or debt relief is given to them, if the country applies ICT in developing their capacity.  That is one important thing.

Another thing is, I come from an area which is a disaster-prone area, and many countries of the world are disaster-prone, so ICT application in --

 

>>BEN AKOH:  Could we cut you short, sir?  We have just limited time for questions.

 

>> Just a few seconds. 

 So ICT application in natural disaster preparedness and adaptation to climate change impacts, that is very important and I think how to finance a developing country or a disaster-prone country is I think the -- (indiscernible) to take an initiative. 

 Thank you very much.

 

>>BEN AKOH:  All right.  Thank you so much for those questions.  Three quick questions that emerge.

How do we deal with spam within the mobile sector?  Village software linkages to global software markets, I believe.  And then the third question is of course in relation to debt relief and debt swapping, as well as applications that deal with climate change and other risk reduction systems.

We will not ask our panel to deal with this.  I'm not sure you want to deal with this right now.  But there are a lot of issues that have emerged.  Both from what you've said and what we've just had from the floor, but I'm going to pass this on to Olga, who will run through the next phase of our discussion this morning.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Yeah.  We have heard concrete issues about development in different places of the world, and I would like to address this question to perhaps three members of the panel.

In thinking about solutions, what would be useful questions to ask in the IGF, thinking that people -- this is the first meeting that we are having, main session, and they will go to other workshops and main sessions with this in mind.  Which would be this main important question about solutions?

I would say perhaps very short answers from Bill, Joy, and Katim?  Bill?

 

>>BILL DRAKE:  I'm sorry, Olga.  The question was what --

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  In thinking about solutions, what would be useful questions to ask in the IGF, solutions for development.

 

>>BILL DRAKE:  In other workshops and panels.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Yeah.  Having that in mind.

 

>>BILL DRAKE:  Well, before you can suggest a solution, you need to identify a problem, and so for me, I would start by identifying where there may, in fact, be connections between either national or, in my view, more interestingly, global Internet governance mechanisms, and domestic development trajectories, and try to have a neutral, fact-based assessment rather than a purely political one of whether or not there are ways in which the different kinds of institutional arrangements we have in place seem to be supporting a good balanced developmental trajectory or perhaps could be tweaked and improved in some manner in order to make a better fit.

So for example, if one were to take a look at a workshop that had to do with CIR matters and perhaps was looking at names and numbers, you might look at things like how well does the existing framework for regulation of registries and registrars lead to diversification in the global market, how do the market structures better in place impact developing country participation in the namespace, how do the kinds of changes envisioned by the new gTLD program open up new possibilities for developing country participation, particularly given the special provisions that we in ICANN have figured out for trying to ease applications by people from the developing world.

One might also then look at issues like technical standards and say "well, are there ways in which the dominant forms of technical standards that are being adopted today empower developing countries, particularly open standards, which we should build on and try to figure out how to make that a more -- part of a more integrated approach to promoting Access to Knowledge?  Are there potentially standards that have proprietary elements to them that would in some way inhibit the ability of developing countries to be able to advance their developmental objectives?  And if so, are there ways to try to think about making connections there?"

Intellectual property.  Do the rules that we have in place for digital intellectual property seem to be lending themself to a sort of robust, bottom-up trajectory within countries or are they constraining people's ability to access and use knowledge and information in ways that serve development most effectively?

So the first step is obviously, then, to start thinking about these issues.  To put the development frame onto the questions that we normally discuss as sort of insiders looking for technical solutions, political fixes, in a kind of bounded way, and say, well, make sure we touch the -- check the box on development as a consideration.  And if we see that there is something there that merits further discussion, percolate that back up to the concluding session and so on.

So I guess that's one way of going about it.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:   Thank you, Bill.

Joy, you wanted to stay something?

 

>>JOY LIDDICOAT:  Thank you, Olga.  Yes, to pick up on Bill's comments, I think the answer to the question is more questions.  And to deepen the understanding, and also to hear an increasingly multiple and diverse range of voices from developing countries.

Not all developing countries are the same, nor are the economic, social, cultural, and other conditions the same.  Nor their civil society and political context.

So I think when we're talking about solutions and ways workshops can be assisted, I think, to ask those questions and to dig into assumptions about development, and particularly sustainable development.

I think we also need to explore what are the links between democracy, Internet governance, and human rights, and how do we ensure that discussions about infrastructure, access, markets, competition, strengthen and support and deepen those links rather than operate in counterproductive ways or, indeed, create new issues which undermine the various things we are trying to achieve.

I think it would be helpful for workshops to focus particularly around issues of security, openness and privacy, on issues such as access to knowledge and Internet Governance for Development.  As Bill has said, how are intellectual property rights, policies and regulatory measures, both supporting and undermining development?  And what are ways that this is affecting civil society groups in terms of their access to knowledge and their ability, therefore, to be full participants and their respective role in multistakeholder processes in Internet governance?

And how do we measure IG4D?  How do we measure access for different groups?  Particularly equitable access.  Access is not the same for all.  And how do we relate our measures for assessing Internet governance with our measures for development and progress there.

And I think a further question is, well, what steps can we take in our roles to ensure access to the Internet and related policies actually uphold freedom of expression and freedom of association and ensure a multiplicity of voices, including women's human rights defenders.

And in this sense we would particularly like at APC for workshops to be considering whether one way to draw these issues together is to adopt human rights as a main theme of the IGF in 2012, so that we can actually have a space in which to bring these rights issues, which as I said earlier are really the root of Internet governance, the foundation of it in the WSIS, back to the forefront as a link through which to consider these issues going forward.

So I would pose those as questions that workshops could usefully focus on.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:   Thank you very much.

Katim, you have some questions for thinking about development that maybe the audience could bring in other spaces in the IGF?

 

>>KATIM TOURAY:   Yeah.  Just along those same lines.  One of the things that I was thinking about is maybe why not shift the debate a little bit from the traditional notion of looking at development cooperation in a vertical sense to a more horizontal sense, by which I mean that we try to look at development cooperation in Internet governance and, indeed, many other development areas as strictly something between developing countries and developed countries.

And I'd like us to see the issue; namely, south-south cooperation, I see it is sometimes called, because, I think, developing countries have a lot to offer each other as a matter of fact.

And I think if we emphasize this going forward, we could probably be much more effective in some of the interventions that we intend to make.

An example of a particular area that I think I would like to see more of is, for instance, in the area of the management of ccTLDs, Country Code Top Level Domain names.

We all know that not all Country Code Top Level Domain names are created equal.  Some are stronger than others.  Some have more domain names than others.  And some are just struggling.  Some are, indeed, as in some West African or some African ccTLDs, Country Code Top Level Domain names, being managed by people outside Africa and nonnationals.

And I think when you have say, for instance, a ccTLD like dot BR from Brazil or even dot ZA from South Africa, they have a lot of help I think they can offer and should offer to other developing countries.  Or dot IN from India, for instance.

So I think what I would like to suggest here is that as we move forward, we can look at what we can do to strengthen south-south cooperation in the Internet governance domain.

There is also, of course, the issue of cost and its implication for access to the Internet in the developing world.  I always marvel myself when I travel at the incredible bandwidth that people around the world experience, which of course is very different from what we experience in the Gambia, for instance.

So I think what we ought to do is have a very effective look at -- a comprehensive look at the cost issues, especially in terms of bandwidth, between Africa, say, for instance, and the rest of the world and developing countries and the rest of the world, and see what can be done, either, for instance, through aggregating traffic by setting up regional IXPs or national IXPs to ensure that the costs are reduced.  And of course, ultimately, also to ensure those costs are passed on to the end users.

We all know that Kenya has been celebrating the landing of various fiberoptic cables, but the argument and the quarrel in the country has been now that we have got all this bandwidth into the country, what can we do to pass on the cost savings that the ISPs are experiencing to the end users.

And I think this is a debate that we need to continue moving forward.

There is also finally -- and I will just make this as the last point.  As we move forward in discussions of privacy and security, we ought to make sure that we pay adequate attention to the distinction between the need to ensure personal privacy and protection and also state security.  Because I think most countries in developing countries, most developing countries, their governments especially, want to run with the idea of security and forget about privacy issues.  And of course they also would not -- quite a number of them would not hesitate to use the Internet to extend some of the autocratic tendencies that they have.  And I think we need to be very careful of this.

Thank you.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   Thank you very much, Katim.

Fouad and Barrack, we have remote participants that may have comments or questions to ask.

Could you raise those comments or questions right now, please.

 

>>BARRACK OTIENO:   Thank you, Ben.  Barrack Otieno, remote moderator.  We have five hubs participating in the session at the moment, and the question is from the Cameroon hub, directed to Katim Touray.

What is ICANN doing to improve participation of developing countries in the ICANN processes?

Thank you.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   All right.  Thank you very much.  Katim, we are going to come back to that question in a little bit, but I wanted to ask Khaled to just comment broadly on what he has been hearing so far.

What have you heard?  What's emerged for you?

 

>>Khaled Fourati:   Many issues have emerged so far, so let me try to synthesize them in a couple or three points.

I want to build on the idea of -- that was expressed here of the IGF as a forum to debate policy outcomes, taking into consideration a development perspective.

And perhaps from that lens, focusing first on the issues of access and affordability, with the notion that clearly, as expressed by the panelists and you from the audience, that we live in a network knowledge economy.  And whether we are in developing economies or more developed economies, we are faced with a few changes around us, and there are underpinning fundamentals.

Those fundamentals are that telecommunications costs or telecommunication services, the Internet, are becoming an input factor in many type of other industries and services.  And you name it.  Whether you look at it from information, like agriculture value chains, supporting, as someone from the audience said, financial services and the emergence of new ways of thinking about providing micro lending, improving data production for perhaps decision-making in health services.

So the bottom line is that reducing the costs and improving affordability in this sector, in the telecom sector, in the Internet economy is paramount because it's an input factor to other type of sectors and services within our economy.

So how do we reduce those costs?  I think we need to look, from a development perspective, at the input costs within that sector itself, within the telecom.  And as mentioned here, we look at the licensing fees, the power and transport costs, the issues of cumbersome regulations that were mentioned.  Spectrum management, lending rights when it comes to international bandwidth, and so forth.

My second point builds on the first one, and perhaps to synthesize it, looking at more the rights perspective, and specifically around the issues of privacy, security.

Obviously when these -- Since we are living in a networked economy and society, that means these issues are emerging, and they are more complex.  And obviously we don't know the answers to them as yet.

But allow me to be, because I was asked to do so, a bit more controversial, and perhaps by making an analogy.  And this controversial perhaps will spur thinking and debate for the audience and in other sessions.

So if you look at the economy of the 20th century, the main ways of thinking or enabling the economy around services and products was to reducing tariffs; right?  And we talked about the WTO and so forth.

I think in the area of the network economy, where obviously you want to encourage the flow of idea, the tariffs have sort of become more around the intellectual property regimes.  And we're seeing that instead of producing the cumbersome tariff in this area, we're seeing an emergence of increase in the tariffs in this area, just for the sake of being a bit controversial in this.

So the real question is how to balance the different interests between the rights holders on the firsthand, between those who are interest in making sure there is a flow of ideas to be able to create and innovate.  And whether you look at that from the IP -- in the IP vision context, whether it's from the corporate lens or from the patent lens.

So as I build on these two main ideas, there are other issues that were brought forward by the panelists.  Specifically in the area of capacity development and how to increase the participation of various actors in this process, both at the national, regional, and international level.  Perhaps how to make sure there are interlinkages between the ideas that are discussed here and going back at the national/regional level.  And obviously strengthening, as was mentioned here, south-south collaboration and how to make synergies of position.  And this can -- actually, I come back to that first idea, the one we started the panel, and really understand the policy outcome from a development perspective.

And at the end of the day, I think these are complex issues that we need more evidence.  And perhaps because I come from an institution that is interested in research, and expanding this from the different lenses on how they interact and be able to build on concrete findings in very controversial issues, I think.

Thank you.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   Thank you very much, Khaled.  Maybe just to add to some of those questions you are posing and to also refer to a comment that came in from Bangladesh, I believe, on linkages between the economy or the Internet economy and the environment.  For instance, we might begin to see linkages as to digital economy and the green economy, for instance.  And perhaps these are questions we want to ask as to what linkages exist between the -- what's thriving right now in the digital economy and perhaps our concerns as it relates to the environment and the climate and whether there is connections between that, in the Internet -- on the Internet, what's going on on the Internet and the green economy.

But we will leave those questions for you to talk about during the follow-up sessions.

Any other comment?  Olga.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:   Do we have time for this?  We have one question.  Perhaps if Dimitri and Romulo can address it.  It's how do you interact with government?  You are from government, you are from private company.  In addressing -- In working with them, not in -- only in the national level but also in the governmental and local and perhaps the local level in the cities, also in regional level and international one to address this Internet for development issues.

So both perspective will be good to hear, and we don't have much time so if you are brief, that --

 

>>DIMITRI DILIANI:   I will be very fast.  Thank you. 

 We do it today at three different layers or three different levels.  One, we do it at a global level where we participate in forum industries such as this one.  We have a research and standardization group dedicated to working on future technologies, and making sure that they confirm within the standards that all the companies in our industry will confirm too, and they work very closely with ITU, and 3GPP, and that's one way we manage it on a global level.

On a regional level, we have a group today that's dedicated to working with different governments across the region, dedicated -- for example, I have one in Africa today working with different government entities to make sure we drive our policies, our -- not -- our products standardization into what they do in terms of policy.

And finally, of course, at the local level, per country we participate in a lot of the local interest groups, such as the CCK in Kenya, ICA in South Africa, and NCC in Nigeria, et cetera.  And that's how we do it today.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:   Thank you.  Romulo, I cannot see you.

 

>>ROMULO NEVES:   Very briefly.  The Brazilian Internet Steering Committee has a very --

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:   Go ahead, Romulo.  Then we go with Joy.

 

>>ROMULO NEVES:   The Brazil Internet Steering Committee has a very successful manner to deal with all the stakeholders, because we consider all the interests very legitimate, all the stakeholders' interests are represented in this model.  And we believe this could be applied in the global Internet governance by increasing the participation, the effective and real participation.  For example, empowering IGF; for example, empowering developing countries in the flow of decisions.  There are a lot of manners to do that.  There are a lot of right of possibilities.  But we consider that the actual -- the current situation, instead of increase the participation, just limit it, the participation.  And this consider some interests, and we would like to discuss the Brazilian model a little bit more with the interested to present some questions and some responses that we already have, but also questions that we want to solve in that model.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:   Thank you.

Joy, you wanted to add something?

 

>>JOY LIDDICOAT:  Yes.  Thank you. 

 Just to emphasize that in ensuring that developing countries and private sector work together well.  I think it's critical that the multistakeholder approach that the IGF itself tries to emulate is taken into those processes so that governments are relieved of the burden of requiring, on their own, to put forward the multiplicity of voices within civil society in their own countries, and that those groups also have access to those processes themselves.

Thank you.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:   Thank you very much.  Now we will take some questions from remote and from the floor, but I would ask you to speak slowly and say your name slowly, so the transcribers have the chance to put your names and your reference nicely and without mistakes.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   We have someone over here for a question.  Any other questions?  Or comments?

We have one over here.

We have remote participation.  We have a third over there.  Two more at the back.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:   I'll make a list.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   So that will be five.  So I have one, two, remote, three, and two at the back.

Let's start with you, sir.

 

>> Thank you very much.  I represent the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I would like to thank you all for hosting this great conference.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   Name, sir?

 

>> My name is Mohamed Bourhan (phonetic), and I come from a country where we have seen in the past few months the real effect of Internet governance or Internet and how Facebook and different social media have affected us in a huge manner.  System change.  System change in Egypt has happened since the January 25th revolution, and we are experiencing a new era of freedom.

So this is one sense where IG for development has really been achieved in Egypt.

The second thing is we see the need that we emphasize education.  Schools need more Internet access, and we have seen statistics where children with Internet access are more intelligent, more able to engage each other in the educational field and have better opportunities for their own careers.

So thank you very much.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   Thank you very much.

Over to you, sir.

 

>>JUAN FERNANDEZ:  Thank you.  My name is Juan Fernandez.  I represent the Ministry of Information and Communication from Cuba.  And I want to thank, first of all, the panel.  Many interesting ideas have been put of this topic of Internet Governance for Development.  But I want to underline a subject that, in my view, is essential.  That is the economic aspect of the Internet and especially the economic sustainability of the Internet model.

Mr. Fourati mentioned some very particular -- interesting particular aspect of that issue.  But for everybody here, we know that developmental aspect needs financing, and that is one of the other area of the World Summit on the Information Society that was left open.  You know, one was Internet governance.  This is the other one.

And as you know, also we are in the middle of an international economic crisis in which there has been cut in funding for many things.  Not only for infrastructure, but grants for content creation and so on.

So as Mr. Fourati said, I think that this forum should work into look of the business models, because the telecommunication network has the possibility to create their own resources, their own income to finance their own development.

Of course, in developed countries, there's a very thriving Internet industry.  But the conditions sometimes do not apply for developed -- developing countries.  For instance, in developed countries, the advertising industry is huge and it's a source of revenue for many of these Internet enterprises.  But in developing countries, we don't have that situation.

So we have to move and find some other business models that could make Internet sustainable in economic terms.

If we don't do it, what we're going to have and what we are seeing in many places, that statistics and some friends and NGOs that do these studies are showing that content creation now with the economic crisis is going down.

I don't want us to go further.  I think this deserves more discussion.  Even I can propose that the next year topic, main topic for the forum could be the economic aspect of Internet, because we are in the middle of an economic crisis that I think it will go worse for next year in which funds and resources are getting scarcer.

So I think the issue -- excuse me for saying it again.  We should pay more attention to the economic sustainability of the Internet.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   Thank you very much.  That's a very useful comment.

Remote participation.  Fouad.

 

>>FOUAD BAJWA:   Thank you very much, Ben.  Fouad Bajwa from Pakistan.  We have a very interesting question from the Australian hub, reemphasized by the Cook Islands, shows an example of how distances and such issues affect Internet Governance for Development.  For small Island developing states, the challenges of Internet development are increased because of the distances of ocean between land masses within each country.  When compounded by the cost of transport equipment and connectivity, they increase the digital divide between countries.

Question:  How can these isolated islands focus on Internet governance when they can't even access the Internet?

Just adding three small points for the speakers.  Maybe they can say something on this.  Number one, participation in the spectrum.  Very underdiscussed topic.  This would go to, actually, Joy Liddicoat.  Can multistakeholderism be usable in the spectrum management space?

Number two, should dialogue within Internet governance with a development aspect be bottom-up or should it be top-down?

Third, what would be a one liner for IG4D that everyone can take back home with them and maybe look at this in the future?

Thank you.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   All right.  Thank you very much for those questions.  Joy, Bill, would like to flag those questions to you specifically.  And perhaps Katim.

And Romulo as well.

Marilia.

 

>>MARILIA MACIEL:  Hi, I am Marilia from the Center of Technology and Society in Brazil.  I have a question for Katim.  How do you think the new gTLDs will impact on development?  Has ICANN conducted any study about that?  And would you agree with a policy that would enforce or provide for some of these new gTLDs to be managed by companies from developing countries?

And I'd like to hear a little bit more from Bill, what are the concrete obstacles to the inclusion of developing country actors on (indiscernible) of frameworks that discuss Internet governance issues in formulating their concerns into real policies?  And if you have some  suggestions to make.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   Thank you.  We have two more questions at the back.  There were two gentlemen at the back.

 

>> Yes, my name is (saying name).  I work for an NGO called ComFEDI.  ComFEDI means Community Facilitation Empowerment and Development Initiative.

Mine is two questions, and the other one is just a response maybe from the panelists.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   Could you make them brief, please.

 

>> I am going to be very brief.  We are having comparative trade in fiberoptic.  Some areas within our nation have not been able to access the Internet.  They (indiscernible) that to from the forum and from the mega resources that even the ministers are located, even to the issues pertaining implementation of maybe (indiscernible) that have not yet been affected.  For us to have a policy issue, do we have a mechanism from the forum that can suggest or consult mechanisms that even the community out there can be assisted?

The other question, I would want to be very brief for this purpose, is that we have been finding, as an area we have been having business and ethical practices.  Do we have mechanisms from this forum that we can come up and curb issues possibly of substandard products that are coming and you see in a scenario whereby the economic handicap is (indiscernible).  We have just come from that road.

And a third is costing to the newcomer for somebody to go and buy (indiscernible) discussing 5- to 7,000 (indiscernible) of the funding cannot, the media resources cannot help (indiscernible) to buy a set much more.

And that's why it is promoting substandard products, having a -- finding their way in our country.

Do we have a mechanism from the forum that we should come up and stand up and say ethical practices, and then we deal with them.

 

>>BEN AKOH:   All right.  Thank you very much.

All right.  We're going to take two more comments, and we'll round this up.

There's someone at the back over there.  Not the person in the brown jacket.  I'm sorry.  The person behind.  And there's someone way over at the back, the last row over there.  We'll take those two comments quickly.

Go ahead, sir.

 

>> Okay.  Thank you very much for the panel.  My name is (saying name).  I am a project manager for Sevtek (phonetic) Systems.  I'm very much concerned about our children in public schools and private schools.  What can be done to introduce -- to implement the e-learning systems within the public schools, so that we can do away with the jobs for teachers who actually, you know, are taking more time and, you know, knowledge does not get into our kids in a proper way?

Can some software be made for -- you know, introduced, rather, in e-learning systems, so that it can be engaged within the local and say public schools and private schools within our education system?  Thank you.

 

>>BEN AKOH:  Thank you very much.  The last person at the back there, sir.

 

>> Thank you very much.  My name is (saying name) from Somalia.

I have a very quick question.

As you know, there are prevailing famine in the horn of Africa, particularly in the case of Somalia.  My simple question is:  Do you think that the social media has failed to inform or give early warning in terms of early action, or mobilize all the community in supporting this case in the horn of Africa?

 

>>BEN AKOH:  Thank you very much.  We'll take one more question.  The gentleman frantically raising his hand here, we're going to allow him to do that.  Yes, with the brown jacket.  And then we'll go on the to the panel.

 

>> Okay.  I'm Steve from Kenya.

My question is about the Internet.  What are you doing to make sure that the environment is much conserved when in the future that there will be no problem of the network. 

 The other thing is about the health of the Kenyans, of the users of the Internet, because I hear you people speaking about the economy, yet the health of the people who are the users of this Internet, you don't consider them but in the future when we come to the future, you will find that there is a problem in the world.

So what are you doing about those two things.  Thank you.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Thank you very much.  Do we have questions from remote?  No?  Any other comments from any participant?

Okay.  So we will turn to our panel.

 

>> Can I just say a few words.  The interpreters have agreed to stay until 12:45 so if you agree and -- yes, thank you very much, interpreters -- so we'll take a few more minutes to get answers from the panel but please be brief because you are now between the participants and their lunch.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Thank you.  Romulo, you want to start?

 

>>ROMULO NEVES:  Sorry.  Very briefly, there are interests that oppose each other.  For example, human rights and control, privacy and security.  Of course.  And some interests are overwhelmed in this current situation.

Meanwhile, some other interests are sub-estimated.

Just to put together some questions about the financing of the Internet, the sustainability of the model, maybe we could get some interest down and put some interest forward by financing -- by the Internet itself -- the development of, for example, ccTLDs.  This is the kind of response to Mr. Juan from Cuba, that there is -- there are some variety of possibilities to make this -- make this issue forward, to put it forward within a very creative model.  Just a suggestion, and we can discuss it a little bit more after lunch.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Thank you, Romulo. 

 Joy?

 

>>JOY LIDDICOAT:  Thank you.  Very quickly, kia orana to my colleague from the Cook Islands.  Thank you for the question, remote participants. 

 I think that small Pacific island state governments participate in many international government forums, and one way to ensure their engagement in Internet governance, despite access issues, and perhaps to address them, is to make the linkages between their participation and environment, climate change, and development contexts, and the issues we are discussing, and I would encourage more regional Pacific IGFs to address that.

Secondly, the direct question on open spectrum, yes, definitely a multistakeholder approach is possible in relation to open spectrum, and I would encourage that person to come to the open spectrum workshop which APC is cohosting on day 3 of the IGF to learn more about that and share experiences.

Thirdly, in response to the question about the situation in the horn of Africa, thank you very much for that question.  Just to know that the Internet rights and principles coalition has issued a statement on that situation, and linkages to Internet governance which may be of interest.

And finally, APC is running a gender report card throughout the entire IGF, and so we're going to be looking for the participation of women in all sessions, and I'd like to point out that there's only been one question from a woman in this entire participation.

So let's aim by the end of four days, to get a much more even gender balance in that regard.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Thank you very much.  Dimitri?

 

>>ROMULO NEVES:  Olga, just to compliment -- sorry.  I just forgot to link the question from Kenya and the remote.  This kind of suggestion that I've made could provide access to some people, to some countries, and then to provide participation.  Just to respond to the remote question.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Thank you.  You want to address the last question -- comment now?  Okay.  Thank you very much.

Bill?

 

>>BILL DRAKE:  I believe Marilia asked me about barriers that developing countries encounter in Internet governance mechanisms.  I would say you have to sort of draw a distinction -- I guess you could make it a 2-by-2 or 4-by-4 table.  There's governmental and nongovernmental actors from developing countries and then there's intergovernmental bodies and non-intergovernmental bodies, and the mix of questions is different in each case.

In intergovernmental processes, certainly governments have the formal ability to participate.  There's no question about that.

There's no formal barriers to participation.

But there are often a lot of challenges for particular players.

For example, I know living in Geneva that about 50 least developed countries don't have missions, so to just have meetings in Geneva where you don't have representation there, this is an issue.

When meetings move around the world, that can be expensive.  That's an issue.

But there's also a larger point.

I think that there are intergovernmental bodies that restrict the ability of nongovernmental actors to participate who could support developing country interests and development concerns, and in that way -- and often, unfortunately, those kinds of restrictions are supported by the governments.

To me, that's a bit shooting yourself in the foot.  I think it would be very effective if developing country governments would embrace more opportunity to bring on board those nongovernmental actors who have shared interests, shared visions, and want to work with them on those kinds of questions.

And of course there's the general problems of power differences.  They are barriers in a lot of ways in every environment.

In the nongovernmental bodies, though, I'll just say I think that the challenges are quite different.  And I can use ICANN as a particular example because it's one that is -- I've raised with ICANN people quite a bit.

The number and diversity of meetings being held around the world and the cost of getting to them, the fact that the issues are often very complex, it's very difficult for newbies of any sort and particularly people coming from a different cultural tradition and orientation to get on board, figure out what's going on in a meeting.

These things are information barriers.  They have to be tackled.  I think the fact that the culture of ICANN and other indigenous Internet bodies is really quite different from the culture, say, of intergovernmental bodies.  That is a real challenge.

In ICANN, people basically don't care who you are.  You know, you can be -- you can come in and say "I'm the Vice Minister of so-and-so," and maybe at the ITU everybody would then say, "Oh, yes, I listen very carefully," but in ICANN, it's like either you have a history of making strong interesting suggestions, in which case you've built street credibility with people, or they'll go "ah, so what," and move on.  And people don't know necessarily know how to respond to that.  So there's kind of like a more of a challenging, demanding organizational culture.

So the informational barriers, the cultural barriers, are there and have to be dealt with, but all of the indigenous Internet bodies are very much wide open to participation.

There's no formal barrier.  There's no reason in the world anybody who can afford a plane ticket -- which is no different for an ICANN meeting than it is for a U.N. meeting -- there's no reason they can't go to an ICANN meeting, to an IETF meeting, and so on, and participate fully.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Katim?

 

>>KATIM TOURAY:  Thanks, Olga.  I'd like to very briefly take turns addressing some of the questions that have been raised to me but before that, I'd like to very briefly touch on the issue that was raised by my brother from Cameroon about the particular challenges that are experienced by -- or felt by those of us from the villages.

Indeed, when we talk about the digital divide, we're talking about it existing between both -- between developing and developed countries, but also we recognize that in developing countries there is an internal digital divide that exists between the rural areas and the urban areas.

For instance, when you talk in many African countries about erratic electricity supply, in the big cities you talk about the lack of -- the absence of electricity in many of the villages, including my own.

When you talk about poor Internet connectivity in a lot of the cities -- capital cities, for instance, or the big cities -- in my village we talk about no Internet access at all.  Even though we have, you know, relatively good coverage of mobile phone GSM networks.

We're talking about also the fact that in a lot of these villages, education is yet to reach many people.  In my village myself, there are still families to this day that do not send their kids to school.  They just simply as a matter of policy refuse to send their children to participate in western education.  That's a reality that we have to deal with in many of these villages.

But still, it shouldn't stop us from dreaming.  I dream to this day of taking my laptop to my village and showing people Google Earth of the village, showing people all and any aspect of the Internet that I can show them.  The challenges are there, but I think we still have to understand that there's a lot that can be done.  Look at mobile telephony, what it's doing, for instance, in healthcare delivery for villages, in e-commerce, in reducing money transfers, for instance, in reducing poverty.  So there's still quite a lot of very promising developments that I think we just have to build on and deal with the challenges that we face as we move forward.

With regard to the question about what ICANN is doing to support developing country participation in ICANN processes, I think it's worth mentioning here that for the three ICANN public meetings that are organized every year around the world, ICANN provides a fellowship program which is very widely contested, actually, where people apply for sponsorship from ICANN to attend the meetings and participate in them and hopefully after that become more interested in participating in ICANN's activities.

ICANN also works very closely with the government advisory council, the GAC, and in this regard is working diligently to increase the involvement of many developing countries in the GAC process, in the GAC body of ICANN itself, and of course reaching out to various intergovernmental organizations and get their participation and involvement in ICANN's activities.

And finally, let me say also that ICANN is working with the community to develop ways and means of supporting people from developing countries, applicants from developing countries, to help them participate more effectively in the anticipated new gTLD program that ICANN is going to launch. 

 For those of you who are not in the know, the new gTLD program, very briefly, is a program ICANN is introducing to liberalize the top-level domain namespace, so that you're not going to be restricted to the dot com or dot net or dot travel top-level domain names, but you can, indeed, have almost any top-level domain name you want.  The dot Nairobi, if you want, dot Africa, or dot Asia.  Dot Asia is already in the root, of course. 

 And so the challenge here is to make sure that we have a program that's inclusive and have as much participation from the developing countries as is possible.

With regards to the questions from the --

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Katim?  Katim?

 

>>BEN AKOH:  Sorry, Katim, we cannot take any more.  We do not have time for any more.

 

>>KATIM TOURAY: Could I just -- one second, please.  One second.  About the impact of the gTLD program on developing countries' economies, there's not been a specific study on that, but I think it would be expected that there's going to be increased competition and the -- and the effect of the Internet users in developing countries.  And let me just say finally that -- okay.  I'll stop there.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  Thank you, thank you.

THE INTERPRETER:  The interpreters apologize.  They will leave you now as per their agreement with you to work till 12:45.  Thank you.

 

>>KHALED FOURATI: -- discussions, perhaps, because I know that we're pressured on time. 

 First, on the area of the issues around the importance of the multistakeholder approach as a way of building partnerships, as a way to increase population, and perhaps as a way to reduce organization and cultural barriers.

Also, there was sort of emerging trends around the importance and the -- perhaps a further investigation of the role of social media, not only from the perspective of supporting freedom of expression, but perhaps looking at their role in supporting policies around for security and supporting policies around improving learning and education.

And the final point I wanted to make was in this area we're thinking around the economic aspects, and from that perspective I'd perhaps focus more on the importance of being innovative from the policy and regulatory perspective.  Thinking from more a development approach in this area, so that we can think more constructively around appropriate business models that are best suited in our context. 

 Thank you.

 

>>BEN AKOH:  Thank you very much, Khaled, and please put your hands together for our panelists.

[Applause]

 

>>BEN AKOH:  Thank you very much.  And please put your hands together for my lovely cohost, Olga.

 

>>OLGA CAVALLI:  And for Ben as well.

[Applause]

 

>>BEN AKOH:  Thank you.  And I'll pass it back to our chair.  Laurent.

 

>>LAURENT ELDER:  So fortunately I'm very hungry so I'm keen to close this session.  I want to again thank all the participants for listening intently and your incisive, insightful comments.  Thank you to the panelists for what I think was a very enlightening and important discussion.

At the end of the day, though, I'm left with the idea that there were possibly more questions than answers, and you've heard that the challenge has been put to you to think about what are potential solutions for thinking about how Internet governance can actually play a positive role for development.  So through these three days, I would hope that you would think about these issues and bring your comments back to us on the last day.  Thank you very much.  And -- sorry. 

 Before I end, the secretary has a few comments for you.

 

>>ADAM PEAKE: Thank you very much.  Ladies and gentlemen, if you could return to this room at 2:30 for the opening ceremony.  That will start, we hope, around 2:30, so get in here around that time.  If there is no space available, then there is an overflow room, and that is in conference room 1, which I believe you'll find across the courtyard, so 2:30, please.  Enjoy your lunch.  Thank you.