IGF 2010
Vilnius, Lithuania
14 September 10
REGIONAL PERSPECTIVES
11:30
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Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during Fifth Meeting of the IGF, in Vilnius. 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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>> MARKUS KUMMER: Can I ask the panelists to come up to the podium? There are still a few missing. May I ask you to take your seats, please. We'd like to start with the second part of this morning's session, which is devoted to regional perspectives. Regional meetings have sprung up over the past two years, also mentioned in a previous session as one of the very concrete outcomes of the IGF. They were not part of the negotiated outcome in Tunis but they did come up as very much bottom up initiatives. Now, we have here with us representatives of some of these regional initiatives. I quickly will introduce the speakers. To my right is Alice Munyua from Kenya. She was a driving force behind the East African IGF. Next to her is Valeria Betancourt from the Latin American IGF. Next is Edmon Chung from Hong Kong. He was the driving force behind the first Asia Pacific IGF which took place in June in Hong Kong. And on the very right, there is Khaled Foda from the Arab ICT. We have Sebastien Muriel from Spain. He was host of the European IGF. The dialogue on Internet Governance which took place in Madrid in April. Then Katim Touray from West Africa IGF, Joseph Tabone from the Commonwealth IGF and that's the list of our panelists. We're not asking them to report on their meetings. Their reports are up on their respective websites. You can find links to their reports on the IGF website and there will be special sessions on some of these initiatives where they can go more into the detail of what they were actually discussing. Here our objective is a comparison between the different initiatives, what was similar, what was different. And also listen to them whether they can provide regional input, regional substantive input in the global meeting. I don't plan to do two rounds of panel discussions before we turn to the floor. In the first round, I would like to ask them whether they had the same agenda in their meeting or whether they had a different agenda, if the agenda was different, what were the issues, the global IGF was not dealing with, and then also what were the two or three priorities as they emerged from their meeting. The interesting thing is, I visited, I took part in a number of them, and they each have their different flavor. Each region seems to have a different approach and each region seems to have different priorities. Let's listen to them. Alice, please.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much, Markus. Just a way of a background, the East African Internet Governance Forum has been taking place the last three years, the first one was in 2008. The third one was in 2010 hosted by Uganda and each one of them is hosted by a different East African country. The next one has already been taken up by the Government of Rwanda. Now, it came up from the acknowledgment and recognition that our region was not really represented meaningfully in the Internet Governance policy processes at the global level but also looking for for more meaning in terms of policy impact at the regional level that is not the nature of the global IGF so we were looking for something much more significant to us at the regional level so our model has whether or not slightly different in that it's a very bottom up approach starts usually with mainly discussions at the National level in the five East African countries, then to National face to face Forums and the National face to face forums form the building block for the regional East African IGF held each year prior to the global IGF. We usually have tended not to mirror the global IGF programme specifically and rather allow National IGFs to identify the issues at the National level so our issues continue you can see the pro Greg's. At the very beginning in 2008 it was about access, access to infrastructure, access to the Internet, access to local content, a lot of Access and Development issues. But this year in 2010, the issues were more to do with now we have access, what do we do with it? We've had three fiber optic cables that have landed in the East African Coast. And so now we are beginning to deal with the challenges and opportunities that with come with that. So this year's programme included issues to do with cybersecurity and Cybercrime. others to do with involving the youth in IGF and innovation. Beginning to look at issues of policy and regulation, issues of content again, acknowledging there's not enough content and also this year's theme was based on strengthening critical Internet resources and specifically strengthening our East African ccTLDs. One of the important emerging issues was in terms of course continues to be access and affordability but this time to broadband and to Internet. And also the issue of having a programme, creating a framework for development of ICT skills and capacity. And also an idea around where we want the IGF the kind of impact we want the IGF to have at the regional level and there was a very strong consensus that we would want to go beyond, we don't want to be constrained by the same challenges I wouldn't call them challenges but the same constraints with the global IGF, we want to see a much more policy impact because the IGF itself has already impacted in the way we conduct ICT policy process at the National level and a good example is a Kenyan example where our Government has provided a policy window and there's a new way of developing policy where all stakeholders are involved. So that became a very there was a very strong consensus around that, around looking at the 2011 East African IGF and see how long we are going to, for example, take some of these issues forward. And one of the best example has been taking one issue that was identified in 2008, the issue of strengthening African ccTLD, subjecting it to research and coming up with very concrete ways of dealing with strengthening our ccTLDs from issues of redelegation all the way to issues, we're now currently talking about, whether or not ccTLDs should be involved in content regulation or not, or how we deal with our engagement with generic Top Level Domain names and other issues like that but mainly this year's issues have been strengthening critical Internet resources and looking at we have access, what do we do with that access and is it really making an impact? Thank you.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Alice, can we go straight to Valeria?
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Thank you, Markus. I guess I will follow the President in the previous session and I will participate in the debate in my mother language which is Spanish to respond to Markus' questions if that is okay. Good morning everybody. The Third Latin American and Caribbean Preparatory Meeting for the IGF was jointly organized by LACNIC (Latin American and the Caribbean Internet Address Registry), APC, and APC member NUPEF Institute . The meeting was held in Quito, Ecuador in past August 2010. It convened more than 120 people from 25 countries representing all the stakeholders of the regional Internet community. The meeting was focused on the topics surrounding the Internet Governance Forum, identifying the characteristics and regional challenges for each of these issues.
Over the past three years, the preparatory regional meetings in Latin America have followed the agenda of the IGF. However, it is important to mention that Openness has been a theme in itself separated from the Privacy and Security issues. It has allowed to have dialogues focused on topics that are relevant to the region such as access to knowledge, freedom of expression and free flow of information, open governance, open infrastructure and technology, among others.
In fact, one of the main suggestions made for the global IGF is that Openness should have a more clear focus in its specificities. This could be done by encouraging and ensuring the continuing involvement and participation of FOSS, Intellectual Property Rights and Access to Knowledge activists in order to feed in those perspectives in the debate.
However, it is also important to mention that the need for the LAC region to build an internet governance agenda that responds to regional particularities and countries priorities came out strongly in this last meeting.
There is clearly the need to integrate the technical expertise with the political and rights dimensions of the themes. It would not prevent from but contribute to enhancing the engagement of the LAC region in global processes like the IGF, the participation in other related internet governance institutions and, primarily, this would establish linkages between national internet governance public policy priorities with the perspectives of developing countries.
In terms of priorities, the importance of universal affordable broadband access was highlighted as a pre-condition for innovative and competitive environments that generate new types of income without limiting or affecting people´s rights. The need to broaden the approach to the access theme was stressed. Commercial agreements with developed countries that determine the conditions to access to information and knowledge should be also addressed if the internet is meant to significantly impact on people´s lives. In order to accomplish significant access to knowledge, have free flow of information and freedom of expression, it was proposed by some speakers that a new system of intellectual property should be created to facilitate the access to knowledge in the framework of the Information Society, appropriate for digital media and for development needs.
The internet governance for development session focused on the need to build capacities for increasing the participation of developing countries in decision-making mechanisms and processes in global and regional fora. Additionally, the importance of addressing the economic, social, cultural and political impacts of the internet in societies was highlighted.
Participants identified as a priority the right of people to control their own personal information, to access to it, to modify or delete it, or to oppose to its collection. Participants stressed that the multistakeholder model, with the participation of all stakeholders, should remain and be strengthen for the management of IP addresses.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Hong Kong and Asia?
>> EDMON CHUNG: First of all I'd like to I guess say I'm probably much less qualified to speak of the Asia perspective than the driving force of the Asia Pacific IGF is really sitting over there, Steven Lau. And I think I'm for myself trying to coordinate the whole process. I think this is the first time that we put together an Asia Pacific regional IGF but of course, we remember that hide Hyderabad and India hosted a global IGF so that's an important step for Asia as well but in the preparations I think in terms of the format, we generally followed the global IGF streams. I think that's the because this is definitely the first time, I think providing an open platform was most important. Another interesting thing is right from the start, we went about it as not so much an approach but as was mentioned last panel creating this non threatening environment for society, business to engage in Governance dialogue and I think the whole structure and format was developed with that in mind. Instead of outcomes I think there were a number of learnings I would say coming out from the coordination of the event, one of which we are very we owe a lot of thanks to is the strong support from the Hong Kong Government through the office of Government chief information officer. The importance there is really not only from a Government from inviting governments and also getting involvement in these discussions, there's also the vision of Jeremy Godfrey, our Government CIO that on the one hand, he provided strong support including funding support for the event. On the other hand, he really left it very hands off so that the agenda, the entire discussion and the direction of the discussion was allowed to be developed in a bottom up manner. I think that's sort of important in the context of Asia, again very important item is that Asia is a very diverse region and the other part is that a lot of it is a relatively authoritarian culture so allowing a bottom up process to develop the agenda itself and the IGF approach of multistakeholder itself I think it is an inspiring message. I think our colleague Ravi from India earlier mentioned and I very much agree was the development of consensus with the, where respecting differences and I think that was the goal of the first Asia Pacific regional IGF. Just to talk a little bit about the entire format a little bit, it's actually three events put together in one week. We have the Asia Pacific regional IGF roundtable which was two days. The Hong Kong Internet Governance conference which again is two days and then we also had a youth IGF camp. I think that also is one of the important learnings from the whole event. Two particular things. The youth IGF camp we did not follow the global agenda kind of thing. The agenda itself was developed by the youth, the mission Ambassadors, actually they're sitting around here, and what is inspiring from there is the interesting the topics that were discussed were actually developed from their own discussions a format for which I think was quite interesting and thought it sort of worked is the use of sort of a role playing model in the youth IGF camp to enforce the idea of multistakeholder approach, which actually yielded pretty exciting results. I think Markus mentioned that there will be regional session workshops throughout the week and you can we'll talk a little bit more about that in the in those workshops. But I guess over all, the format itself I think, it generally followed the global IGF meetings, in terms of the streams, but I think one of the learnings is that we've received both from civil society and Government that they wanted more air time. They wanted to speak more so I guess as a first event I think it really did its job I guess. People wanted to talk more and as one of the most important results is that people wanted to do it again next year. That's pretty much it. Thank you.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that, Edmon. And now the next speaker, Khaled Foda.
>> KHALED FODA: Thank you Markus and everybody. A lot of effort has been done throughout the past period towards Internet Governance and this effort was basically done by the technical team responsible for Internet issues that with work under the technical information Council of ministers. Yet with a lot of cooperation from international and regional organisations and I have to mention the ITU and the Arab ICT, the Arab organisation responsible for ICT. The efforts have been maybe directed basically towards access and towards internationalized domain names, maybe IPv4 to IPv6, and a lot of efforts have been done in that. Also, the team have been participating very closely with ICANN in a lot of its efforts towards internationalization or institutional accountability, even throughout public comments on the Internet and in internationalized domain names, as well, with IETF maybe, also a lot of cooperation have been done and we produced an RFC about the linguistic guidelines for the use of Arabic script in domain names. The efforts have been all directed maybe as I said towards internationalized domain names, IPv4 to IPv6. Some efforts towards security, and it was all within the Government bodies with cooperation with international and regional organisations. However, we're starting maybe a new phase. We're putting more efforts towards security. We're putting more efforts towards other Internet issues, and we are also maybe trying to seek public consultancy. We're seeking public consultancy. We're seeking participation of different public entities, all different stakeholders involved. We have a huge project about Arab domain names that we are adopting as the league of Arab states. However, we're also interested in involving all parties in that project, and in taking actual roles in managing and in running that project. We also have recently an initiative that we have an agreement with the ESCWA, we adopted an initiative for Arab dialogue on Internet Governance, and this maybe initiative involves meetings, involves many involves meetings, involves studies, involves maybe setting a road map, involves public consultancy about Internet Governance and we're seeking behind that maybe that could lead us to an Arab IGF, a regional IGF. Even though the technical teams responsible have been always organising regional workshops before, the IGF used to be, before the IGF time in Sharm el Sheikh, we did that, and before the IGF here, we also did another workshop, and invited all different Arab Member States to those workshops. We have also been issuing reports about the Arab vision towards Internet issues, and publishing them over the Internet for Arab participants to maybe share those visions or those concerns about Internet issues. Maybe also we have a technical team that's actually a self regulated group. This group has been participating in putting a lot of policies and a lot of and technical issues and identifying problems about the use of Arab script in domain names, and it has also participated with ICANN very much in many policy issues regarding this matter. And maybe also we have ICANN is always participating with us or attending the meetings of such technical groups, and maybe also one of those meetings was attempted by a Board member from ICANN. We hope that we can set a much clearer vision within the coming period for the issues that we have not been focusing on during the past period, and we hope that with the ESCWA initiative, we can reach an Arab IGF, we can reach a clearer vision about all needs within the region. We have actually a session tomorrow I think with the ESCWA about that Arab dialogue on Internet Governance, and we have another session we are participating in another session about Arabic content with the Arab organisation ICTU which is responsible for ICT and I hope that all interested people might participate within those sessions. Thank you, Markus.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. I'll turn to my left and continue with Sebastien Muriel.
>> SEBASTIEN MURIEL: Thank you, Mark. We see it is an open platform to discuss and debate about all the Internet Governance issues not only across Europe, even though we are of course based on that issues particularly worried, our countries but we want an all inclusive philosophy. In fact, the next one is taking place on 31st of May in Belgrade. All of you are invite. Tomorrow Wednesday I was told that at 4:30 there is in room 6 here in the IGF session an open Forum. In fact, we see a middle ground between all the National Internet Governance Forums that we have in Europe in more than 10 countries, France, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, Ukraine, Russia, the U.K., Germany and Spain, and the British raised some key messages from Europe to the global debate. In addition to that, we have in Europe another and very relevant outcome from the discussion. Which is high impact. Is the relationship with the policymakers and all the European institutions. In fact the European Commission, Council of Europe and also the Parliament, are very involved which lead us to raise some of the message to them. In fact during this last six months of Spanish presidency, we finished the detailed agenda for Europe for 2015, and in that agenda, in that strategy, we put a lot of issues from the Internet Governance Forum. The Parliament had raised also a resolution on the 15th of June of this year, and Parliament support the continuation and development of all the IGF model on a global, regional of course the National level and we think that this is very valuable. The multistakeholder vision to have all people involved, from Government and academic, from the civil society but also with the business and enterprises. Some of the highlights of this bottom up approach that we debate on the last EuroDIG in Madrid was relating some hot issues like the net neutrality. We also talk a lot of the importance and the need of deployment on the IPv6, and also one thing related with the TLDs and some of the challenges that we are facing and especially with the new generic TLD programme and some of the issues that the one size fits all approach is one of the major reasons for the delay of this programme. This is because sometimes it's very difficult to switch a global perspective with the local issues we're facing in some regions even in the small areas within a country. So that's what we mostly talk about in Europe, and we are continuing the debate in a very interactive format, not only in decisions where we have less panelists but more interactive with the audience, but also online using streaming and also the conversation.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that, Sebastien I realise I maybe should have asked you immediately after Alice to compare East Africa to West Africa. Please tell us about the West African IGF.
>> KATIM TOURAY: Thanks, very much, Markus. I begin by saying bonjour and I said good morning. Just to give you an idea of the various languages that is spoken in the about 15 countries that are in West Africa. Basically we're talking about countries as big as Nigeria with 150 million people to the a country as small as my own country Gambia which has just about 1.5 million people. I feel very strongly also pretty much along the lines of how Edmon Chung felt when he thought that he wasn't really he was in very big company when Markus referred to a number of panelists as "key drivers" in the various regional Internet Forums that have been held over the past couple of months. Certainly, I am not or I have not been a driver for the West African Internet Governance Forum. There are many more people who are more deserving of that accolade. I'll mention them as I very shortly in my very brief intervention here. The West African IGF was held this year in Dakar, Senegal, in early September, with the active and full participation of quite a number of countries. We certainly did not get all the countries to participate but we're very happy in the end with the level of participation that we got from the various countries in the subregion. It cut across the Board. We had Government officials and civil society participants as well as also some elements of private sector participation. And the meeting in Dakar was actually preceded by a few National Internet Governance Forums that were of different forms. In some cases they had online discussions on Internet Governance followed by face to face meetings. In some cases they had face to face meetings. But all in all, the idea was that we will have the National IGFs and then this will feed into regional IGF, and of course hopefully the regional IGF would feed into the international IGF that's being held in Vilnius. With regards to the theme, it was very much in the spirit of the theme for this global IGF, basically the theme for the West African IGF was promoting the multistakeholder model for further Internet development in Africa, which is very much in the spirit of the theme for the global Internet Governance Forum, which is the development of developing the future Internet together, or developing the Internet together. And so I'd just like to remind also that for us, I think, the IGF, the regional IGF, was a very important event, a very important process, because you remember that presently this year, many countries in West Africa are celebrating the 50th or their 50th independence anniversaries from Colonial rule and we realise and acknowledge that many West African countries, democracy is yet to take old and that's why it's important we have a process like the IGF to further strengthen the Democratic spirit and the concentration on policy formulation and development. I'd also like to mention that we had very active partnership and collaboration across all sectors to realise the organisation of the West African IGF. In particular, I'd mention I'd like to mention we had very significant support from the open side initiative for West Africa which based itself in Dakar, Senegal as well as support from ICANN and the consortium that organised the West African IGF was led, in fact, by the free software and open source foundation for Africa, other wise known as FOSSFA and we had very able coordination from a member of FOSSFA and also a consultant base in of all places in Nairobi, Kenya, and her name is Judy Okite. She's here with us. I'd like to acknowledge her presence and the wonderful contributions. Please raise your hand. We had strong support from the Government of Senegal as well as from its regulatory agency and one of the Telecom operators so it was a classic example of public private partnership at work. Regarding the various subthemes, were discussed various issues from open access and diversity, in that regard, in the case of access and diversity, the conclusions we arrived and the recommendations we arrived at was that, one, that there should be greater effort to provide increased broadband Internet access in the subregion. Now, this shows we're really at a very different ballgame from what happens in East Africa with the advent of the landing of the cable submarine cables they're now talking about content development and access for them is not quite primarily an issue. For us in West Africa we thought this is still a significant theme that should be addressed. We also talked about the need to support the creation of local content and content locally relevant to the needs of the subregion, as well as also the need to have great civil society participation in the Internet in the subregion. With regards to Internet Governance for development, the IG4D as it's sometimes called, the overwhelming feeling was we should redouble our efforts to make sure that we have the protection of intellectual property rights, as well as domain names, and identity issues of the subregion, and people in the subregions especially as we move forward with efforts to move forward to generate more domain names. There's also the concerned expressed that we suffer in Africa in the subregion the very pernicious problem, the sinister problem of our having our IP addresses blocked by providers so that for instance if you are from Nigeria and you want to access some sites, you might find it difficult simply because of the fact your IP address has been blocked, or in some cases for instance, your IP address has been black listed and pretty much anything that's sent out for email really doesn't get delivered the way and manner it should be if at all. In fact it is delivered. There was also the concern and the expressed desire on the rubric of Internet Governance for development that there should be increased ownership of the process by National Governments and regional Governments as well as the regional economic community, the West African, economic community of West African states known as ECOWAS. In the area of privacy, security and openness we deliberated on the issues also and basically called for a multistakeholder approach to the policy development process to developing privacy laws and policies and that also there should be efforts to have a regional approach also to data production and also the protection of personal data and privacy. We also thought that it was important that we redouble our efforts to in partnership with the global Internet community of course work to improve the image of Africa on the Internet. The overwhelming feeling was that we really are getting a bad rap and this has a lot of consequences in terms of both the usage of the Internet by Africans as well as how Africa and African content is perceived on the net. With regards to managing critical resources again the underlying theme there was the emphasis on a multistakeholder process, the multistakeholder approach to the process, and in particular, there was a call for greater regional integration, greater regional effort, to basically provide all these services, the critical Internet services. And in this regard, we called for the active participation and involvement of the service providers, for instance the ISPs and also the IXPs, those are the Internet exchange points, and indeed, calling for the formation of regional IXPs and strengthening of National Internet exchange points. We also called for and advocated for the introduction of regional data centres to provide more robust and more effective resources and infrastructure for use by people in the subregion. We also had a discussion on cloud computing, and cloud computing and the implications of this emerging technology, when especially we're talking about so much of data from Africa and about Africa being more and more hosted outside in clouds that nobody really knows where they are. of course, there are a lot of those implications we talked about and we expressed our concerns in those regards. So basically again, we we emphasized the multistakeholder process very much in spirit of the theme of the global Internet Governance Forum and pretty much across all the subthemes that we had discussed. With regards to the way forward, it's important to note that we actually have established a website for the U.S. African Internet Governance forums, www.waigf.org, the abbreviation, www.waigf.org. There are discussion lists that have been established so there's the idea the discussion wouldn't stop with the conclusion of the WAIGF but this would be on going. There are some people saying they're going to have their National IGFs after the conclusion of the international IGF. And of course they're also talking about having subsequent IGFs in the coming years and they've expressed interest in hosting those. We're looking forward to having more engaging IGF discussions in the future. There's also talk very interesting and I think in a sense in a very uniquely African perspective, talk about the nomenclature of the Forum itself because there was the feeling for some people that once you talk about Governance in Africa you create a threatening atmosphere as it were especially for some Governments that really do not want to stand to scrutiny so there was talk maybe we should at our local level change it from Internet Governance Forum to just call it an Internet Forum to make it more innocuous and less threatening to the authorities. So all in all, it was a very good meeting that we had, and basically like I said, we felt that it was very important to have the space and to continue the discussion and the dialogue, and of course to participate in this Forum to engage in discussions and dialogue and exchange of ideas with our peers and our colleagues, and fellow Internet enthusiasts in other parts of the world. Thanks, Markus.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Katim.
>> JOSEPH TABONE: Now, I'm competing with your stomach at the moment so I'll be very, very short. The IGF has been in place now for just over a year. It came about, it was set up within the context of the Commonwealth and ICT for development programme which is called Commonwealth connect which has been around for a few years and I should possibly point out that the Commonwealth is made up of 53 member countries ranging, they span the 5 continents, they range from the largest to the smallest and the richest to the poorest but half of these member countries 35 of them are really small countries and very small island states. So in the course of the purpose of setting this up in the first place was we the largely outreach to spread information, the word about the Internet to the extent that it's possible for the sharing of good practice, and for capacity building purposes. I should really say that the initiative which has been instigated by the Commonwealth has really to a large degree been driven by the U.K. and the Maltese Government. And I'd like to thank my colleague Mark Carvel for his support in doing this. What we set out to do in the first place last year leading up to the consultations for the IGF, we tried to first of all get a sense from various interest groups throughout the Commonwealth about the interest and the need for really such a group, and the feedback that we had was really very, very supportive and enthusiastic of particularly of so many of these countries who have had no exposure, had little access to Internet related activities. In terms of what has been done in the course of this year, just very briefly, I think that we have really set up a website which contains a fair amount of information relating to ICANN and very GAC specific activities. In focusing our activities we tried to really get a sense from stakeholders about what they saw as priorities. And there was an overwhelming list of issues, which really are identified, and at the top of that list was really the need for capacity building, the need for a safer online environment, the greater attention to the multistakeholder approach, and again a concern about the future of the IGF. In terms of where we concentrated our effort this year, it has really largely been in three areas, the first of these really being capacity building, what we've attempted to do is wherever the Commonwealth maybe organising really a programme in really different parts of the Commonwealth, we're trying to introduce a module are relating to really Internet Governance and I think in the course of this, we've found ICANN very helpful in making resource people available. I think that these really modules are intended more as really informative for a lot of people who really do not know very much about the setup of the Internet, the institutional setup of ICANN, the existence of the various bodies within that. Particularly we have the Government Advisory Committee and parts of these sessions aside from their being informational is to try to draw in participants in these countries into the appropriate really Internet Governance process. The two really major activities in addition to that data, we have really focused on in the course of the past year, have been the compilation of two repositories, one on cybersecurity and a second one on online child protection. The cybersecurity essentially is really a compilation which really has information relating to legislation, National legislation, international conventions, policies and good practice, and then in addition to that, it has information about various sources for capacity building purposes, which really organisations can draw on. And then the good deal of detail templates really having to do with infringements of intellectual property rights, computer related forgery and fault, computer misuse, legal access, legal interception, data interference, that type of thing, which people really find very useful and really much needed reference. Then the second really major activity has been this really compilation on online child protection and I think that we have been very, very fortunate in having really John Carr, who is one of the foremost U.K. experts on the subject, in conjunction with the American institute for child protection in putting this together, and this is all this now is on the CIGF website but this really child protection compilation is going to form really a large part of the workshop that we have scheduled on the on Thursday. I think that's really largely the those have been largely the activities of the really Commonwealth IGF. Later this month in the course of the Commonwealth organising a series of regional meetings in Africa, Asia, we've had one in the south Pacific quite recently and a third one in the Caribbean, and once again, in these meetings, we are really dedicating a fair amount of time to really Internet Governance. The participation in these regional meetings is really typically people Deputy Minister level and they are finding these Forums and these sessions really particularly useful. Something else that we have been doing, that is very relevant, we think, is we have been really trying to put out information relating to the Internet Governance Forum, it's origins, how it came about, it's objectives and the issue relating to the continuation of the mandate for the IGF and we've been doing a fair amount of work in putting out information to member Governments relating to this, to the importance of the continuation of it in its really present format. In terms of the activities for the future, our plans are to continue working within these four key areas that we have already identified. We would like to find a way of focusing some more efforts on the capacity building. This is really something that a lot of really countries, a lot of organisations, seem to be crying out for, and particularly capacity building in these areas of Cybercrime. We would also like to focus on youth participation, providing positive input as well as building better understanding of what the Internet, Internet Governance is about. I think that is really covers largely our activities for the last IGF Forum in Sharm el Sheikh, we were able to offer a number of scholarships, 18 travel scholarships for people to attend the Forum. Unfortunately, we were not able to repeat that this year, and we hope that we will be able to come up with resources to hopefully enable us to do it for the coming year. So thank you very much. Markus?
>> MARKUS KUMMER: First time to quite a bit longer than expected. But it was interesting. For this reason instead of going to a second round I would see whether we have any questions from the floor. Or I would also like to ask remote participation first, maybe a report. Is there any comments, blogs or -- nothing at all. That's not encouraging. Do we have any questions that came to Jennifer, who's collecting questions? Do you have any? And in terms of organizations, actually, when giving the names, please give it twice so that we can give one of the names, one of the leaflets to the scribes and one up to the front so we all have the name. That is very helpful. Please, whenever you write down your name, write it twice. We have a question from Deirdre from the Community College. And would like to give a brief overview of the Caribbean IGF. Did you please -- we are not really interested in overview as such. For overview as opposed to report. But focus on similarities and differences and try and be as concise as possible. And also know there are two other demands from the floor. One from the representative of the Italian ministry. Can you please make sure you give your name to the ushers in the room. And there was another intervention from the floor on human rights and regional perspectives. Can you make sure you have given your names to the scribes. Please first, Deidre Williams on the Caribbean IGF.
>> DEIDRE WILLIAMS: Thank you very much and good afternoon. The Caribbean IGF doesn't seem to be remembered, perhaps. And it's the oldest one. This year in August I attended the 6th Caribbean IGF in St. Martin in the Caribbean. So I'm very glad to be able to speak for it. I think we -- I was also at the LAC preconference in Quito. And I think many of the same issues were dealt with. Mostly I think that I wanted to make sure that everyone remembered that the Caribbean is there too. Thank you.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Point well taken. I was aware that there was a Caribbean IGF. But you could see we just didn't have enough room on the panel. But we will have to make sure that next year somebody from the Caribbean region is on the panel. Sir, you have the floor. Will you kindly introduce yourself.
>> CLAUDIO LENOCI: Thank you. Claudio Lenoci, representing Italian minister of public administration. I thank you very much for giving me the floor. Giving me also the opportunity to put a reflection of Italian government inside this very interesting session on regional perspectives. In many ways the questions that I have today, especially for example access to Internet, the position of our country has been very positive in recent period. Last year during the G8 meeting Minister of Innovation launched some e-government projects with North African countries in the area of the Mediterranean, so strengthening the prospects for access in a context of cooperation and collaboration. During recent years we have been very active in creating the condition of work for dynamic coalition of Internet rights, in order to establish Human Rights standards to the Internet. IGF-Italy and the Italian government have the same vision today of the Web of Internet governance. I will remember that Italy will have its regular meeting at the end of November of this year. It is quite clear for us that the way to follow is grouping all the stakeholders together, strengthening the intuition of the Tunis World Summit on the Information Society to promote a bottom-up regulation process as a result of concerted efforts. But however, we should collect all principles, orientations and best practices in order to progressively elaborate an internationally recognized method and the practices. In our vision international response provisions to the Internet Governance should take the form of a process of sharing and comparison, originated from the following historical analogy. At the end of the 18th century, beginning of the 19th century, Napoleon engaged a distinguished Sardinian jurist, Domenico Azuni, specialised in mercantile law in drawing up an extensive and innovative code of maritime law which would set in order any systematise laws, use, habits and decisions already regulated in Europe. With a bottom up approach, Azuni managed to collect widespread and shared rules, thereby setting the stage for the birth of the first code of maritime laws. But apart from the analogy between navigation in 18th century and the problems related to Internet in the 21st century, there is no doubt that we want not a top-down governance, but a bottom-up approach, utilizing widespread principles and practices. As in the case of maritime international navigation, today it's clear that Internet would not accept the top-down governance. To sum up, in order to develop our idea we need to draw on our own Azuni method in a multistakeholder approach, finding the best instruments and procedures able to manage the proposal described, finding our way to suit the needs of the individual still compressed and compromised on the Web and giving at the same time, a clear definition of Internet-related duties. In conclusion, our proposal does not claim to be revolutionary, as it fully reflects the aim of the debate developed during the IGF meeting of all these years. And I conclude, I thank you, Markus, for your presence and the presence of all the attendance to this session. It is clear in pursuing this goal, we need to join other global initiatives on the subject and to promote a real exchange of ideas and information. In order to facilitate this process, we plan to open soon a consultation at global level through the English version of our website. Thank you for the time that you give me.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. May I take this opportunity and ask the camera man when somebody is speaking, rather to focus on the person who speaks than on the podium. Next speaker is Dixie Hawtin, from global partner associates. Please.
>> DIXIE HAWTIN: Hello. I would like to talk about initiative that I have worked on as part of the dynamic coalition. Human rights at regional Internet Governance. And it's based upon the idea of this session, that there are really important conversations going on at the regional IGFs and that it's important to try and gather these together and see where there are areas of similarities and differences. What we did was we had an Rapporteur, attend each of the IGFs and write a report based on the discussions that went on there. And we put these together into a global report. So I just want to say some of the key findings. First of all, we found out that human rights issues come up at all of the regional IGFs and that many, many different human rights issues. However, Human Rights language is rarely used when discussing them. This is something we thought was quite interesting given that Human Rights have a lot to give to our conversations given that they are well developed international standards which are applicable everywhere. So should apply to the Internet. Multistakeholder participation was celebrated at all of the regional IGFs. However, there were also absent or underrepresented stake holder groups at all of them. And that included indigenous group, women, people with disabilities, end users, nonusers and future users, as well as some of the more traditional stake holder groups such as government, businesses and civil society. Internet access was the foremost Human Rights topic at all of the regional IGFs. Slightly less, though, at Euro DIG. And under that topic people were looking at infrastructure, educational programmes and capacity building, regulatory approaches as well as the need for the Internet to recognize more languages and to house more content which is relevant on a local scale. Personal data privacy was another huge issue at many of the IGFs. And there were many cause for new data privacy standards. Limitations to on line content were also discussed, but many, many different issues under this heading were discussed such as political censorship, which was a big topic at the Asian Pacific IGF, whereas at the central African IGF they were talking about how great the Internet is because it circumvents traditional censorship or more traditional medias. The value to children and young people were recognized at all of the regional IGFs particularly in education and leash your. And all IGFs recognized the need for educational programmes to allow young people to take advantage of all the opportunities of Internet and also for the need to involve young people in Internet governance discussions. There was lots, lots more information in the report if you're interested. I do have a couple of copies. And all of the regional IGF reports together with the original one is available on the rights of individuals coalition website. Thank you.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. We have quite a few people who asked for the floor, but I don't think it will be possible to give them the floor as some of these interventions are actually not actually comments and questions but almost written statements. There is one intervention, though, that complete the name but it's from telecom Fiji limited on the Pacific IGF. Where is -- yes, please. Why don't you -- microphone for this lady, please. And please say your name how you pronounce it. It seems to be a very long name.
>> SALAMETA TAMAMKAIWAIMAW: Very long name. All the letters of the alphabet -- just kidding. It's a pleasure to be here. I think it would be remiss of me if I didn't make a comment, at least on behalf of all my colleagues in the Pacific. The Pacific in case most people don't know, it's in the southern hemisphere, and at least 16 to 18 sovereign nation states each with voting rights in the United Nations. And the good news is we are having our first Pacific IGF next year. In April. So we are really looking forward to that. In terms of differences and similarities, it was very fascinating herring about the different developments. And clearly differences with Europe would be Europe is far more advanced. We are -- we are learning from Europe in terms of how you have been negotiating your tree teas and what not, being able to draw from that. And we also draw richly also from the Caribbean in terms of the ICT strategies and what not. And some of you may probably -- probably may not know for different nations in the Pacific at least, Australia has its national Broadband network, and it's running out pretty soon and Fiji is headed that way in terms of consultations. And in terms of access, our country -- can't remember whether the first African speaker was west Africa or east Africa. East Africa. Sorry. The difference with east Africa is where east Africa has just got an excess, the Pacific has got access for a while. And we have cable all across the Pacific and in terms of access. One of the things that's happening now in the region is in terms of opening that up to other networks. And the rumors of Pacific fiber being built maybe between Australia and New Zealand to sort of increase capacity. And quite aside from that the regional organisation, the equivalent of Caricom in the Caribbean, we call Pacific Islands Territory. And also as an entity sort of engaging in what's called the spin network. Which is an alternative network which should increase access. And in the Pacific one of the predominant issues -- not so much access -- well, yes, access in terms of universal service, in terms of equalizing or national penetration rates, bringing up the numbers. Quite aside from teledensity and that sort of thing. One of the huge issues is cost. Cost of access. And I suppose just alluding to the previous panel that sat before you, Miss Aniretta, she spoke about competition and markets and the need to engage in dialogue in that sense. So I think all in all, we have an organisation called Pacific island telecommunications association, and I also heard from -- I know Mr. Chung spoke on behalf of Asia Pacific. But not that Pacific was heavily represented in that forum just because of access -- potentially transportation and just cost of actually going there. But the good news is we're having an IGF in April, and everyone is looking forward to it. And I'm sure our Pacific colleagues also in the room will talk sometime. Yes.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for that. I would like now to turn back again to our panelists. But you have to be very, very brief. But basically the second set of questions would be -- and one of the speakers from the floor actually also asked that question on the relationship with the global IGF and the speaker, Ayman El-Sherbiny, had a question on the sustainability of national and regional IGFs and also their funding. Funding is of course always an issue. What I would like to hear from you is whether seen from your perspective, is the global IGF dealing with the right issues or should it be dealing with different issues to satisfy your community? And then also, how do you see the interaction between the regional meetings and the global meeting, or also should there be some form of interaction between regional meetings, let's say Latin America and Caribbean or east Africa and west African, and out of reasonable nones, why not the meeting of the Pacific meeting. Of course you're free to add other issues. But please be very, very brief. Starting with Alice, please.
>> ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you, Markus. In terms of the relationship the African IGF, and the global IGF, I think since we started in 2008, it's been very clear to us that while there's been a lot -- the impact of the global IGF, there was major impact and because of the recognition that we were not represented meaningfully. But then the regional IGF went beyond that and began to look for relevance, local relevance. So that yes, we are linking to the global IGF, but for us what is the most important is that it's relevant to our needs and concerns and issues at the regional level. And that's why for each east African regional IGF there's always a linkage to policy processes at the national level. We keep saying that we do not want to be constrained by the global IGF constraint. And that's why for us we look at it as a sustainable process. Where each -- in each country all the stakeholders then come together and are willing to host each regional IGF. And that's I think responds to the issue of sustainability. When we look at the 2008 IGF, yes, we do have international partners that provided, you know, financial resources -- financial and in kind resources, I'll name them ISOC, and ICANN, and AT&T, and IDFC, and others. But most of the support came from the Kenyan government and Kenyan private sector. Even though one of the major challenges is that our private sector at the local level do not really understand what Internet governance is about. And contrary to what the west African IGF, where the government had an issue, governance, for the east African IGF it's the private sector that have an issue with the wide governance. And most of the matter, look at it as something that might actually affect their bottom line in terms of, you know, profit and don't understand it. Which means we do have a lot of work to do in terms of creating awareness and understanding of the process. But I think this is where it's, you know, the matter is -- and walking close with government has helped. In that you can see the results quite clearly, especially I think in Kenyan, Uganda and Tanzania. He is specifically with redelegation. In Kenyan it is development of ICT policy. To date the government does not release any piece of policy without using the model that we use at the east African level where a piece of policy is first presented to a -- Kenyan ICT action network. We are actually right now beginning to consider discussing cyber security piece of policy. So that's how, you know -- that's why the global IGF has been very important, especially because of the multistakeholder model.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: I think after the first IGF that you said, we would continue even if the global IGF would not continue. And I think this is a -- okay. Can I turn to Katim. West Africa now.
>> KATIM TOURAY: Thanks, Markus. And thanks for the participants for the very good contributions we have had from them. Briefly touch on two issues. One would be the issue of the cooperation and collaboration between the various regional IGFs and second is the issue of sustainability of the IGFs. Beginning with the reasons for the -- for more cooperation between the regional IGFs, I happen to have been privilege -- I am on the board of directors of ICANN. And I was -- ICANN supporting both the IGFs, both IGFs in west Africa and east Africa. I was fortunate to attend both of them. And really be able to first hand compare and contrast the various -- the two IGFs. And it was quite an eye-opening experience for me, as a matter of fact. And for that reason, I'd like to strongly advocate for greater collaboration between the IGFs at the sub -- region in Africa but also call for greater collaboration between the various IGF, especially those in the developing countries. For a number of reasons. One would be to enable the exchange of ideas across the various subregions and regions of the world. And secondly would be able to share in as they say in French the -- the best practices that often are not really confined to any just one or that location around the various parts of the world or Africa. And finally, I think it would be great opportunity to also help build capacity. We all know that in around these developing countries, especially in Africa we complain often and rightly so about the dearth of capacity that exists. I think where we basically have better cooperation mechanism we will be able to establish order and there by -- go along with addressing serious capacity constraints that we have. Regarding the sustainability of the IGFs, I see here an opportunity and a challenge. Beginning with the challenge, we also -- beginning with the challenge, the question here is how can we ensure that in the future we will be able to get the funding levels that we will require to have the regional -- the subregional IGFs, especially with face-to-face meetings. It's not that much of a big deal to set up a mailing list and have an on line discussion. The problem is getting people flown in for a place for two days or three days or whatever to have face-to-face discussions. As I indicated in the West African IGFs what we did was to have funding from ICANN, or SEWA, and is some of the -- government and also regulatory agency and one of the operators. And I think what we need to do is to tap more and more into local sources of funding. Especially because of the fact that we have more and more this telephone companies that really have the resources to put their money where their mouth is. And also we used to -- we have to look at how we can leverage the Internet to reduce the cost of hosting this online forums. These IGFs. So that we can proceed face to face meeting with a lengthy and intense online discussion so that at the end of the day the duration of this face-to-face meetings can be reduced and thereby saving cost. Finally I see the day when we can leverage infrastructure so woo can have Internet governance forums that are based on video conferencing or all the subregional capitals so people can participate remotely at the regional IGFs. Thank you.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Can I ask the remaining speakers to be much, much shorter.
>> VALERIA BETANCOURT: Thank you, Markus. We'll keep beginning Spanish next. The global IG space is a key opportunity to address the global dimension of issues. However, as global issues have impact at regional and national level, it is important to look at the complementarities of the different spaces. The regional feeds the international and vice versa. These spaces should be in dialogue, with each space benefiting from the other's experience and expertise. Definition of priorities at the IGF should take into account the possibilities of balancing / combining agendas.
The global debate should not eliminate the regional particularities and the regions should not predominate in a way that prevents the global dimensions of the issues from being clearly identified.
Participants pointed out that it would be important to establish a more formal interaction between the regional and global meetings. It would contribute to make the regional priorities more visible in the global debate.
Some recommendations have emerged in regard of the interaction between the global and the regional meetings:
1. It would be useful that the IGF secretariat prepare in advance a summary of the contributions from the preparatory events.
2. Making the interaction more formal could contribute to make messages coming out from the regional meetings more visible as inputs for the global discussion.
The global forum could be the place for regional actors to interact with each other as such, as long as there is meaningful preparatory process that would enable effective interaction.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Edmon?
>> EDMON CHUNG: I think we should immediately start that. In the preparations with Asian Pacific IGF, we talked about eventually finding different people as well, which leads me to -- and including Pacific IGF and we're very much happy that that will happen next year. That leads me to the second item, which is sustainability. The funding is obviously always a problem. That's also another item in Asia is the diversity and the dynamics of -- between potential hosts, I guess. So that's -- that's a very important aspect. The other -- you know, the other item on funding, I think in Asia we are a little bit -- I guess fortunate. In fact, at least myself speaking for Asia, we're willing to support an APNIC and Internet related groups are very interested in supporting the sustainable dialogue in Internet governance. And that leads to us having some surplus which allowed us is this year to send I think eight students over here from the youth IGF camp in Hong Kong. And in terms of the -- what we sort of talked about and think that in terms of the global IGF, how we could inform or what topics to talk about, I think one particular one that came up from the discussions in the Asia Pacific AGIF, for terms of governance, I think that's definitely becoming an item that I think should be more focussed on. And so only about developing -- developing countries and developing areas, but also the development for like youth or disadvantaged minorities, elderly, those type of -- how policies affect the development of those I think is an important aspect. Finally, in terms of how to I guess -- how regional IGFs could interact. Perhaps a couple things. One in terms -- interacting from the regional to the global, I think as I -- the overall approach of IGF being more influencing decisions rather than making decisions, I think probably, you know, one of the things that would be most useful for regional is from the workshops, from the regional workshops, as well as different workshops bringing the discussion and continuing the dialogue. And in fact that's one of the things that we hope to accomplish this Friday in the Asia Pacific sections, to continue the dialogue. And Pacific IGF definitely welcome you to join and continue the dialogue on how to do that. And the other part is from the global to the regional. What we found is that it's very challenging as more of a bottom-up, trying to be a bottom-up initiative, to invite ministers, to invite government. Perhaps on that aspect the UN Secretariat and IGF Secretariat can help us more in inviting governments' participation. So that's my notes. Thank you.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you, Edmon. Three more speakers left. One minute each.
>> KAHALED FOUDA: Thank you very much. In preparation for the global IGFs, they have been always discussing the exact issues related to the global IGF. However, I think that -- they have been also involving maybe government bodies only. But the initiative by the -- in response to the initiative will add this -- good as I say different issues than the global IGF. It also makes to discuss the global IGF, but maybe other issues that could be specific to the region. It should also involve all different stakeholders. Sustainability we should be working on a five-year plan. A road map, as I said, for the coming five years. So at least we should guarantee sustainability for the coming five years. And I think that our leaving countries and -- aware of the importance of Internet governance. So I don't think that financing those meetings should be a major issue for the others.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Sebastien.
>> SEBASTIEN MURIEL: Thank you, Markus. Well, the European Internet governance forum plays a role not only in getting a common European focal point and better coordination between all the countries, but also in the transmission of these key messages to the IGF, and also to the European institutions that I mentioned. The commission of Europe, the Parliament and also the council of Europe. Regarding the sustainability, well, it's -- want to remark the relevant role that is playing the council of Europe in -- well, providing Secretariat authority, enabling also the platform. Which is very important. I want also to thank the great work that Thomas and Lee are performing. In fact, they should be here talking. I'm just -- only because I was the chairman, but people is continually moving on everything. And this is great because we are getting more and more people involved on these kind of issues. The document that we provide as the result of the -- is a document with messages that are not negotiated text. But it's the work -- the work from the reporters directly in consultation with all the orientation people that are working. And serve as key message to raise to the global debate. I think that right now thinking of future, is consolidate event. Has three additions already. We began in 2008. And I think it is useful. And since it's useful because it raise hot topics to the policy maker, I guess it's going to continue without any problem. Of course the funding, we have to be very --
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. Joe. 30 seconds.
>> JOSEPH TABONE: Thank you very much. I will be very quick. In terms of the interactions between the various IGFs, no question at all about it. And probably should try to really invest very sound time or to find out how best this can be done. I mean, such enormous amount that is really going on that we -- becomes overwhelming. First of all, the challenge of the coordination. But also the dissemination aspect of it. So perhaps this is something that we can try to engage in to find out, you know, how best we can really capitalize on all this that is going on. And on the second issue of sustainability, I think this is very much a challenge to most of us. I think in various instances this is very bottom-up type of activity. It is a struggle. And to do this job and do it well, you will need to dedicate some resources to it. And where we have to really concentrate more effort on really making sure that we can continue with this. Thank.
>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you. With this we coming to the end. I think it's not the end of the discussion, though, on these regional initiatives. I mean we will have all these sessions with the various regional IGFs. National IGFs, we should not forget either will report on their activities. And we at the end in Thursday, we will have a round table on -- where all the regional, national IGFs are invited to discuss these issues of relationship between themselves and the global IGFs. And I would cordially invite all those who have -- very sorry, but I cannot -- we really reached the end and the interpreters need -- I'm sorry, I cannot extend it any longer. And so -- I saw Cynthia Waddell had a comment on the importance of best practices in regional IGF initiatives to discuss disability issues, the sharing of best practices is important, of course. And already in the previous session I made publicity for the dynamic coalition of access for disabilities. But I would also like to invite to come to the round table and -- Bianca Ho, from Hong Kong, one of the organisers of the youth IGF camp. Would like to see more on regional youth IGF sessions in the future. But I'm awfully sorry, but with this I have to close our session. Thank you very much. I would like to thank the panelists and would like to thank the audience. The interpreters also need a break. And may I remind you you are asked to be in the -- in this hall seated by quarter to 3:00 for the president's address to in meeting. Thank you very much. And I -- have a nice afternoon.
(Applause.)
(End of Session.)