FINISHED COPY
EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES ‑ ENHANCING MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
OCTOBER 23, 2013
3:30
WS316
INTERNET OF SERVICES‑GRANTING HUMAN RIGHTS AT THE INTERNET
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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>> MODERATOR: Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, let's start our workshop, Empowering Displaced People.
The initiative of this workshop belongs to the representatives of the academia community. I'm the Dean of Business in the School of Economics and I'm glad to welcome all of the participants, all our remote participants.
First let me introduce the organizers of the workshop. It is Dr. Svetlana Maltseva, Mikhail Komarov from the NRU Higher School of Economics and Mr. Ajay Ranjan Mishra that represents the ITU Technical Community.
I'm glad to introduce the panelists, it is Audrey Shcherbrovich, Faculty of Law, Higher School of Economics.
We have Paul Mitchell from the Microsoft Technology Officer for Middle East and Africa.
We have the head of policy for Global Columbia and in Peru.
We have the President of a Chapter of the Internet Society.
We have ‑‑ Nevine Tewfik will not be with us.
And Roxana Radu represents the Institute of International and Development Studies.
I'm sorry. There's some changes in our panelists.
We have the representative of Ministry of The University, the founder of TaC, Executive Director of Together Against Cybercrime International Organization.
We can start.
First let me and the organizers, allow us to do some short introduction into the workshop topics. Please show them the presentation.
I must say, this workshop, this is to understand the needs of the refugees and displaced people and immigrants and to discuss the abilities to address these needs.
I think it is interesting to see some statistics that indicates the problems of displaced people. Unfortunately I ‑‑ I didn't see this. Okay. I'm sorry. You can see that ‑‑ you can see the permanent growth of the amount of displaced people in the world.
You can see, also, that the top destinations of people who are living abroad, it is the United States and the Russia, my native country, now in second place, also you see more attractive countries for immigrants and refugees.
Maybe it is interesting to see that more than half of the refugees come from only a few countries, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan.
It is interesting to see that the Europe, Asia, we can see all of the same number of immigrants. More than 70% of immigrants are of working age. It is critical for them to find job and it is critical services in employment in the skills.
From the point of view from host country, from the point of view services, offer services, maybe you begin to identify main groups of displaced people. If it is newly arriving refugee, low income resident, citizens in the homeland.
For those groups, the services must be different. What are the main immigration and refugee service groups? You can see this, you see the employment and skill combination, housing, healthcare, finance, maybe it is on the top of the list.
If we think of how we can help in organizing these services using the Internet technologists and the information technologists, we have discussed this in the Internet Governance forum, first of all, maybe we can see on their trends for customer services, those strengths are used successful in business and may be critical for the services for these groups or for people for ‑‑ such as refugees and immigrants.
Also it is interesting concept, this is the way to look at this, but you see that the numbers here are based on very big deals and for immigrants and for refugees, and here they have many problems in realizing.
There are exceptions of all personal information. Also, the immigrants, the refugee, this can be different from the citizen from the host population, maybe it is ‑‑ it will be useful and interesting to build some models for our refugees, models of displaced people. Often it is hard to identify groups and group venue.
We have no information about previous and current experience to predict the experience of the immigrant and displaced people using the services, and those with language problems.
I must say technologists and the approaches now, it is ‑‑ I think, and my opinion ‑‑ it is that they have the ability to solve many of those problems. First of all, I think it is very interesting idea for pulling the data and the exchanging of the different open data between the countries.
Of course it is ideal for the concept of big deal with the Internet services. Maybe today we can discuss the ability of the technologists too. I want to finish my short presentation in showing you the question that we, I think, can discuss today.
Today there are a lot of organization, the government ‑‑ not government, but that can provide services for on displaced people. We cannot see that all problems are solved. I think that services must be more personalized, more relevant and also they must be massive in the course.
I want to ask our panelists to answer this question: Which services should be provided to the refugees and displaced people? Who should pay for the development and who’s going to provide the services? Companies, governments, public organizations? If neighbor countries should develop services together, some joint services in case of disaster to one of the country. Which is the role of new information technologists and the Internet.
Thank you for your attention in having this discussion. I want to invite to the discussion one of our organizers, Mr. Mishra who will do his presentation and report in the remote mode.
He will tell us about the problems of immigrants in India.
>> Can you start the presentation, please?
>> Sure. Are you ready to start that presentation, Mikhail?
>> We're on slide number 1.
Good evening to the nation, a good day to those that are remotely connected to the meeting.
It is a pleasure to see Professor Audrey Shcherbrovich. We have never met, but it is always a pleasure.
Here we are, in this workshop, I'll be talking a bit about the utilization of the Internet, refugees, going to utilize the tools and connect in both the home and host country.
Now, if you move to slide number two, we have seen this quite a lot in India. We have an immigration, refugee problem. In fact, in 1970, '71 it was so big it ended in a war between Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh.
Having said that, if you leave aside the political issues and focus on the people that are displaced, a basic problem they face is ‑‑ the biggest problem that they don't want to talk to, he or she would be like to be closer to people that know them.
Generally in the refugee camps you see a lot of people that have problems for obvious reasons. Now, how to understand the local land ways, the local dialect. Especially a country like India, there we have 19 national languages, not one, not two, 19.
Then the government will announce the third aid countries, the aid that's announced, the momentum may move on in countries like in the third‑world countries and the real aid never reaches ‑‑ people don't know how much the government has announced and packages for them, Obama sometimes gives money, houses, but they're not available.
I see another big problem, that's education. Most of the students who are displaced that come as refugees of people, they're doing some education and somehow it is distracted because of things that are not under their control.
I see these four things as one of the key in where the Internet can really help. When I say Internet, I'm talking about Internet in general, not talking about, you know, specific websites dedicated to the refugees, because generally it takes time for these things to come up.
You know, you really get ‑‑ go ahead and slide over to three.
Through the Internet Messenger, for example, people can be connected to the near and dear when they actually know what's happening to their properties back home. Is somebody taking care of them or is it looted or is ‑‑ what is happening with that? They can acknowledge the locals, they cannot only that, but they can get to understand what's being used in the local country or in the host country, they can actually get in touch with the locations, good hospitals.
Okay, here is our problem. What should we do? Generally what happens is that the refugees, they ‑‑ people are ‑‑ the amount of facilities that come to the people, there's a huge gap between it that could be understood from there.
Then the local laws, people may not know that is another piece, that these things are free for everybody, for example, the hospitals may be free. When these things happen, even those that don't know the law, they may end up in pain and may end up in hospitals. Whether it is free, say it may be a dollar, just sign in yourself, that's all, you can get treatments for free. There are people standing outside of the hospital, so on, telling these people, you know, we can get you ‑‑ the work done for free. We can get you a license, we can get you help. People are able to portray them, at the end of the day, at some point they may be caught, put in jail because of having a fake identity.
And last but not the least, people can actually continue education online, especially women and children, all school age, education is really on there. So, online education is there. Even if somebody's displaced from the home country to the host country, there is lots of courses to do. They can get education, get some jobs because sometimes in countries as big as India it may be better to take more people to go back to their, you know, home country, it is very difficult ‑‑ we have a lot of people from Bangladesh staying in India. They have not gotten their cards, work permits, they didn't know what X, Y, Z means.
At the end of the day, as a human being, I'm not really concerned about ‑‑ whatever they're representing. I think they need good advice. They can always go back to another country, the law, to go by the U.N. principles, people should have the basic conditions and should not be butchered. This is crucial.
If we can go to the last slide.
I think the Internet, this is a best means to get connected from the home country, the host country. People really go get an education on the laws, about the health system, applications, they can actually get the help.
In fact, Nelson Mandela once said food, water for all. He said let there be food, water, Internet for all for the good life.
>> Thank you. Thank you very much.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: We have questions from the floor, from the remote participants. Thank you very much.
Of course we must be ‑‑ we must do introduction to technology statistics for the problem which we want to discuss today and I want to give the microphone to Mikhail.
>> MICKHAIL KOMAROV: Thank you very much. I'll try to be as quick as possible.
From, you know, the technological perspective anyway, I would probably like to ‑‑ show you the slides, but I would like to emphasize that we're talking about economic development which is based on technological progress and here you can see some basic phases of the progress when we talk about the communications and when we talk about the communications itself.
I just would like to announce that our technologists, our cellphones, the most common devices and technology used around the world in terms of services provided using the help of these devices.
When we're talking refugees and displaced people, you're also already seeing some services provided via cellphones through short message services and cellphones to connect families to check quality and to find medicines outside of the countries, outside of the home countries to inform people about emergencies and disasters. Even if the High Commissioner, he already says that we should change ‑‑ we should change our policy in terms of obligations that should be provided to refugee, displaced people, we should also provide them Internet and we should provide them with basic services, Google earth, so on.
So that's where actually the Internet service has come. We just had a discussion about many things, but it doesn't matter whether we're talking about the things or services, I want to emphasize we're talking data, talking about data and we're talking about data utilization. We're talking about Internet services, personalized, as it was already announced, so customer, citizens displaced, people should be at the center and we should provide the services for the people, definitely.
Now in terms of the massive services, we're talking about the different services.
What I want to say, we're talking about the Internet services as the mechanism which will help us to empower people, empower displaced people, empower immigrants with the services they need based on some applications case by case. What are we talking about? Services ready to be used, we ‑‑ we have many devices around us.
We have many services around us already introduced, and not just the informative services but also services on a level of communications, a level of a number of things and make sure that these services, they would be quite useful for the refugees and for the displaced people, but they're not just abducted for them and actually the manufacturers and the service producers, developers, they haven't thought about, you know, these people when they were proposing services.
In terms of government enrollment, from my perspective, we're talking about the government as a policymaker for the application and services and in terms of et cetera, we are talking the government of a developer, for the educational services, government as involved in providing culture and the traditional services, just, you know, informative services for the displaced people and those ‑‑ that's some basic governmental services.
We have a technology side as a basis. We have different hardware platforms, but we're not talking about just hardware platforms we're talking about data which is provided by the hardware and software firms.
This data‑driven services should be introduced to displace people, to help them assimilate in terms of informative services like traditions, culture. In terms of services for the job seeking, for the grants, so on. Just try to be, you know, as discreet as possible.
Thank you very much.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you, Mikhail.
The organizers and me, we have tried to outline the raw data for discussion and now we must discuss the critical questions. I think we can start from the first question, which services should be provided to the refugees and displaced people? I think I will ask some of our panelists to give us their opinion and, first of all, we'll do that and then we'll have the questions from the floor and from our remote participants.
>> You covered a lot of those. I would like to add two things to what you said in terms of the basic services that need to be provided.
I look at it from the angle of ‑‑ first of all, we need to have up and running infrastructure. I think we tend to forget that in many cases when we have the refugees, we may not even have Internet connection up and running in those places. In some cases, even if we have it, it may not be at the scale of supporting hundreds of thousands of people in a very small area. It was not designed that way.
So the first thing, the first ‑‑ I would say the first thing is to have basic infrastructure up and running to support the needs of the population at the right time. That's a difficult problem to solve. That's number one.
Number two, to have the basic services that we talked about. The services just as ‑‑ you know, the education, the communication, you know, healthcare and understanding their rights and response and responsibilities and obligations in the country, et cetera. These are sort of basic services.
I would argue, we're in the world of innovation, technology, there may be another level of additional services that will be provided by, you know, smart developers that are not in this room but who may understand the needs of these people and may come up with crazy ideas and innovative ideas to support the needs of certain categories of those people.
I look at it through these three things, you know, basic infrastructure, second thing, basic services, communication, you know, being able to indicate to their parents and to talk to them, being able to understand their obligations and rights and the third pillar, it is really about how do we do it to enable the innovation and bring different services to different people.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you. Thank you.
The services that need to be provided, first, I would like to, you have to have the access to the legal protection, access to courts, according to that, this court accessibility, it is the best practices for services which are important to be provided. First, it should be in the relevant language.
For people that are foreigners, not knowing ‑‑ not the good ability of speaking the language of the country, so the immigration, so they need to access information, how to get the local attorney, how to ‑‑ have access to the court service, how to access the refugee migration services on the language they could speak. That's the first point.
The second point is the other related service, which I think need to be provided, they are a kind of a library or a legal place with the major legal acts, for example. I could see the example of the best practice from Indonesia so when I arrived in the country I filled the immigration form, I'm not a refugee but that's an example. It is written in red capitals that the drug traffickers are sent to the death penalty here. That's good to have that kind of information about ‑‑ to know that coming in the country. I don't know about the refugees issues with the drug traffic but that's okay. That's my point of view.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you.
>> First of all, I have to confess, this is a subject, an area which is not very familiar to me. Since I was asked by my friends who I met in Paris in February to be here, here I am.
First of all, I think that we are talking about very different groups and types of people. Talking about migrants and migrants, you know, they can be actually people who are quite well to do, come to Finland to work as NOKIA engineers, and then on the other hand, you have all sorts of migration and they need ‑‑ we're talking here about a very different thing from each other. Then, of course, at the other end of the spectrum we talk about refugees, we talk about the displaced persons after some disaster or political crisis maybe living in camps, so on, so forth. So, they're really very different needs for hierarchy of needs for all these people.
Finland happens to be a country which people used to emigrate from Finland and not so much take immigrants into Finland, now, of course, we have immigrants in the basic policies to integrate them as fast as possible. That means that the service, the net services, the Web services, they're mostly integrated with whatever agencies there are that provide those services. They try to integrate them there.
The language, of course, is a problem, Finland has a very difficult language. The people who come, they have different languages. Anyway, one of the applications is introduced, the web application for language training. That's a first thing to be able to function in a society. Yeah, it is true, you want to talk to your home country. That's ‑‑ I think that that's mostly actually the telecenters that are ran by the immigrants themselves, they're really springing up in various parts of the city, especially where the immigrants are living. So, that actually provides business opportunities for immigrants that are savvy technology.
Then at the other end of the scale, we're talking about people living in camps and so on and so forth, I don't know much about that. I saw that on the link provided in this book, they were referencing this, there was a story. I followed the link, I found an organization called Refugees United. What they're doing, they're a good example of how this technology can be used in a novel way, that is to say that it is a tracing, a family tracing service. One of the problems is, if you're in a camp, displaced somewhere, you lose touch with your relatives, sometimes with your children and apparently this service has been ‑‑ it can actually ‑‑ it can be accessed even by cellphones now. It has been of great use for that sort of thing.
The one thing, if we have time, I could touch on that subject, that is related to this a bit, it is also about the disasters. It is a disaster in which the people of your country happen to be victims of a disaster in a faraway place. I'm talking about the tsunami in Thailand. We developed some improvised solutions at that time ‑‑ perhaps that's another story. I'll come back to that if we still have time.
Thank you.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you very much. A microphone for you, dear.
>> YULIYA MORENETS: Thank you very much. Good afternoon.
Thank you for this invitation. I'm very glad to be here today.
Specifically we ‑‑ I'm from an organization TaC‑Together against Cybercrime International, and we started to work in the area of what we call vulnerable people but obviously the vulnerable people could be refugees and immigrants as well as defined by the information society.
So, how we arrived actually to this question of vulnerable people in the information society, or how ICTs could assist or better integrate the migrant, the refugees in the society and economic and social life, we mainly work in the area of cyber crimes, cybersecurity protection.
Being in the field, we realize that a target group, the vulnerable group, particularly, they don't have ‑‑ they have enough ‑‑ they don't have enough information, not because of the information not existing, but because they cannot access the information due to the linguistic problems, other problems concerning how to be safe and responsible. Particularly what we realize, they're fragile online, they can be involved in the legal activities and can be easily victims of the cybercrime.
It is how we arrive to this, to the conclusion, that we do need to raise the question of how to protect or empower vulnerable people in the information society and launch the discussion two years ago during the IGF in Kenya.
If we ‑‑ I think the question was which services should be provided to the refugees and displaced people? It was ‑‑ the question is about Civil Rights. We talk about waits they have. We don't have a simple answer to this.
If we want to summarize into words, we would say the same Human Rights as every human. It is included and it is written in the Universal Convention on Human Rights.
First of all, I think it was referenced to a number of times, access to the Internet and information, whatever it is, the information concerning how to be safe and responsible or not online or how to be integrated in the life of the new society.
Before I ‑‑ I would like to share our experience particularly concerning migrants. To speak about the project we have developed with a number of prepare partners at the European level.
First of all, I think before we speak about services we need to provide, we need also to communicate and raise awareness about the services existence or potential existence of the services of the local authorities who are in direct contact with these people, they deal in the field with these people.
We need to empower them with the knowledge, you know, that the information society today can bring new opportunities for migrant, you can implement these solutions, the solutions in the field of economic integration, social, cultural integration, how to be safe and responsible online, et cetera, the locals themselves, they're in the aware of the existence of the solutions or the existence of the possibility of the solutions.
What we have done, we have launched a year ago a project that we call the spring, it was mainly developed with ourselves and other partners at the European level, it was a youth funded project. We developed a course for local authorities, representatives on how to use ‑‑ on the better integration of migrants.
So, particularly it is an online available course which has five chapters. The local authorities, representatives, they can follow online and they have an evaluation afterwards, the certificate can be provided so the main idea was to, you know, to raise the attention ‑‑ to raise the awareness and to bring to their attention the fact that we have solutions in different fields, all fields that were discussed before even concerning the economic and medical, health assistance area with the users. When they know, the authorities know that the services can be provided, they can implement or help to implement the services and bring them about. They're in direct contact with them.
For the moment being my two cents, I would be happy to discuss afterwards. Thank you.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you, Yuliya.
Some questions from our remote ‑‑ yes?
>> AUDIENCE: I have a question, the question is, if governments and the Internet is provided to the citizens, who do you suggest fund the strategy and how to put in place this by the request of government?
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: I think it's the next question. Maybe I can ask to answer this question maybe let's see if other ‑‑
>> Thank you. First of all, on behalf of the ‑‑ I want to express my gratitude for this, the reason is, the colleagues, they have attached the legal background and the structural background, and this point is important.
This is a ‑‑ as you have all known, we're having a problem which was almost we had 1 million refugees, and therefore we were having for the last 20 years we have acquired enough experience and best practices on dealing with the issues of refugees and IDPs. Starting with the experience, to directly answer the question, I know we have a limited time, the services, different camps, they deal with different services.
In Australia they have the refugee’s cash assistance, they just do it in cash, they do have medical assistance. We have a specific law, we have dealt with the issues of refugees coming and the IDPs.
We have a law that was even ‑‑ that was adopted in 1999, a law, and some specific amendments. The law provides this kind of specific service for the refugees and they're fluid communication, free healthcare and also the foods, the groceries, then for specific concessions. The main part of this law is not only on normalizing the life of the refugees but making it better than the normal citizens. They do have ‑‑ they have been moved from their ‑‑ from their life they have built on, or their career that they have built on, specific emergency that they went through, they lost their family members.
So, in this case, particularly I guess we won't have time to touch one by one. If it is okay I'll touch all of the questions and just briefly, simply talk about it and the things regarding who will fund it, well, major funding from the government and daily average is over $300 million. In 2008 it was 300 million and almost the same as the Euro. This funding is all about the building the new ministries for the refugees and IDPs and providing them every single assistance.
Going back to the ICT: If you have a chance to look at the website of the state, it is quite, quite modern. You can see that there is e‑services of the government for refugees and really interesting that we found out, some camps, they tried to involve as much as possible Civil Society or private sector for the implementation of the funding of the projects they have gotten, refugee, IDPs but at the end as I indicated, the questions, there is a need of strategy that strategy is the mission that should be backed with a legal background.
Legal background should be backed by experience. It is the kind of triangle relationship between them.
Going back to the issue of the neighbor countries, the national disasters, how they deal with that: This is an example around ‑‑ so many from around the world. Most of you know, like, the issue of back‑to‑school initiative that was organized and conducted together with Lebanese and Palestinian States and the aim was for providing the refugees, the Lebanon refugees from Syria with major ‑‑ like main school items in order for them to have it leak into that small infrastructure for them having the education, of a perspective of that.
They'll actually think, you know, the point is not only normalizing the life of the refugees but trying to make them better than the normal citizens. The point is to see and to have this balance. There is one thing when we can't ever reimburse, that's actually their mental things they have gone through. There is no price for that. Therefore, actually, when we think about any ‑‑ preparing anything for the refugees we have to take that point into account.
Thank you.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you. Do we have another question from the remote participants?
>> Yes.
>> Does the simple iOS require ‑‑ sorry. It requires a certain level of information and literacy, but the immigrants and refugees are not often educated enough to use the profile. May I suggest the possibility of solving this problem?
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Ajay?
>> AJAY RANJAN MISHRA: I'll try to answer that question. Several periods ago, it was ‑‑ I was employed with the information for all programs, which is active with the internet Governance Forum. They're raising the issues of information literacy.
This is a global part of the informational users, those items are interconnected with each other. It is possible to be the information without the information culture where problem also exists.
When we're talking about, for example, issues called the Arab Spring and after that we have the refugees from the Middle East those are revolutions in Arab countries, it was done by using the Internet technologies.
You know, when they could use Facebook and other applications to make the political regime, I think they could use the Internet technologies more properly for using applications which could save their lives which could save their lives, which could maybe accommodate them to the whole society.
That would be my answer.
Thank you.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you, Ajay.
I must ask our panelists to maybe refer to it in the answers, in maybe 3, 5 minutes for the answers.
Have we anymore remote questions? No? No?
>> This is from Fred.
There was a role played in the increasing situation.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Could you ‑‑ what was the role played out in the crisis of the situation?
>> Could the land services play a greater role in the provision of food in crisis situations?
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Okay.
>> It is a question on online services playing a greater role in the provision of food in crisis situations. You know, food services.
>> JOHAN HALLENBO: We don't have a simple answer to this question.
For example, just an example, we had an example to work with colleagues from Kenya, and I know in Kenya for example they use the online services like emergency SMEs and other disaster management or in cases of crisis of course this can be a solution because ICTs could bring even the information closer to the population.
Another example actually, I just remembered, we worked with a project: In Latin America the professionals in the agriculture sector, they were receiving actually the SMS via mobile phone which was a mobile service on which products are available, for example, for Syria, you know, maybe you're better about this one than this one. Of course, we can use it, it is a question of the access to the information which can be easier. Thank you.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you.
I think we started to discuss the second question.
I ask for a short presentation.
>> Thank you. I think we can't continue without some examples, can't help to understand how the mobile technology and Internet will help with this kind of problems.
For example, after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti a research team ‑‑ I don't know how to say it, but it is an institute, it was a medical school in the Columbia University and they worked together in the developing of the tool that used information from Haiti. They used this information to talk about how the people was moving inside a country before ‑‑ during a ‑‑ after the earthquake, the disaster and they provide ‑‑ the information, to the humanitarian agencies with updates on the population movements and this information. It was very useful for the authorities and for these organizations to allocate resources more efficiently.
So, for ‑‑ I think that's sometimes when we have a natural disaster, for example, the lack of information and where the people is moving inside of a country or in our region makes them the most vulnerable group because there is relief organizations that they don't know exactly where the people is looking and how to deliver the right amounts of supplies for the right places. This is a huge concern for a discount of different organizations.
In this case, the universities are using it for the information available in the mobile networks to provide this kind of information to this different organization. The other great example is that we called it Australia ‑‑ the responses there. It was an example of when we have ‑‑ we have a disaster, an earthquake, another kind of disaster, for example, a massive flood that happened in India in July this year, thousands of people were displaced from their own homes. When we have technology, we can use or create a crisis app with route information and the localization of the relief cams, the medical centers, food supply for the people that was trying to find information about this.
So for example, we can use the technology to find people during the disasters and we can use tools like that, a person can find the Web application to allow to post and search for the relatives and friends effected by the disaster.
So this is only two examples of that, how we can use the information on the platforms to provide good services for refugees, or displaced people, for immigrants. I think that we have the tools and the challenge is how we're going to innovate, create new tools that will be helpful for everybody. I think that I went ‑‑ only two ideas, we need open platforms and open data to create these skills.
If we have ‑‑ if we don't have access to the information, it is going to be very difficult to innovate and create new alternatives, new tools for displaced people or for immigrants.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you.
I want to ask ‑‑
>> On the question ‑‑ I think the question is who pays? Right? Who’s funding?
I think ‑‑ the way I look at it, it is a combination of, you know, it is sort of public partner, private/public partnerships. Government has a role to play, private sector has a role to play, I think NGOs have a role to play. I would argue that even, you know, as we mentioned and will probably go to that later on, we have the discussion about, you know, the new innovator also come in and, you know, like others that can come and build new stuff based on the existing infrastructure.
The governments had have a role to play. They have the infrastructure they own, they have a role to play.
The private sector has a role to play we have seen in the crisis that prevention. You know, the organizations such as, you know, Google, Microsoft, others have dealt with the applications, put them in there and will continue to do so. There are many participating in this.
I think NGOs have a role to play as well in that. They understand the issues, they're core to the issues. People that are in health, food, Human Rights, they understand those things better than anyone else. They may have a funding mechanism to support, it is a combination of those things.
The fundamental issue which was just mentioned, if we don't have open data that's provided by, you know, governments, by private ‑‑ even some private sector, that's out there we cannot be innovative and create things, you know, in the situation of emergency. These are things that are not important before emergency and in many cases they're developed with the urgency, so we have 24 hours to react. Initially what are you talking about? Building the applications, innovations in the matter of 24 hours, 48 hours to react very quickly to address that specific problem that we're facing. In this case, you know, corporation is important ‑‑ cooperation is important, not just somebody fixing it, but how do we work together between public sector, public sector government and NGOs, industries, whatever, as a group to you say no problem.
Two: How do we have the data ‑‑ people with the data, they ever to put it on the table to go fast and innovate? This is very, very fundamental into the process. So, funding is the multistakeholder but the collaboration is there as well.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you very much. Maybe you want some words?
>> I would like to make a quick remark. The question of the moderator, I know that ‑‑ we already mentioned this, but I want to ‑‑ a quick example, it is a good example.
Today I'm wondering if there is a negative, a possible consequences: Two years ago there was an earthquake in Turkey taking more than 300 lives in one night. Why I'm mentioning these specific examples is they all ‑‑ the online campaign it commends, within a week, they're collecting more than the amount of money that government made a month later as a support to the one. This is a good example of how actually processing the line, helping them to assess the relief to use up their ICT and how the special network is even sometimes more powerful than others. Thank you.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: We'll move to the third question.
If the neighbor countries develop servicing it in case of a disaster in one of the countries, I would like to possibly sit down and discussion and to discuss with Roxana.
I ask you to use 2, 3 minutes.
>> ROXANA RADU: I just would like to make two points.
The answer depends on the point’s context and it is great to have the cooperation. I'm afraid it is not possible in all of the cases and if the people are displaced by the water conditions, that's impossible as we know. The development of joint services could be done, however, on platforms that would be available for sharing codes and could be implemented outside of the conditions of political tensions if we use open source code, trying to intergrade the community working in a different way. That may be hard to achieve.
I want to make two points: One is on the target groups we're looking at. In this case I think we want to look at not only the temporary conditions in which the groups are placed but also at the long‑term implications, what's it mean to be a forced migrant or displaced people in a country? What's that mean for the rest of your life? So, if you take the concept of vulnerability in the long‑term, we observed beyond the language difficulty and the literacy rates they face, poverty and aggravation to the other cultural norms and the transition will make it very difficult for them to move on with their lives. The discrimination, the inequality, the social exclusion.
If you think long term, I think we need to add another layer to this differentiation of the service. We have to have some empowerment services long‑term. These people need more than just the temporary intervention. In this case, maybe we should also think of just empowerment possibilities.
Thank you.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you.
2 minutes, not more.
>> Thank you.
There are also two points ‑‑ not the same reached by Roxana.
The first major point, it is the relation towards the convention.
There is the major document adopted by the United Nations, as you know, in 1951. Really all states are the members of the convention but the application of this application is different and ‑‑ different from state to state.
One of the best practices of developing these services of providing real kinds of rides for the refugees, the migrants, it is not shown by the states. They're shown by the intergovernmental organizations led by the United Nations and led by the United Nations commissioner on refugees. Under that, under the services, of what developed, the services related to also fulfilling the basic needs, improving the living conditions, also those services are related for education, for cultural and for fulfilling cultural needs.
I could remember that the convention provides a wide specter over the Human Rights. We should be guaranteed for the refugees. They should be not only basic rights, but they should be a rightful for the normal conditions, even for the development of the rights, of the intellectual properties and this kind of rights.
The best practice I show not by states but for ‑‑ but by the intergovernmental.
Just one more minute.
The other question is the question between the states.
Our relation between the states, they're sometimes not so good to develop joint services.
Thank you.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you.
We have a question from the floor, two questions.
>> AUDIENCE: I think the examples you give are great.
I wonder if you have any examples of governments misusing this information, intercepting ‑‑
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Louder.
>> AUDIENCE: The examples are great, but I wonder if you have evidence of governments misusing that information to stop the immigration flows or to, you know, block the financial transactions from the ‑‑ back to the immigration camps or the refugee camps because if it is all open data, it could be misused.
>> RONALD DEIBERT: If I may, actually ‑‑ this is linked to the same question. I was going to ask in the same vein.
Honestly I did the title of today's topic, I thought, okay, great, this is probably speaking about migration, about immigration, about internally displaced persons, I will be honest saying I'm quite surprised that it doesn't touch on as much as I expected it would.
Perhaps if I could pose to the panel a situation: I'm from South Africa, and the phenomena that happened a few years ago, I think it was 2008 in South Africa, where we had the largest number of internally displaced migrants which was unprecedented in the refugees, what is it? The UMHCI. Sorry, they get to me.
Yeah, just to actually put to the panel, sometimes many of the persons, the IDPs, the refugees, they don't want the personal information shared, governments can abuse that information and lady luck can shift that information when coming to this country and given the internal race relations in politics and now you have a group of persons coming in from the continent, we had black on black violence because they were immigrant communities of the same skin color as our locals.
Working at the Human Rights Commission people would come to us, we had thousands in one night. We worked two days straight until 4:00 in the morning. Just to get these people's names, just to be ‑‑ they didn't trust any other agencies besides Human Rights Commission.
I want to put to the panel if that was happening today, what technologies are out there, what could be done to have averted something of greater violence or a mechanism in place to address that sort of issue and gaining trust with the persons at the same time.
Thank you.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: I think we have to answer that third and fourth question. About the technologists and also about the ‑‑ yes. Yes.
Who will answer, who will answer those questions?
>> I want to make sure ‑‑ it is not ‑‑ it is because you asked for ‑‑ it is the misuse of this. I wanted to before bringing that example to the table, I recently had an occasion to work on the development of the interception of communication legislation.
So particularly, after the government example, after the end of the crisis, the disaster they had, they developed online services to emergency, to get the access to the information. The point is, they don't have any legislation for the moment in the information society. They don't have the legislation or the information society. Any framework, including the cybercrime, more or less it is ready.
My answer would be, I'll not bring you the example, but I may be ‑‑ bilaterally I could give you a number of them ‑‑ I would say, you know, when we speak about ‑‑ when we speak about the solutions, we need also not to forget about the legal part and the need for the legal framework because if we see today we don't have the framework, which underlines marginalized communities or links, the marginalized communities and the ICTs, the information society.
Thank you.
>> Roxana, maybe you have some words.
>> ROXANA RADU: I wouldn't be able to answer what technologies are right now available. I can pass the microphone on.
I guess in terms of the data protection I'm sure there is much more to be done in this sphere and the problem with emergency services is that everything happens so fast. The collection of information is also very fast.
With the recent management of a system to manage that information in place or not, that depends on the local capacity and could be probably handled relatively easy with some sort of encryption out. I would throw it back at you, maybe you can give us more answers regarding what can be done technologically.
>> There are a lot of technologies involved in the market, when I look at how ‑‑ what sort of technologies are available today that can be used in cases of emergency we're thinking about cloud computing which obviously has huge power in terms of being able to do large scale things in a very fast, you know, time. In a more secure way. That's one thing that's usually a powerful set of technologies available on the market.
The other thing is, you know, other technologies that needs to be used to some extent, they're, you know, how do you use social networks, social networking technologies to support ‑‑ you know, the ‑‑ those crisis, it is very powerful.
Technologies such as, you know, the voice, the voice override, that's another set of technologies because this has been encrypted, it is out ‑‑ usually it is out of the ‑‑ based on the Internet, fast, you can use any device, et cetera, et cetera, so, technology is ‑‑ that's just a few examples of how technology, specific technologies can be used to address the problem.
The reality is I think there are two elements.
One, countries today, they have to be prepared. They have to be prepared and they have to put in place, you know, frameworks, legal frameworks and policies. They have to put in place technology infrastructure and even processes and prepare their own people to the issues of, you know, emergency response, disaster management, those kinds of things.
We will ‑‑ we don't know how it will happen. Public awareness, it could happen internally, externally. We have to be prepared, not wait for the disaster and address the problem differently, that's number one.
Number two, I think technology is going to keep evolving and providing opportunities for new scenarios, new solutions, new things to do. We should not prevent ourselves from using the latest technologies.
Interestingly, when I see what's happened in the last two years, how the industry has been able to react very fast by using the latest technologies like the new mapping tools, big data, cloud computing, et cetera, it has been very innovative, very inspiring actually to see how people get them to use the latest, et cetera.
I want ‑‑ I'm optimistic, you can see, I'm optimistic on how, you know, developers can come up with the right ideas and use the latest.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Yes?
>> Only one comment. It is very aligned with this, with what you said.
It is only I wanted to highlight we need to ‑‑ we have all of this innovation to create this kind of tools, to support the people that need its help. Initially we need a by law and will see the legislation between the protection of the SPCI and the development of the new technologies. It is a challenge for the religious leaders, for the global leaders in our country. I think we need to follow general principles, for example, in the privacy. I think we need ‑‑ we need to create a violation for every tool that is developed that we use in that technology. We have general principles of protection of Human Rights, constitutions and other countries.
So the post important thing is we need to create this balance and innovation and to tag the human value and the in general principles.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you.
>> Thank you. I promised to say a couple of words about the tsunami, 2004 which was in ‑‑ not very far from here.
Of course, 178,000 died in that tsunami. They were holidaying in Thailand at that time. Of course, I'm on a machine talking about that, I know in Indonesia, they lost so many in tens of thousands of people.
Anyway, as an example, the bad news was, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which was working at the time, we had a brand new software precisely this purpose, for, you know, getting information, looking at people that are missing, so on, so forth. It is bad news, however, that nobody had been train ‑‑ had been trained to use it. That meant that if it was unusable in that situation and people had to literally go back to ‑‑ they had to go back to paper and pen.
However, a good example wasn't that we were able to improvise something in those, during those days, needless to say that the airline organized an organization flight. When we relayed this information to those that were in Thailand, they were about 6,000 FIFs and 3,000 in the disaster area.
We were able to get everybody together, the operators, the authorities, agencies, so on, so forth. We decided to send a text message, an SMS to all phones in Thailand that were connected to the operators from Finland. They did those text messages telling the FIFs ‑‑ all of those that had mobile phones to go to specific place, to use words where they're evacuated. That was successful.
One thing for tsunami, everybody who had mobile phones, if they were ‑‑ if there was any connectivity, they were informing their friends and relatives immediately in Finland, a tremendous flow of information.
Back to Finland, immediately on Sunday ‑‑ there were people in Finland separated that knew all about this. However at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs we were not a part of that information flow and didn't know anything for a full day.
For a full day we thought a not one person had been effected. He gave us applications that could somehow use media, that would make that sort of information available, a pool, that can be aggregated which would be successful for the disaster situations.
>> Thank you.
>> First of all, thank you. The lady from Africa, a real challenging question, as well as from the audience.
The case about it, the real good precedence of this, the genocide, '94 in April, at that time the government was able to disguise the information for a while and there were other issues regarding what happened that many U.N. had GOP to council, by the cases in the weather, it is the extent of the ICT and success of civilians and the tourists and journalists to the most contemporary ICT gadgets, it is a bit difficult to stage two, to look at that information and the good examples is, today, Syria, what's happening there. We have different pictures on one hand and the other hand.
Thank you.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you very much. We have some questions from the remote participants. A lot of questions, yes?
One question ‑‑ and I'm sorry. We're 10 minutes late? Is it okay for the panelists, 5 more minutes? Is it okay? Just a question from the remote participant. It is important to speak with the remote participants.
>> The question from Travis. Following the earthquake in Haiti, crime and violence increased dramatically especially against vulnerable groups.
My question is: Would the panel comment on the use of the Internet technologies like that created in Columbia University to provide better security for domestic and displaced populations through these technologists?
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: I think you must answer this question.
>> In terms of the Internet technologies for crime and violence after the earthquake, the most important thing if you're talking about the Internet technologies helping to ‑‑ let's say to decrease the levels, to prevent the increasing level of crime or violence, the services should be established before any disasters. That's what we actually mentioned in terms of providing services before the disaster in order to help. The services, like the physician services, the services for technologists, for personal belongings, probably some ‑‑ let's say violence services and establishing the infrastructure as it was noticed, you know, at the beginning, then I think, yeah T would help, it would definitely help to prevent, you know, increasing of a crime and the violence even after a disaster, even before the disaster, right.
>> MIKHAIL KOMAROV: In terms of conclusions and summarizing the workshop: It is really nice that all of the panelists made ‑‑ made it finally. We have such a ‑‑ a great panel. Then quite fruitful discussion here.
I would like to thank you and in terms of summarizing and conclusions, I would like to put ‑‑ you know, some several points.
First of all, talking about services for displaced people or immigrants, think about infrastructure and whose doing it or if it already exists, talking about a particular country, of course, as mentioned in the beginning, then some basic services from technologically sides, that perspective should be introduced, some information technology, right.
Then services, which we're talking about, should be relevant, and relevance is ‑‑ they should be related to the ‑‑ they should be massive and provided in a relevant language which is quite important. There should be a legal database to implement the services. You know, legal aspects depends on particular countries.
Another thing, in terms of some basic services, it is quite important to ‑‑ as some panelists admitted, it is quite important to develop services under some legal aspects in terms of family tracing, even if the service is helpful, there should be some legal aspects for that.
There should be special services for pro detection of displaced people, immigrants, information society so how they should interact, how they should work online. They should be having the work done with the local authorities.
In terms of the mechanisms, how they should be spread, the services. So it should be studied case by case, but some basic services like, you know, education, should be free, healthcare, should be free, some probably basic services according to the convention. As it was noticed, there should be strategy with legal ground to support the displaced people and refugees and the immigrants through the services.
The services, the development of the services should be based on open date and platform concept and approach. Which is necessary and which reaches the necessity in terms of providing them globally.
As it was, yeah, again, just to emphasize, the empowerment services, they should be related to the convention in terms of the applications for some particular, you know, countries.
Yeah. If you're talking about ‑‑ about basic rules, there should be basic privacy so just ordinary general data protection rule for all the services independent, you know, results of developing some special cases for the particular service.
In terms of ‑‑ so, I do hope that actually we'll be able to continue discussion along this issue as mentioned here as a multistakeholder approach, you know, which is actually, you know, a multistakeholder approach which is necessary in order to be able to implement, you know, what we're talking about here. Thank you very much.
>> AUDREY SHCHERBOVICH: Thank you very much, Mikhail.
I want to thank you for the participants. The time was very short for the discussion of this very importance and I think multiaspect problem. A problem that is connected with different aspects of policy, of technologists.
I think that we have good prospects to discuss more about these problems and about this prospects maybe next year. We have good plans, good prospects and I think it will be great to make new meeting in new place and to discuss all those problems.
Thank you very much. Thank you for your participation.
[Applause]
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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