Developing Civil Society and Youth Participation in Internet Governance in Asia

IGF 2010

VILNIUS, LITHUANIA

15 SEPTEMBER 10

0900

WORKSHOP 67

DEVELOPING CIVIL SOCIETY AND YOUTH PARTICIPATION

IN INTERNET GOVERNANCE IN ASIA



********

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.

********





>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER:  Good morning, everyone.  Thank you for coming.  I think we are, because there was a little bit of a printing error in the programme, I think we'll wait for a couple more minutes, see if some more people will find us and join us online because the online programme is correct and does have our session here.  So I guess we'll wait for a couple more minutes and then get started.

(Pause in proceedings)



>> WOLFGANG KLEINWACHTER:  Good morning, everyone.  It's 9:05.  I think we can get started.  I know there are some people still making their way over.  But anyway, welcome to the workshop 67, which is developing civil society and youth participation in internet governance.  We started off with it being focused more on Asia, but I think we broadened out to include other initiatives.  I'm real excited today that the session is going to explore a little bit about how different initiatives are really sprung up to train and engage youth and students to participate in internet governance discussions around the world.  

So today we'll hear from the NetMission programme, which is initiated by DotAsia, and then also the youth IGF camp which then was initiated actually by the NetMission ambassadors themselves.  We'll hear from them, from Elaine Chang and Bianca and Matthew and the participants

We'll also listen from Child Net, the students in the UK, their youth IGF programme.  The education officer for Child Net.  

HIPA has also been a great advocate of empowering young people and giving them an opportunity to speak about issues relevant to their lives.  And today she'll be talking about the YIGF summer camp that the child had national hosts.  We'll also hear from Robert Guerra, who is the    who directs the Internet Freedom project at Freedom House.  

Robert is also one of the founding directors of Private Terra, a Canadian based initiative that works with the non governmental organisations to assist them with issues of data privacy, secured communications, information security, internet governance, and internet freedom.  

Today Robert will talk to us about the workshops that Freedom House conducts with civil society and bloggers and different participants around the world to train them on participating in internet governance.  

Then we'll also have Professor Hon Suk Ha, who will talk to us on the summer school of internet governance.  Dr. Su is a professor of law and director of the internet policy and law at Beijing normal university.  She is also an associate    she was previously associate of, associate professor, the faculty of law at the University of Hong Kong, was also a fellow of the Yale information project.  The professor was selected as one of the ten nationally distinguished young jurists.  It started in Europe, bringing it to Asia, Asia Pacific and to China.  

And besides the initiative, we also have a few panelists, distinguished panelists with us today, including Max Senges, who is the head of policy and public policy for Google.  Before joining Google, he also served as deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to Arnold Schwartzenegger, the California governor.  He will give us a view of really engaging youth in I guess different movements.

We'll also have Rafik Dammak.  Rafik, of course, if you've been in here, you know that he's coordinating the youth coalition on internet governance at the IGF.  Rafik himself is a student at the University of Toronto.  He is a computer engineer    sorry.  That was my university, which was the University of Toronto.  But Rafik is from the University of Tokyo.  Sorry about that.  

We were supposed to also have Amelia.  I think she is probably wandering around trying to find our room.  Amelia hopefully will join us soon.  She is one of the youngest European parliament members from Sweden, the Pirate Party.  And she will also talk to us a little bit about engaging youth in different processes.  

So let's get started with the sort of rundown, we will talk a little bit about the different initiatives that I mentioned.  That mission, the youth IGF camp, the child IGF summer camp, freedom house workshop, and then summer school internet governance.  So I'll get it started with Elaine Cheng from the NetMission project.



>>  ELAINE:  Good morning, everyone.  I'm Elaine from DotAsia.  As an organiser, what we hope to do is create an open pathway to our next generation.  They were born and raised with technology.  I can remember when computers were first introduced in schools.  So we believe that we always have a fresh idea.  They are our future leaders.  So they can do contribution.  They can do something fame.  They can be a NetMission ambassador and serve in the digital world.  

Last year, DotAsia is starting the ambassador programme, the first ambassadors in promoting that mission.  We had to conquer the digital divide.  Nearly 3,000 students have attended.  

And we believe that digital divide is no longer just a problem in IT industry.  The NetMission programme has a lot of supporting organisation from different centres of society such as children, youth, elderly service organisations, universities, and social service council.



>> BIANCA:  Hi, this is Bianca.  I'm one of the NetMission ambassadors together here with Matthew and Desiree.  We were working on the community project for the children's sector.  What we did was basically had this crazy idea to organise a carnival for children.  So what we have, we had games and a lot of performers.  

So one thing that we want to emphasize is that digital divide is not only IT sector thing.  So basically, we had a lot of briefings with the performers and to educate them, even them being a part of the carnival, they would know more about the digital divide, what it is, why it's relevant to them.  

We also through DotAsia found venue sponsors.  We actually hosted in a mall in Hong Kong and organised with safer internet day.  And this would not be possible without the help of the organiser, DotaAsia, that it provides this pathway to us to kind of build on what we want to do.



>>  DESIREE:  I'm Desiree.  One of the major characteristics that differentiate the NetMission programme from a lot of the other programmes that are direct at university students and secondary students that it's highly, highly autonomous.  That means that after the training session, we're actually given a lot of freedom and flexibility.  DotAsia takes a hands off approach when it comes to us organizing community projects and reaching out into the community to address these issues.  

So the advantages of this is that, number one, we're given a lot of room to make mistakes.  So I think that's what makes the programme very, very engaging.  Secondly, it saves a lot of time and energy.  Because of this freedom, we're given a lot of freedom to go from our idea to execution very quickly.  We do not need to go through a very formal approval process.  And in this way, it reflects the trust that DotAsia students to create a community project that is based on what the internet means to us.  And I also think this embraces the characteristics of youth because we're not given a very formal agenda, say that you have to complete A, B, C, D.  We're very rebellious.  If you put it in black and white that we have to fulfill these objectives, it actually might turn off the youth.  The freedom that we're given is what actually makes the internet programme work.  



>> We have students become our NetMission ambassador.  They undergone a series of    the ambassadors have been able to use their insights in the IT world.  So as users and youth, as so, DotAsia has ambassadors who have made contributions to participate in regional and international forums.



>>  So last year, we actually, all of us went to APNIC meeting in Beijing back in August.  We were selected to different programmes.  Matthew went to Asia Pacific next generation camp.  I personally went to IGF in Egypt last year.  So yes.  Matthew can talk more about his experience.



>> MATTHEW:  So after Desiree said something about international (Off microphone)   

So I need to talk about something like, inside each... all these kind of experiences.  So it's really empowers youth a lot.  

So international fellows in the Asia Pacific, the youth generation channel.  So it's really it helps me a lot, for opportunities in the IT industry maybe for my own life.  What I want to say is APNG for still being there.  I got the chance to be the secretary director, which originally is what gives me the chance to be there and really empowers many youth into a lot of IT organisations, to do something different in the world.



>>  Okay.  Maybe I'll add on to the experience.  So actually being at IGF last year in Egypt, it kind of inspired us because first of all, we see youth as a very important theme.  So there's a lot of discussion about how to train youth in terms of like understanding internet governance.  So I think it's good today to sit here together to discuss this issue.  

Another thing is that as a young people, we often feel the barriers because we find people are expert.  They know so well about what they're talking about.  Sometimes when you ask stupid questions, you feel bad.  

So basically, Elaine was waken up during our trip to Hergata.  We're like, okay, we actually need a youth governance forum to give youth a chance to understand what internet governance is.  So here I'll speak as an organiser of the youth IGF camp in Hong Kong to tell you about the format.  So maybe before this, we can have some questions about the programme.



>>  Any questions from the floor?



>> And then I'll continue on the YIGF.



>>  Audience:  Just a quick question.  How many different countries did that mission include?



>> The NetMission programme start Ned Hong Kong, so the first batch of NetMission programme ambassadors are all from Hong Kong, so 23 of us from Hong Kong.  Even though some of the students are actually from the mainland.  They're foreign students in that sense.  But I think that the next generation of NetMission, we're actually opening in Beijing and Taiwan as well.  So mainly in Asia.



>> And that's really impressive and that's only one year of the NetMission programme.  We have people who are interested in hearing out had model.  So if any one of you are interested in bringing NetMission to your country, we're more than happy to speak with you and share experiences.



>>  Audience:  Are NetMission ambassadors

(Off microphone) what country    



>> Sorry.  Can you   



>> The autonomous part, we all initiate the project that we want to do.  That's the youth engagement part.  So by giving them a lot of freedom, as Desiree mentioned, that really empowers people to do whatever they think useful, you know, valuable to society.  And that's how they do it.



>> MATTHEW:  Also, on top of that, I think it is a programme.  We welcome    so anything, we still welcome.



>>  Any other questions?



>> Audience:  How do you feel about...

(Off microphone)



>> I think we did not directly involve them in the NetMission ambassadors programme as an ambassador.  However, based on our community projects, we reached out to 10 to 12 year olds by the carnival that we arranged where we promoted the positive use of internet to show them their role in creating a homogeneous internet environment.



>>  The NetMission programme is actually supported by DotAsia, but the main programme itself, funding comes from DotAsia to support them, travels to ICANN meetings or IGF meetings.  But also this time around, activists will go into the youth IGF camp.  This funding for the camp at the regional IGF.  The core programme for NetMission is supported by DotAsia.  In future, we're hoping to leverage other support as well.  And one of the things that they mention about the projects that the member ambassadors themselves do, we hope to have sponsors and leverage other funding for those particular projects.



>>  I also want to add, because depending on the budget that we need to create these community projects, actually we actively look for sponsors ourselves as well, the community.  So when we think of a project and it's too hard, it's too expensive, we actually find ways to solve it rather than avoid it.  But we actively go into community and find companies who would be willing to sponsor our cause.



>>  And also another thing, DotAsia would not let us go through with the project if there weren't any external supporters.  That would mean our project doesn't work because it doesn't get any support from the other sectors that believe in our cause.  You have to find people that support you out of DotAsia because obviously as an organiser, they're going to be very supportive.  To bridge this divide, we really need everyone's help.



>>  Audience:  I just want to supplement, as far as funding, particularly for young people, require people to participate in these activities.  I just want to, not remind as up but give you some food for thought.  Sometimes you have funding for activities, could be sponsoring from the private sector.  It could be from the government.  And particularly from the government, you will find usually when they sponsor a certain amount, if you ever have surplus, they want it back.  All right.  Because accounting and auditing and all that.  

However, any funding activities, either the private sector or the government, if you mention, if we have any surplus, we would like to use these for our youngsters, young people's activities.  And you tend to find them, they're very susceptible to this kind of idea.  I think we demonstrated last time, maybe organised IGF activities in Hong Kong through the government.  We said, if we're going to have some surplus, we would like to use those surplus funds for our young people involved in internet governance issue.  And it was very well accepted and received.



>>  I apologize.  In the interest of time, drop down your question and we'll come back to a free flow discussion afterwards.  

I guess we'll move to the youth IGF camp in Hong Kong, which was interestingly one of the community projects.  In fact, from the NetMission ambassadors themselves.



>>  So again, so I went to the IGF last year in Egypt.  It really gave us the impression that youth is very important and for us, it's hard to verse out.  We designed different formats of Internet Governance Forum, which kind of carries the spirit of IGF of using the multistakeholder view.  What we do is basically having the youth IGF participants right here, talk about, tell you more about their experience.  And we asked them to role play in different sectors.  They'll actually tell you more about it.  

And we also adopted a very hands off approach.  So Matthew here, he is the team facilitator so maybe he can tell you more about the hands off approach.



>>  MATTHEW:  So for the format of the IGF camp, we do it like in different meetings.  So we try to assign a role for the youth to just keep an eye on.  And they will fall into those positions to think about what procedures or what even issues that can be brought from the perspective on being that role, like a company, NGO's, or something like that.  

On top of that, we have divided into like internal meeting and external meeting.  So what it means, internal meeting is around like six or seven students of the same social group, like they're all NGO's.  So they speak quite the same tone and they have the same perspective for being in the internal meet to go get a consensus there and try to bring it to the external meeting which they have different centres.  

So the chemical element is that they can experience the kind of conflict even in the same industry, like only in NGO's, they will get a lot of conflict because based on different visions and different perspective of different NGO's.  They've got conflict.  

On top of that, the conflict brings which makes a really huge conflict.  So we hoped that this format can be experienced by the youth that IGF, that we need to get some progress or something like that to make progress.



>> So to add on that, the external meeting, we actually discussed three specific issues of specific interest to Hong Kong.  So they discussed about privacy, censor ship, and digital divide.  We actually printed out the executive summary of our report, so please feel free to come by and grab one

Another insight is that we had received a lot of complaints about the need for more trainings beforehand.  So we're actually very happy about that because we believe that it should stimulate them before the trainings.  So they should be the people who are actively asking for trainings.  That makes a lot of sense because then they're more motivated to learn about the issue.  They understand how it can be applied to their daily lives and why is it relevant.  And that's why pushing them to understand more about internet governance.  So now I pass the mike to the IGF participants to give you your feedback.



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Sorry for interrupting.  I did a really bad job in moderating.  Please announce your name before you speak and other speakers as well.  I guess the transcript person doesn't even know my name.  I'm Edmon Chung.  I'm moderating the session.  As you go on, please announce your name.



>> Hi, I'm Clements, I'm a university student studying free arts.  After listening to the introduction and format of the IGF camp, it sounds like fun.  Having we're having a meeting in the YIGF camp.  We're going to have a multistakeholder role play and experience the problems faced by young participants.  After seeing the role, we are going to randomly pick on any one of you.  If you are picked, please relax.  And feel free to speak according to your role.  Now let's begin.  

Today we are going to discuss about how to bridge the digital divide.  Here comes our first row.  Can you kindly speak in the role of the private sector about bridging the digital divide?



>> Thank you very much.  There is a special price for pronouncing my name correctly.  It's 17 letters in French spelling and I have five spellings but my nationality is Lithuanian.  I have come here not to speak.  I have come here to listen.  Because I will chair the session, the stock of internet governance and way ahead.  And what I was listening until today, it seems as everything is perfect.  So because of that, and I am not sure that everything is perfect.  So because of that, I came to this panel, the most young people are because young people are the most sensitive and they can find those things which can be improved.  

So I am going to listen.  I am not going to speak and to impose my opinion.  Come to the final session, stock of internet governance and way ahead.  Thank you.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Thank you.



>>  Thank you so much for your appreciation.  We would like to listen more for the participation maybe as different roles.  Mr. Tashi, if you are an NGO government organisation, what would you do in dealing with this issue?



>> Hi.  My name is Ish.  I come from Japan.  So speak more slowly and speak again, the last sentence.  I can't hear you.



>>  Okay.  What would you do if you are acting like an NGO, nongovernment organisation?  The question    how to bridge the digital divide as an NGO.



>>  Yes.  So I'm from an ISP in Japan.  So how to bridge the countries and the local areas, the local area?  Okay.  Sure.



>>  Maybe for Japan, say, for example.



>>  So the physical lines to access each residential line.  I think that    in a short time, we should use satellite.  So that's very convenient and maybe very fast and cheap one in short time.  In the long time, we should make maybe optical fiber is most.  But the problem is that how to collect the investment from other areas.  So that's a very big programme.  So not only the developing countries, of course, in Japan.  We don't have so much digital divide area, not for many people, but the area is so very big I think.



>>  Thank you, Mr. Tashi.  So it seems that in a given role, we still have some kind of knowledge based on the situation that we face in our own society.  And maybe we are confused when we are given a role which is quite different from what we are.  

Professor, supposing that you are a representative from the public sector.  What are you going to do to deal with the digital divide?



>> Okay.  So I'm playing a role as a person from a private sector.



>>  Yes.



>>  Okay.  For the person for the private sector, the most important thing is to have a free and open market.  You know the force of the free and open market can drive costs down very fast.  You can look at the mobile phone.  Say ten years ago, it was very expensive.  Because of the free and open market competition.  The government has a role to play to make sure that the market is free, it's not to intervene in the market so much.  And because of that involvement, then the costs will be driven down very fast.  

So I think from a representative of private sector, I think the government, the best thing the government could do is to make sure the market is free and open and not to intervene too much.  Some people suggest an idea that the government provide internet access free for other people.  I think that won't do much good because the government usually does things very slowly and inefficiently.  And it's better for the private sector to provide the services and through competition, it will provide better and cheaper services.  That's the role that I'll do, that you assigned me.  I'll state this.



>> Thank you, Professor.  We have shown a picture of the discussion.  I passed the time to explain why we were doing the exercise.



>> KEN:  Thank you.  Hello, everyone.  I'm Ken.  So we have just demonstrated the role play that we did in the YIGF camp.  So I believe that everyone here by now has just tasted the difficulty we faced in the camp.  Actually, I think the three main areas of improvement.  Okay.  Just the first one is, we always have no idea about the role.  When we receive our role, we don't know what to do with the topic.  Just like Mr. Tashi, he is confused what to do, when he accepted the role of NGO.  Right?  Yes.  

And secondly, sometimes we don't know any background information about our roles.  So it's difficult for us to share our idea to everyone.  We always have an outside track in the camp as well as our discussions.  For example, there are many kind of digital divide.  And we are not talking about specific ones.  So everyone has different approaches.  And we are not talking about the same thing.  So at the very beginning of the discussion, the camp, we just talk about the parenting problem.  

A concern of antiterrorism was raised.  Come on, don't ask me why, because I really don't know why.  So that's why we have an outside track.  I think just some improvements we can do.  Actually, before going to the camp, we have a clear picture of all the topics.  So I suggest inviting a guest to give us a talk so we can know more about the topic.  And also we need a moderator to talk about a specific topic so we can easily get on the right track.  

So that's all I want to say.  Actually, I think I've learned mainly in the camp, so the refreshing part will be past to the front.



>>  FLORA:  Hello, everyone.  I'm Flora.  I will share my personal reflection about the YIGF camp.  Actually, at the camp I represented the private sector to talk about privacy issues.  It is very challenging because like I have to defend myself and explain why, for example, I have to write privacy terms very long and so user unfriendly.  

I started to think why.  And then it is a very good experience because at first as the youth, before the camp, I just complained about the internet related problems.  I complained about the government, it's not doing good and the private sector is not doing good.  Now I start to think about the reasons behind these problems and why it is so difficult to improve this problem.  

I'll try to consider the interests from different    of different stakeholders.  So that's why I'm here today.  I would like to join the IGF and listen to the ideas from different stakeholders.  I've become more interested in internet related issues.  So this is a worthwhile camp meant to do to us to make us more interested to these issues.  

So if you'd like to know more about our camp, actually there will be some written in the executive summary.  So feel free to pick it up over there.  Thank you.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Thank you.  In the interest of time, I'll take two questions, one or two questions if there are any, about    in that case, it's really an interesting observation, I think, the side tracking is not an issue just of the camp.  This is how any discussion in internet governance goes.  You will get that quite a lot.  So that's an interesting observation.  So it happens not just in the real world, it's also in the role playing world

With that, I move on to our next initiative, from ChildNet, another youth IGF summer camp to talk about their experience there.



>>  PIPPA GREEN:  Thank you very much.  I'm Pippa Green from Child Net international.  We originally ran our first IGF project last year.  And it was response in the 2008 criticism from the IGF itself saying that there had been far too little involvement of young people in the key discussions that were taking place.  So I'm going to start by giving you a bit of quick history of what we did last year because that is what we built upon this year at the summer camp.  So we started by engaging young people in the private sector for outreach projects and also with school participation.  So we actually spoke to over 1,500 young people aged from about 8 years old all the way through to 18 to have discussions and to get some responses that reflect the key topics that are discussed here at the IGF.  

So we discussed with them the issues of openness, access, security, diversity, and also their rights and responsibilities when they're online.  

We felt it was incredibly important to get their voices heard as when we're at these events, often it is their futures, their interests which are being championed.  So they need to have their say as well.  

We then had an event at Parliament, Parliament and the internet event, and a number of young responses, people who made responses were then brought forward to speak at that event.  And we have one of them us here today who is actually Alex.  He was then invited actually to speak at the IGF in Sharm.  He and another boy Liam were involved in the discussions that went on last year.  As I said, that was our project last year.  It was in the very early stages.  It was something that we really wanted to develop and build on.  

Since then, we have had youth IGF summer camp.  This year we have actually had seven young delegates here with us at the IGF.  So they are out and about.  I'm sure if you bump into them, they'd be happy to talk to you about what went on as well.  And they're aged from 14 through to 18.  And they are participating actively in a number of the workshops going on during IGF.  

So in August, we had these young people attend our summer camp.  And the structure of this event was to give them preparation to be able to come here and confidently speak, confidently being involved in the discussions and debates going on.  During the summer camp, we had a number of expert speakers, the key stakeholders in the industry coming in to give their opinions and their views as well.  We ensured that the young people who were involved were going to be driving those discussions, pushing those discussions forward.  

I had a number of really interesting speakers come in and have the discussions about openness, security, diversity, access and privacy at the camp.  We had a broad range.  Some of them actually quite conflicting opinions, which I think, from my opinion, maybe not young people, will actually be interesting to establish how different stakeholders have incredibly different needs and challenges.  

So for example, we had a speaker talking about freedom of expression, quickly followed by a speaker who was discussing the need for blogging when it comes to the internet.  So this raised a number of issues and a number of challenges that different stakeholders have when they come and attend these events here.  

Also adding further depth to the discussions we were having and bringing a whole new opinion to some of the discussions, we were partaking in.  We had two fantastic international young people come along.  We had Desiree who is here and we also had Jerry attending.  This was incredibly valuable, us having this international aspect to our summer camp.  And it allowed the young people to gain a broader understanding how in other countries, other people again are having very different challenges, very different needs that they want to be met and very different opinions of the subjects that we were covering.  

Very similar to the IGF summer camp, we did a situation where we encountered the different stakeholders.  We encountered challenge, people not knowing enough of the background to take on those identities.  It resulted in interesting discussions with people taking on some very conflicting opinions about what individual stakeholders may want out of those discussions.  

These ideas, values, debates we were having throughout summer camp were drawn together and we use add lot of social networking and also, some of you may not be familiar is radio, which we'll talk about in a moment, to share ideas with one another and to further discuss the issue after summer camp was finished, which was incredibly important to us to make sure we were still drawing on those beliefs in the event building up to here today and we produced a document statement of beliefs, pulling together all of the ideas.  These are available for anyone to pick up from anyone wandering around Child Net.  It reaffirms how the internet is of incredible importance to young people.  They have a lot to say.  They need to be joined into the discussions we are having here on the floor today.  

I'm going to hand over to Suraya, who is going to give a young person's opinion on how the London based camp went down, so over to you, Suraya.



>>  SURAYA:  Hi.  Like Pippa said, I'm Costa Suraya.  I'm 16 years old from England.  I'm involved with a project called Radio Waves.  I'm involved with a part of Radio Waves which is called reporter.  We do sports journalism.  What the whole of the Radio Waves project, it improves our confidence.  It provides a basis, a platform for people to express themselves, to connect and communicate with other people and the rest of the world, which I think most importantly is what the internet is all about, just expressing yourself and communicating and connecting, which is really good.  

When I went to the camp, I didn't know what to expect.  I got an e mail saying, this is a really good opportunity.  It's weird because when you think of internet, when you go on the net, you don't think of what it actually is and who is behind it.  You just go on it.  You never really think who controls it, the governance of it.  To me it's always been easy and accessible.  To a lot of people even in the UK, it's quite hard to go on as well.  A lot number of people are currently not connected into it.  

When I went to the camp in London, that was a really good experience.  It made quite a few of us think about what the internet really is, what it means and stuff like that.  And I got to go to London, which is good, if people hadn't been before.  We met a whole lot of new people.  It was quite nerve racking at first.  It really improves your confidence, connect with people who have different opinions from you, same opinions, different things like that.  

We thought about the governance of the internet, how it is controlled, who controls it, and how and why it's changing because I think it's definitely changed from when it first started out.  I think it will always be changing.  And it's because of the IGF and the positions like that.  I think maybe one day we'll perfect a kind of balance between the internet.  But I think we're always working towards that kind of balance and that kind of perfectness.  

We met, like Pippa said, industry speakers.  We got to go to Facebook which is good because I'm a Facebook user.  We talk about diversity, all those issues.  It is interesting because we never think about behind the scenes.  We found out a lot of information from these speakers.  It was so interesting for us to learn about that.  

I think it's a good thing, what NetMission is doing as well because I think if young people know more about the internet and who is behind it, I think we'll use it more safely and it gives us a good knowledge kind of thing.  We also met people around the UK like Desiree.  I also met a blind man who developed his own software.  It made me think and realise how accessible and inaccessible the internet can be.  For him, it would have been so far.  But he's done it himself, and that was good.  

We also did statements of belief, as Pippa said, which are on these sheets if you want one.  My statement of belief was that, we all want our privacy protected but for different users in different countries, this means different things.  It is about privacy as individuals, but a lot of the information in the world is private and is inaccessible to them.  I believe we are all equal and should have access to the same information and that millions of other people are able to view.  The lack of knowledge impacts their beliefs and thoughts.  If you're only taught one thing, information we receive is limited, how are we able to learn and grow.  Privacy is very important but only in the context of your personal information is private and protected rather than all other information being private.  I think that's really important because the internet is basically a bunch of information, I think.  And a lot of it, a lot of things we shouldn't see and a lot of things we are trying to stop people seeing.  

It's like, again it's sort of beliefs and contrasts behind blocking openness.  I think we're all trying to reach a balance kind of thing.  I wrote about internet governance from the youth camp.  Everyone sees internet governance in different ways.  We had discussions and conflicting issues, like Pippa said, it's all freedom of speech and blocking.  We didn't know anything about that really.  It really made us think.  It was really good discussing it.  If more people get involved in behind the scenes, then I think the internet, we can express our views and help change the internet.  

We also, part of Radio Waves is connected with Child Net.  That part of the project provides us the basis to communicate with the world what Child Net, we all are doing.  So we do a lot of blogging daily.  We do a lot of things on Radio Waves.  I also have cards to give out so you can look up the Web site which is radiowaves.UK/ChildNet/C/IGF2010.



>> Thank you very much.  We're happy to take any questions from the floor.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Who wants to go first.  Bianca.



>> BIANCA:  I have a question.  Why do you choose specifically to age 18?



>> Originally when we did the youth IGF last year, it was 8 to 18 because we were working, in our school system, we have key stage 2 to key stage 5.  A loft them have key stage 1.  Those young people who have started to develop literacy, started to develop their writing skills, and those are the young people we are finding who are going on the internet and freely using it as young as 8 in the UK.  We felt that they also have things that they want to improve.  They also have things that they want to talk about.  They absolutely adore it, it's a world that they grow in.  We wanted to give them the opportunity to also put forward some of the opinions.  

For the summer camp itself this year, it was actually from 14 to 18 were the age of people that were with us because it was an overnight summer camp.  It was important to make sure they were of an age where they could be happy doing that.



>>  Audience:  So my question would be, how do you select your candidates and how do you know that they're appropriate for your particular camp?



>> Last year during the IGF project, the young people that we went into the schools and worked with them directly during our outreach work.  It's from had that we then selected young people who wanted to come along and wanted to speak, were comfortable to speak in front of stakeholders.  

This year for the summer camp, we split the candidates between ourselves and Radio Waves selecting those who would come forward and speak.  For example, Alex who is with us here today, had experienced the IGF the year before.  So he was coming back as a repeat Child Net youth IGF delegate.  As with the other candidates who came along, they too have been involved before.  But they were originally selected, Alex and Liam are from incredibly rural areas in the UK.  So there are certain limitations that they face that other users are not.  

Two of the other candidates they came around were from Guernsey, islands off the coast in the UK, had a very, very different experience to maybe a user in London.  And we also had people coming from other cities in the UK.  And these people were selected from Radio Waves.  I can hand it over to Kate to talk about how the Radio Waves candidates were selected.



>> KATE:  The candidates were selected on their previous experience as young reporters.  So they also had media training and, therefore, were going to be linked up with Child Net young people to be able to show them how to physically use the equipment, how to do good interviews, etcetera.  So they had all had previous radio Waves experience of varying degrees.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Thank you.  There's   



>>  Audience:  I have one more question.  I



>> EDMON CHUNG:  I wonder if you can hold it and we'll come back to a free flow discussion at the end.



>> Audience:  Okay.  Sure



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Now I move to Robert from Freedom House and their workshops to sort of train civil society and youth to participate in governance



>> ROBERT GUERRA:  Great.  I'd like to thank you, Edmon, DotAsia, the attendees of this panel to give us the opportunity to share some of the work that Freedom House has been doing in not only supporting the participation of youth but also what I would see as groups that are traditionally underrepresented here at the IGF.  

First a little introduction, I'll explain a little bit of the reasoning as to the type of work that we did, how we did it.  So I'm Robert Guerra.  I'm the project director at Freedom House's internet freedom programme.  We do a variety of activities, key ones related to the IGF is really following the processes at the IGF, particularly in regards to freedom of expression and human rights and the engagement of civil society and processes, just to make sure that issues of freedom get discussed as well.  

I have been involved in the IGF process back since 2002 and have always struggled to try to find a way to work with youth and to try to bring groups that are here.  The first couple of IGF's that I participated in, I was the sole participant from Freedom House and found it incredibly challenging.  But it also did an analysis in terms of, you know, what are the issues that are coming up in regards to civil society, what are voices and what are groups that are missing.  And strategically, quickly analyze that issues of privacy, openness, and human rights to a certain extent come up quite often.  

But unfortunately, the majority of the groups pushing these issues either are funded by groups    sorry.  Most of the groups come from western Europe or the Americas.  And an international scope that makes it very difficult.  Over the last year, we've seen a huge rise in internet issues coming from Asia and the middle east and elsewhere.  And strategically, you know, it's important to have internet users from those countries actually comment whether they agree with their governments, whether they agree with what's being said from western democracies and their own opinion and bring them to the IGF because I think that those voices are very helpful and beneficial.  

Youth strategically have important, there are issues about child protection.  Knowing whether youth actually shares the same views as a lot of the child protection agencies that are mostly run by much older people, whether they share the view.  A lot of comments over the last IGF's is one of the biggest concerns from youth is having privacy from their parents and the web surfing habits of their parents as well and not what the other child protection people are saying as well.  

So sometimes there's a difference of opinion.  And we thought that in regards to Asia, that there was some missing voice.  And some Freedom House, for those of you who aren't familiar with, is one of the oldest human rights organisations in the U.S.  It was founded in the late 1940's, has been working on a variety of different issues particularly on Democratic development.  It has been focusing on human rights and freedom of expression.  

With our internet freedom programme focusing on issues of internet governance, and we realized that to build a capacity, if anywhere in the world if we could build it and have them participate more in the IGF process, not only was it important to partner with groups in Asia but southeast Asia would be particularly important.  

And so through funding that we were able to cobble together but also in a larger organisation make the case that it was important to build networks, we are able to get support.  It's a pilot project really this year where we brought a group, I think it's about 13 or 14 people to the Asia regional IGF back in June.  And it was really a test to see whether groups working on freedom of expression, bloggers and human rights groups really care.  And if they do, would they be interested enough to be engaged.  

Our approach was recognizing that the space is very complex.  Our format has been working through regional networks, human rights, freedom of expression, and others in Asia and in Southeast Asia to identify participants, take them through a two or three day preparatory process kind of before the meeting proper, first of all, to give them an understanding of some of the IG issues; secondly, to analyze the programme, who are the panelists, who are the speakers, so they can pick the sessions appropriately, what are ways to stay in touch with each other during the meeting, and then do a follow up report after the meeting is done.  

For the Asia regional meeting, it was simple.  It was a short, I think, two day meeting, if I remember correctly.  And what we found is that there was incredible interest.  The group was very active.  They developed a statement which they put out about a week and a half after which they contributed to the multistakeholder advisory group.  Later at the IGF, there are copies of the statement they put together.  

And the statement basically had three components.  One, recommendations to the organisers.  Two, a set of issues that the group thought was priority for them and an action plan for going forward.  

What we've done for this IGF is again try to find some funding from two sources this time and bring a smaller subset of the same group to come through this IGF.  And analysis of the programme, as most of you know, there are many concurrent sessions.  It took us almost a day and a half to go through the list of speakers and speak.  One of the individuals who was supporting is here and will speak after us.  I'm curious to get his perspective.  But our point of view is really being facilitating, not necessarily bringing specific issues related to Freedom House but really wanting the groups to know what is going on at the meeting, tell them and introduce them not only to civil society but governmental representatives, businesses as well.  So the multistakeholder approach where everyone can speak to each other in a very kind of Democratic way.  They can take that back them with them as well.  

So I'll passion the comments to Blogie Robillo from the Philippines, who is one of the persons who attended both of our meetings to hear from him what it's like to participate in both of the meetings, what he's learned and, more importantly, what this means for internet users in the Philippines and what are the ideas that he has to promote internet governance and its discussion in the Philippines.  Blogie, over to you.  



>> OLIVER ROBILLO:  Hello.  Good morning.  Can you hear me?  I am Oliver Robillo, but everybody calls me Blogie.  So please do so, too.  I am from the Philippines.  And I represent a group of a community of bloggers in Mindanao, which is south of the Philippines.  

As Robert has said, I was part of the group in Hong Kong during the Asia Pacific regional Internet Governance Forum.  And now I'm part of the IGF 2010 again.  So since Robert has already given you the overview of why and how we were participating in IGF, I'd just like to give you my thoughts probably or what I've learned as a member of civil society as hosted by Freedom House.  

To give you a backgrounder, I'm a blogger.  We have a community of bloggers in Mindanao.  Most of us in the community use blogging for advocacy.  Of course, a lot of us write about food and travel and probably personal opinion.  But as a group, we promote better understanding and peace and development issues, discussions in Mindanao and the whole of the Philippines.  

So I guess because of that kind of involvement, Robert noticed my activities.  In fact, we first met in Hong Kong during Blog Fest Asia, which is also organised by DotAsia.  I gave a talk.  And Robert was there when he was en route to Sharm el Sheik.  And then we met again in Washington, DC, and in New York, where I was participating in an international visitors leadership programme by the U.S. State Department.  

I guess because of the confluence of events, I guess that's why Robert and Freedom House asked me to participate in the Hong Kong programme and now here in Lithuania.  In fact, again, next weekend in Hungary.  

So what I appreciate about Freedom House is that they have no hidden agenda.  We know that they are promoting freedom of expression, which is the main, the core idea of why the representatives from the Southeast Asia civil society group are here.  But Freedom House says, okay, these are our advocacies, but what are yours?  Okay.  What are the advocacies that you are involved in in the Philippines and in Thailand and Malaysia and Cambodia, the entire group of civil society representatives from Southeast Asia.  

And then through their, how should I say, stewardship or tutelage, the representatives from Southeast Asia civil society were able to come together in spite of our varied cultures and languages and come to a discussion, a meaningful discussion and arrive at that statement that we have now from the Hong Kong IGF.  And I'm sure that we'll work again to come up with a Southeast Asia and civil society statement after the IGF 2010.  

So as Robert mentioned, we did in Hong Kong and now again in Lithuania, we went through a process of discussions.  In fact, for IGF 2010, we actually, because now there are only nine of us compared to Hong Kong when there were, I think, 16 of us.  So we had to identify which sessions to attend, which sessions that had meaning for us.  At the end of the day, report to each other either face to face as a group or by use of technology, of course.  In fact, we identified which platforms, which technologies to use to report on our thoughts, what we've learned in the different sessions.  

I guess all of us are already knowledgeable in what we do.  And we have an idea of which tools, which skills are useful to us.  But because of what Freedom House has done, we were able to consolidate that and make meaningful sense out of our chatter and our planning.  So I thank Freedom House for that.  And of course, I also thank DotAsia.  I'd like to take this opportunity to thank DotAsia because if you had not invited me to give a talk in Hong Kong during Blog Fest, I would not have met Robert and the State Department as well.  Because of that, I was invited to Washington, D.C., last January.  

Thank you.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Thank you.  I didn't expect it to become thanking DotAsia.  Thank you very much for that.  

It's   



>> Audience:  Just a quick question, Blogie.  In regards to IGF activities in the Philippines, how has this encouraged you to do things with your fellow bloggers and others in the Philippines?  



>> OLIVER ROBILLO:  Philippinos and other bloggers are not really keen on following internet governance issues and developments.  The reason for that probably    well, in my point of view because I'm coming from the freedom of expression of human rights perspective, we have nominally complete freedom of expression in the Philippines.  When I talk about it, my fellow bloggers don't really care to listen much but maybe because it's colored by my perspective.  

There are now some bloggers in Manila and Mindanao where I come from who are interested in what I am talking about and they know that there are different perspectives.  So when I go back to the Philippines after this, I plan to talk about a possible IGF which we also indicated back in Hong Kong, although there are other plans as well for other synergies, especially with Indonesia and Malaysia, for us to learn why internet governance issues are really important to talk about.  

Besides that, we are more concerned about    the main problem of bloggers in the Philippines now is access    I'm sorry.  The main problem of the internet in the Philippines now is access and a very huge digital divide.  

I hope that I would be able to bring ideas from the IGF back to the Philippines and be able to contribute to the discussions on those issues in the Philippines.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Thank you.  I jotted down a note when Robert mentioned about web browsing patterns by parents.  I think that's a rather interesting subject.  In fact, one of the projects that the NetMission ambassadors did when they did a home visit to a family, we came across an issue where a little girl was, you know, hesitant to use the computer because in complaining that basically her father was visiting porn sites all too often, which is an interesting observation.  I think that's one of the things that often, as Robert mentioned, child protection agencies tend to forget the other side of the story.  

With that, I move to Hon Suk, who will talk about the summer school and internet governance.  That's probably a much more formalized group.  I think with her strong background from legal might have more insight on some of those parent issues, too.  



>> HON SUK HA:  Is it connected?  You have to do the    oh, not yet.



>>  There's nothing here.  



>> HON SUK HA:  Sorry for the technical problem.  I'm Hon Suk Ha, thank you very much for organizing this wonderful session.  

Still I cannot see anything from my screen.  Shall I unplug it?  I cannot share computer information.  It used to be okay.  I tested it already.  There's a problem with that screen.



>> It's not turned on maybe.



>> It went to sleep.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  While we are fixing the technical issue, I just want to welcome Amelia to join us.  Thank you for joining us.  Amelia, as I   



>> Thank you very much.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  She is a member of the European parliament from the Swedish Pirate Party.  Thank you for joining us.  

We're still trying to fix the screens.  



>> HON SUK HA:  I can do it without the screen



>> EDMON CHUNG:  I guess Hon has agreed to move forward without the Power Point.  Thank you.  



>> HON SUK HA:  Thanks, Edmon.  Okay.  For the benefit of the time, we're all busy with other sessions.  I move ahead, briefing on summer school on internet governance.  This idea on summer school was raised in 2006.  So it was four years ago.  

At that time, when a group of professors researching in writing on internet governance issue gathered together in Harten, a small town 200 kilometers away in Germany.  Internet governance is a new issue in academic area.  There's a group of academics and scholars researching on this subject.  This is still a small academic community.  But it's actually producing high quality products and publications.  

So in 2006, the Harten meeting, the professors were the superstars such as Professor Drake, Wolfgang Kleinwachter, and the professor from Beijing.  So these people came together to talk about the research and academic training on internet governance.  As profess ors, we think about how to develop a really teaching programme.  So it's more systematic training for leaders on governance.  The systematic study system was still underdeveloped.  So that was the beginning of the thinking on this kind of a summer school.  

In 2007, summer school really came into being in Europe.  So the first summer schools, this IG on summer school governance, in 2007, to 2010, the summer school has been held in Europe for four years.  So this year, I went to teach in Germany for the first internet governance school.  We had a wonderful gathering.  I have some videos and slides that cannot be shown to you.  

But anyway, we had a wonderful time.  We have one of the participants of this academic programme, Mr. Todd is sitting right there.  One of the policy office at the dot CN registry, I can forward, go to him after the short briefing.  That's okay.  I don't need it anymore.  

So the mission of this SSIG, first of all, we want to train the leaders for the future.  This is kind of a grown up programme.  Most participants have got at least one academic degree.  Most of them have master's degree.  And some of them have a Ph.D. degree.  So this is kind of an advanced academic programme.  

Secondly, we want to train the current activists in the stakeholder groups.  They have to participate and be active in governance, internet governance process already.  They have been.  So most of them actually are a representative at ICANN or the CCT, or officers at CTOE's, for the technical community for RAR's, from civil society has been active in NCSG or large structures.  

So these are actually insiders of the governance process.  And we make can kind of an academic programme.  So the training will be a certificate.  This is not a degree programme at the moment.  But we hope it could be developed into a degree programme.  

At the moment, in Europe, what you receive, the credits you receive from summer school is transferable across Europe academic institutions.  So you attended summer school, it will be counted as a credit for one course in your school.  So quite workable for these post graduate student in Europe.  

The idea of summer school has been spread from Europe to other parts of the world, such as Latin America has been holding two summer schools.  We're not in the same hemisphere.  The summer of Latin America is actually the winter of the north hemisphere.  So we don't call it summer school.  We call it spring school or fall school.  Asia Pacific is going to organise their first funded summer school hopefully in June, the last week of June 2011 in connection with the ICANN meeting in the middle of the year, which is going to be held in Asia.  

I want to read this message right here.  

For the scientific programme for this kind of training, we want to make it visible, theoretical enough to make it a course recognizable by any academic institution.  So we have two sections in the curriculum or the training programme.  The first part is the theoretical part, authored by top professors on internet governance.  For example, for the first European summer school, theoretical section was taught by six    oh, sorry.  It was on now.  

We wanted Professor Bodrick, Professor Kleinwachter, and Professor Wolfgang from Austria to teach the history of internet, the theory of internet governance, the multistakeholder regime, the legal aspects of internet governance and the process in this new transnational system.  

So these are a part.  The business part is not interesting, quite boring.  But the second part, the technical and practical part, it is more original to these activists in the process already.  Sessions, we invited the companies, business sector, private sector to talk about cloud computing, model computing, social networks.  For these parts, we also organised a roundtable discussion and kind of tutorial, communication between the students and them to exchange their views.  So this is very compressed, intensive training process.  The professor can testify how hard it was.  It was eight hours lecturing, every evening, homework, student presentations.  So it's restless.  You have to work very hard.  

For the funding, okay, interesting part, I'm very much impressed by the funding exercise by the colleagues.  For summer school, this is really difficult.  I must say from the very beginning, it was a one person show only.  Professor Wolfgang Kleinwachter's persistent, determination, he managed to talk down to 100 people and was turned down 1,000 times but he kept talking with people to ask for small funding monies to sponsor one or two students to attend the programme.  So normally every year, he will receive more than 100 applicants but he can only accommodate about 30 students to really go to Mason, Germany, the permanent home for European summer school.  So far the funding is still not stable.  He had to have this annual exercise.  And for Latin America, the local coordinator, the local manager is Professor Kawali.  She is also doing the same things.  Next year in Asia Pacific, I'm going to organise one in Beijing.  I still don't know where the money will come from.  As a law professor, I choose to leave academic life because I wanted to keep away from money and now I need to talk about, give me a little money to upon sponsor some    sponsor some students to teach them.  I can't open up my mind to talk about it.  In these days, I still cannot    

(Laughter.)

It is really challenging.  So what I'm thinking, we need a kind of stimulized system to fund this programme.  It is not working.  Every year we think about from Europe to the programme, there's no budget at the beginning.  It's not sustainable.  Even though there will be international summer school correlation established, registered in Europe.  It's going to be a non governmental, nonprofit, academic international organisation.  

So that's basically my main thing.  Finally the Asia Pacific summer school, even though there is no budget, hopefully will be held the last week of June 2011.  

Now I want to hand over the microphone to Mr. Todd.  What is your personal experience, after receiving the certificate and developing your personal network with those ministers in Europe.  So what is your personal perspective for that, Mr. Todd, please.



>> Mr. TODD:  Thank you for inviting me to attend the first EUS SIG.  This is quite exciting, kind of knowledgeable.  For me, I think this week is kind of intense.  And I just get a lot of stuff to go out.  It makes me almost a month after that to digest all the materials I get from this programme.  

From my personal experience, this summer school course is quite enlightening for me.  Previously I was working for    currently I was working for Simnic.  Actually I am taking on activities, like attending the ICANN meeting, taking part in the policy, making the ICANN world.  But frankly speaking, I'm not    I don't have overall a vision of what the internet means before I joined this summer school.  In fact, the summer school just gave me a whole picture of what the internet governance is about.  And quite interesting for me is that I have got kind of a holistic understanding of the history of internet governance.  The IGF is more realistic from my perspective.  It is more, theoretically... so that's why personally for me I think getting training, getting training on the side of internet governance is quite good for people like me tis also good for youth who are eager to know what internet governance is about.  

I think it will also get other professions who is taking on the job on internet governance, it will be also helpful.  Okay.  I guess that's all.  



>> HON SUK HA:  Thank you.  Just a small question   



>>  Audience:  Thank you.  Just a small question.  Did you receive any scholarship to attend this summer school?



>> Mr. TODD:  Of course.  This programme is quite interesting.  We have 33 classmates.  Some of them were subsidized by some organisation.  For me, I was subsidized by AUDA.AU, which I think Mr.    yes.  Hopefully, the Asia Pacific summer school is willing to act as one of the sponsors.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Thank you.  I think you have your first sponsor now.  And the second one.  I think DotAsia is definitely willing to support the Asia Pacific summer school, internet governance summer school.  

So any questions about the summer school?  There's one.



>>  Audience:  I have a question.  So my impression is that a lot of people from the IT background actually joined the summer school.  Are there a cross section of people maybe from businesses?  I'm just wondering.  



>> HON SUK HA:  Thank you very much.  That's a great question.  Professor Todd can correct me, this year 32 students, about 65 percent are actually lawyers, law background.  So it seems that the policy and legal profession are becoming interested in internet governance.  And maybe 20 percent are just techies.  And the rest of them, government officers from business, private sector.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Thank you.  So I guess we'd like to move on to sort of open the discussion.  But before I do that, I'd like to get the, I guess, response from some of our other panelists today.  I guess I'll start with Ross and then Rafik, since Amelia came in a bit late, I'll end with you, Amelia.  Ross, just generally all the initiatives and perhaps your experience, some of the other types of youth engagement even into politics because I think internet governance often delves into sort of politics as well.



>> ROSS:  My name is Ross Ligonnes, I am head of public policy and affairs for Google in Asia Pacific.  Thank you, Edmon, for allowing me to be here today and thank to the panelists for very provocative presentations.  

I want to say from the outset that I'm primarily here to learn.  And I want to applaud the efforts of all the programmes that I heard about just now.  A couple thoughts, I believe it was Suraya, I hope I got her name correctly, she said, when you go on the internet, you don't think about how it is, how it is governed and things of that nature.  I think that's true.  I think it's true not just of young people but of all users.  Most people don't have any idea how it's run, who runs it, how it works or anything of that nature.  I think if you ask them, they'll say something like, governments run it.  My home government must run it.  They control it.  

So they just think it runs itself some how in some way.  And that's probably where the analysis ends.  

So I think educating young people and training them to be involved in internet governance is a key way of getting them involved in the internet itself.  And this is really the important part.  By doing so, you're ensuring the future vitality and vibrancy of a free and open internet itself.  

Another thing I should say, something that Robert said, the views of young people are not just internet governance but on any of the number of internet policy issues that are currently being debated, are extremely underrepresented, regardless of the issue, whether it's privacy or online security or free expression.  

Youth really, young people really have not had a place at the table in the way that they should have.  That's why the programmes we heard about today are so important.  I don't need to say this, but the internet belongs as much to young people as it does to anyone else.  And in a very short time, it's really going to be yours.  And it's important that when you take on that responsibility, you have the training and the understanding necessary to sort of fulfill that responsibility.  And it really is a responsibility.  You have any number of people and governments and organisations out there in the world in various parts, all four corners of the world who would be more than happy to take over that responsibility for you.  And if we don't sort of continue to do the work that we're doing, that's an extreme possibility.  

At Google, we see youth engaging in internet governance is really encouraging young people to become more involved in the world at large, in politics, in world policy and government.  And so that's really where Google's efforts have been to date, have been focused on to date.  Just to cite a recent example of many of the things that we do around the world, and it is the Asia Pacific region, we had a number of programmes to encourage youth to engage in that election.  We set up a site where young journalists could work with much more established journalists, major media outlets.  And they reported on the election together.  And it was all sort of put on this one site that we had that covered the Australian election.  

Also on that same site, we partnered with an NGO in Australia called Vibe Wire which is part of YouTube, which is a Google party.  We asked them what they thought of the national party, to get them engaged in the election, on the policies and questions that were being presented to Australians as part of that election.  And some of you may know that the election in Australia, the outcome hinged on a large part of one of the proposals of the Labour Party which is a national broadband network.  The Labour Party was able to maintain control of government by attracting the interest of a couple key independent legislators.  And the reason why they chose the Labour Party was because of their support for a national broadband network in Australia.  

It goes to point out that some of these issues really play out in national and international stages and that youth really has a role in participating with them.  

With that, I want to thank Edmon and the other panelists for being here today.  It was a very good experience



>> EDMON CHUNG:  It's interesting, you mentioned the simulated elections.  How did it, the real elections, how did it reflect?



>> I don't have the exact figures, but I think it tracked    I believe Labour came out a little more ahead than they did in the actual election.  I think the actual results of the election were quite surprising to most people who were watching the results.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  That's kind of interesting.  So you're saying that youth is actually more conservative than the actual voters?



>> It's a little bit harder to track in Australia than it would be in a country like the U.S.  I wouldn't necessarily say that.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Okay.  But I do hear that you have the    it seems like the Radio Waves and the Google programme might have something in common as well, especially encouraging youth journalism.  I'll move to Rafik, your thoughts.  



>> RAFIK DAMMAK:  So first, thanks for inviting me to attend this session.  The interesting thing about youth participation, how to train young people to be involved, if I start from my own experience, unfortunately I am missing the races in 2005 which was organised in my country because there was no real programme for people from Tunisia to be involved with that.  But I got the chance in 2007 to attend the internet governance diversity building programme of the DiploFoundation.  I got the possibility to involve in the internet governance community and to meet many people, especially from Diplo communities.  And after the internet governance capacity building programme, I attended the first European summer school on internet governance, which was held in Mason in July 2007.  And it was also a great experience because even though I have the IT background, but I attended many lectures who are not really related to technical side of internet.  It's more about ICANN issues, etcetera.  And from that, I got a lot of interest to be involved in ICANN.  And from that, I started to be interested, what is Atkins doing and so on.  

So from these trainings, from the summer school, from the capacity building programme, I got aware about the different issues of internet governance.  And then I could focus.  On things that matched my interest.  And then I started to be involved.  So the important thing is not just to train people to be interested in internet governance issues but how to build the process and the mechanism that allows them to be really involved.  

For example, in the IGF, we have many workshops.  We don't see many of young people in the workshops.  We can maybe find them in some workshops related to youth issues, but why not to have young people organisations like in all the workshops.  If, for example, we have a workshop about copyright or literature, why don't we have, we list ton the young people.  We just young people, for the content.  Now I am more talking from the perspective of the youth coalition on internet governance, which was launched this year.  We tried to create that space to attract young people from different backgrounds.  We want people from private sector, from government side, from civil society, from technical community to be involved on internet governance from the youth perspective.  

They can be involved not just to talk about what we can, like youth issues, but any kind of topics related to internet governance.  We need to involve more young experts.  I'm not blaming that we have many veteran, but we need to bring more new blood to have more fresh ideas and then to expand the internet governance community and also to work on the diversity, geographic and gender diversity.  And young people can help in that matter.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Thank you.  That's a very interesting observation.  I totally share the idea    I mean, the critical idea, which is the mechanism to get young people involved, you know, not just training but also get them to actually being involved.  

That sort of brings me to, one of the things that Ross mentioned that really the internet is the young people's, the future that's yours, not the people that are running or controlling it today.  

The other thing that is really interesting I think is I certainly didn't grow up using the internet myself.  The youth today are the ones who grew up using the internet.  And they probably have a different perspective on how it should be governed.  That is definitely a very interesting thing.  

I remember Bianca was telling me yesterday about a thought of having a youth IGF main session.  I want to hold that thought because when Rafik was talking about it, I actually think, is that good or bad because we should integrate the whole thing rather than, you know, separate out, sort of like a mock UN thing or something.  

The internet governance, we might have a chance to actually integrate youth participation directly into the entire dialogue.  So that is interesting.  

I know Robert wanted to say something.  You wanted to go?  Okay.  In that case, I'll move to Amelia.  Your thoughts, especially your campaigns to engage youth voters and youth participation in policy discussion and political discussions.



>>  AMELIA:  Yes.  So I'd like to thank first Edmon for letting me be here and also I'm very sorry that I was late.  

I think it's a bit misguided to say that young people have no role in internet governance today.  Most of the people I know who have even been close to ripe in Europe are still under 30 years of age.  And about two weeks ago, I find out that by having the right contacts, even if you're somewhere around 18 or so, it's perfectly possible to get access to ripe servers.  

So as far as I'm concerned, the internet is still very much run by young people.  And it's going to continue being that way.  

Governments, however, usually are not.  Internet Governance Forum is a platform where you come together and discuss among governments.  So going here, it obviously appears as if this is a topic dominated by the older generations.  

Young people in Europe, I think, also are very aware that internet governance, particularly with respect to security issues, is limited and is restricted towards internet freedom, because the security issues in governments are decided by old people.  And this is perhaps also why young people in Europe now have taken such a large interest in changing who is in the political processes in parliaments and in governments.  

It's a bit like, how did we make young people do that.  Well, we actually didn't.  I think policy makers have accomplished youth interest and participation in internet governance all on their own.  If you're going to suggest that all internet traffic is monitored, which is actually what was suggested in Sweden just some three years ago, if you're going to suggest that internet pages are going to be arbitrarily blocked without anyone having any insight in what's blocked or when or how and there is absolutely no way for users to choose whether or not they participate in this blocking process, then you are obviously going to get young people interested in the topic simply because it's not okay.  

And if you're going to negotiate, like what is currently discussed very much in Europe is the anti counterfeiting trade agreement.  What's that about?  Well, restricting internet access for users and/or cutting users off the internet if they acquire an MP3 file.  

Now, these discussions are run globally.  Of course, young people used to be able to share, interact, communicate with each other, even across borders or with people in the Philippines or in Australia, they're going to get slightly pissed off.  And from my experience, this is like, regardless of summer schools, we have already activist groups and people working with this predominantly young people all over the world.  

My current    most of my current contact with people south of the equator are actually in Latin America, but they have a very large community of people with random interest.  Granted, they will not be as slick or used to the political processes as somebody in their 50s, but then again, they can't be because it's something you learn over time.  And definitely young people involved now in internet governance processes, including myself, will acquire insight in how policy is being made and perhaps even be able to change it slightly.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Thank you.  It's a very interesting observation, one of the things that, I guess, a couple of feedbacks, one of my thoughts, one is in Europe, probably the    in Europe or, I guess, the more western societies, the tendency to participate in activism from youth is probably a little bit higher.  

And the other part I want to talk about is that you mentioned, yes, actually there are a lot of youth engaged in these type of discussions.  The problem is bringing them to the table to talk about it with the grown ups, I guess, with the older people.  That's always a challenge.  And it seems like the reason for, I guess, some of the summer schools, that different type of schools, it actually helps us.  

One of the things I learned is that it helps us create funding or, you know, aggregate funding such that the young people can come.  You know, I guess from our side and from Freedom House and probably from Child Net as well, it allows us to develop funding that allows young people to be here and to talk.



>>  AMELIA:  Okay.  I know that I often sound very critical of international governance processes, and I apologize slightly for that.  The reason I think most of the people that I am in contact with on a daily basis probably would never have the patience for this type of process, like just sitting down for two hours, talking about summer schools.  It's just    you know, they would rather sleep or eat or do whatever.  

Also but my experience with third world countries or developing nations or whatever isn't really at all that they don't participate in governance processes.  It's just that they do it completely differently.  I met a guy yesterday outside the host country reception, he tracks down botnets.  Botnets can certainly be used to gather information about people's bank data.  And I'm not saying that    but some botnets are used for political focus, like taking down the national police force's Web site or making sure that you limit the possibility to move for one of the dominant parties in the country.  

And whether or not you find this a good political process or not or a good way of making your voice heard, it's certainly one way of using your skills and capacity to promote the political opinion very fast.  

When I came here this morning, I found this fantastic book, Hackavism, cyber terrorism.  Something that in any normal circumstance would be considered something like a demonstration, it lasts for a couple of hours and then you recover, is an internet governance apparently equal to terrorism:  In Australia, there is a law if you gather people on the street with an intention to disrupt society, you are also a terrorist.  

Well, you know, like young people do protest, even in Thailand and in Brazil, they have loads of people doing that.  It's just generally, we would not consider that approvable behavior, much like we don't consider a lot of political actions like civil disobedience approvable behavior in real life.  But you still need to acknowledge the existence of it.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  That's interesting.  You certainly have the observation correct, looking around, not a lot of people are coming to listen to us today.  But I know Robert had a question and then Soraya.  Can all of those who wanted to give a comment, just raise your hand so I have a list.  We have about five, six minutes left.  Just put up your hand.  I'll start with Robert



>> ROBERT GUERRA:  So I guess something that's important is maybe a little bit of historical context.  What set up the IGF, the world summit on the information society.  Luckily there was funding for youth participation.  In fact, the youth caucus was incredibly active in the preparatory process in the two summits.  So it was well over 30 to 50 youth, it's how Rafik and other people got engaged.  But then the funding stopped for that group.  Some of them have gone on to other things.  There's a few that are still engaged.  One of the biggest challenges is, I think making sure the youth issue is always raised in every summit.  There is always in every single session a youth participant there.  One of the key people who is now in Australia was very insistent in making a point all the time.  

The question for the IGF, do we have any youth on the MAG.  Take a look at strategic analysis of how to insert youth and make sure they are represented.  So I'm not sure that that's the case.  And if there's one recommendation maybe from the session, you know, since we have people from government, we have definitely a parliamentarian or two in the room to lobby saying, there must be a youth person there.  That perspective is missing.  

Secondly, going forward then is making sure the support going forward is making sure that youth can be engaged and that different modalities of engagement can be represented.  This is not probably a very typical youth session.  It was probably done in a very different fashion.  And the space needs to be open.  So I would suggest planning for the next IGF, if the mandate gets renewed, I would love to see a session that is youth organised, youth led, and the creativity and the labels that get associated, activism, terrorism, but the definitions from youth, they are the users of the internet of tomorrow as they said in the world summit, their perspective seems to the not here at all.  And that really needs to be corrected



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Soraya?



>> SORAYA:  I was going to say, government implies power and age, control.  And for me, an 18 year old person is classified as a young person but adult at the same time.  And the term "young person," I'm kind of okay with.  But for me in society today, it seems like we are just the young people.  We're not people.  I think we don't notice    we don't classify all older people, to think we will never achieve equal status as adults in any kind of respects or we'll always be the young people who are kind of an occasional voice.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  That's an interesting observation

Alex wanted to add something as well.



>> ALEX:  Actually just a minute ago when Robert mentioned about us joining the MAG, that is actually on our statement of belief, one of the main things.  I was at Sharm last year.  One of the comments was that there should be more youth involvement in these panels.  A year later, another IGF, and nothing has happen.  So I wonder, like Amelia, it is great that we are discussing these, a really positive kind of thought process but how much will actually be implemented.  

We want our voices to be heard.  How can we actually get that across when we're relying on the adults, the old people, to do that in some respects.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Thank you.  I'll circle back to Robert, but Rafik?  



>> RAFIK DAMMAK:  I think it's related to all this discussion.  The important point about the presence of young people in the MAG, we also asked about that from the youth coalition on internet governance.  We also, there was some discussion, if we can say to represent stakeholder.  Young people can present in all stakeholder groups.  

One of the problems that we share, I like the idea of, there is a youth session organised by young people.  We can do that.  But the problem we have, there was a talk in the open presentation to prepare this IGF that youth is one of the issues in the IGF.  If you read the problem paper, will you find many times the notion of the young people.  We have mostly the same topic that we are discussing but there is no young, youth perspective.  We don't have young people participating there.  So it's just, maybe like some workshops of youth related issues.  But young people want to present in all internet governance issues and that old people can listen to their voice.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  It seems like we're building consensus here to have a youth main session.  Desiree, then I'll end with Robert.



>> DESIREE:  I just want to point out that one of the characteristics of the IGF is it is not a decision making body.  I was told at least that we're not here to generate any action, which is very debatable.  So on one hand    yes.  So you can't directly analyze the direct benefits that we got out of the IGF because it's very second order.  Do you understand what I'm trying to say?  I think that's why it makes it very open.  

But I think that whether or not the IGF continues is very much based on how much we're all getting out of it.  Another observation I want to point out is that it seems like across the floor, we have a lot of programmes that are actually doing very similar work.  So I kind of want to open the question to the floor as to, what do you think works and what do you think does not work when you carry out these programmes and initiatives involving youth or young people in internet governance.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  That's an interesting thing to talk about.  I just want to say, you know, I think we want to drive towards action.  It's just not, we're not making policy decisions here.  The discussions hopefully will drive to actions by us, which I'll go to Robert and I'll end with Amelia.  We're running out of time



>> ROBERT GUERRA:  Something that Amelia said in terms of challenges, the problem with the IGF is just to organize a panel, it gets organised six, eight months out.  Everything takes a lot of time.  That's one of the really big challenges, is that there need to be a lot of people following the very archaic processes in a way.  

But as long as people are just coordinated and make sure that there's some sharing of information, their have been youth main sessions in the past.  The problem is that people would leave.  Moderators weren't selected properly and they weren't strategic.  And so the other thing, too, is don't go by what the organisers tell you.  The other thing, too, is what other sessions are doing is they're using the sessions to organise actions outside of the IGF.  I mean, the cyber security are talking about how to collaborate over the next year.  

So if these issues, they can talk about what is being done over the last year, it can and wonderful session.  It can be action elsewhere.  I think it would be wonderful.  The biggest challenge is being strategic and the second thing is, yes, it should be read by youth, but working with the other stakeholders, so fining those of us that are    finding those of us that are older, that are allies, more importantly, government officials, that might be helpful.  The fact that we have, the fact that we have Amelia, who is a parliamentarian, gives us access to say that we have different stakeholders in the room now as well.  And that's very appealing.  So having others bring more of their colleagues and their allies here is particularly important.  But I'll stress that a key factor is time, strategy, and, yes, funding, which is very difficult to obtain.  



>> EDMON CHUNG:  Amelia, you have the last word.



>> AMELIA:  So I read a paper quite a while ago about, by Heinz in Milan.  It's about internet governance and grassroots organisations.  It talks about what internet grassroots feel about organisations like IGF.  More or less it's yes, the processes are slow but also one of the early criticisms was it was very difficult to make your voice heard in the international forum.  

There's quite a lot of technical people out there that would love to attend your security    or the security sessions on the forum, but they lack funding.  I am here because I'm semi sponsored, I'm freeloading off of the friend of a friend.  As many friends as I can find in this building.  This is how I sponsor myself.  But I'm on the other hand also living like on minimum life support kind of funding.  

So I think in order to get more participants, especially from the youth technical community that I think really needs to be represented here, regardless of where they're from, you have lots of scripts in Brazil, for instance, you could invite if you wanted to get the bot nets invited.  What really is missing is funding.  And that's how you get young people to participate.  

Maybe then also you could see them feeling more integrated.  And primarily you would see them take up so much space that nobody could possibly neglect them.  And if you want to make your voices heard it's generally a good thing



>> EDMON CHUNG:  With that, we have the calling to work together, not only with youth groups, try to find out to fund more of us    I shouldn't say us, I realise.  More of you    I try to think of it that way, more of you to come to the forum and to make your voices heard.  So with that, I hope you join in a round of applause to all the youth and the panelists.  Thank you.

[ APPLAUSE ]



(End of meeting.)