FINISHED COPY
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED
MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
03 SEPTEMBER 2014
14:30
INTER‑REGIONAL DIALOGUE SESSION
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This is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Thank you for being with us. This is the interregional dialogue session and we are trying to talk about exchanges on the regional IGFs. Let me introduce Marilyn Cade who with me, will be the leaders, co‑organisers of these sessions, but most importantly I want to introduce the team that has made this happen. We have Christine Arida from the Government of Egypt and Ellen Strickland from DotNZ who are going to be our co‑Moderators and will go through the different items posted on the programme. Let me also ‑‑ let me ‑‑ yeah. Okay? And before just starting the moderation let me introduce Chengetai who is our IGF Secretariat and Ambassador Janis who will be expressing some words of welcome to all of you. And I see we have been just joined by Janis, our Chair. Perhaps we will open by Janis' remarks followed by Chengetai's.
>> JANIS KARKLINS: Thank you very much and apologies for being a little bit late and apologies that we haven't coordinated with Chengetai what we would say. But for my part I am very encouraged with the ‑‑ in a positive sense with the proliferation of IGF initiatives which means that the concept and the approach is the right one that we are advocating and pursuing. And we are very pleased with your presence here. And we hope that this dialogue that you will be engaging in exchanging your experiences will be fruitful and useful for the next period that all of us hope will be decided either this year or latest December next year by the UN General Assembly.
I think that we are ‑‑ we heard very clearly messages from the NETmundial meeting where community was discussing possible ways forward. And one of the issues that is recommended was to think about the linkage between different initiatives being national, regional and international. That we would create kind of an ongoing permanent engagement throughout the year which would be cross‑fertilizing and self‑supporting each other. And in this respect I think it is very timely for you to consider the modalities of that process and bring your thinking, your proposals to the main Plenary and stocktaking session that we learn what ‑‑ in which way you are thinking.
From my part, of course, I have some ideas but not being perceived as being prescriptive I will sort of keep my ideas for myself and will be verifying them along the way of discussion as it evolves, because at the end of the day the preparations for the next IGF will be done as usual by the MAG in cooperation with the host country in consultation with the wider community through existing mechanisms, open consultation process. The initial thinking is that we would have the first open consultation meeting maybe prior to the end of the year simply because IGF this year is taking place early in the year. And not to postpone it too far. Because traditionally the first kind of stocktaking meeting is taking (Internet outage).
>> CHENGETAI MASANGO: Thank you, Janis. First of all, thank you for inviting me. I am personally very pleased of the proliferation of the regional and national IGF initiatives. It really shows that the multi‑stakeholder model is growing. And it is important and it is being accepted. From my point of view and I would also looking at the agenda it is a very good agenda. And I am very interested in how the regional and national IGFs can distribute to the global IGF debate. And it shouldn't just be one direction. It should be both directions and we should be ‑‑ we should re‑enforce each other. One thing I'd also like to mention and I think it is very good that we know that one size does not fit all. There are slight differences in each regional and national IGF. And it is important that we do follow the main principles of an IGF and that is openness and inclusiveness and that anybody can join and discuss and have their views heard at the regional and national level as well.
And to this I also invite those of you who have not sent the information to the IGF Secretariat so that we can put your information on our website because somebody might be wanting to start an IGF in a country near you or in your same country but they don't know the information. So they know who to contact. And also if you could just bring some information on your structure because think the structure is also very important. So that somebody who wants to start a regional IGF or a national IGF can look at the structures that are out there and see which one best suits them and maybe slightly modify it to suit the national needs.
We've also been discussing things about funding for regional and national IGFs. I was at the meeting with the friends of IGF website and we were discussing website issues. And we were planning to have facilities that regional and national IGFs can have a website or a section of an IGF website where they can maintain and have access to list serves, et cetera, because there is some overhead involved in this. And if we pull all our resources together you can have your own section there and people know where to go to get the information.
At the IGF Secretariat we ‑‑ I don't know if you are all aware of this, but we also offer our WebEx. So if you want remote participation, you just contact us. We will give you a virtual room, how many you need for your meetings and we are quite pleased to host that. That is part of what we can contribute to the national and regional debates. There was also a talk about funding and there are some various Associations, friends of the IGF Association and there is also the Tides Foundation which are being set up now and with a hope that we will ‑‑ they will be able to give funding to the regional and national IGFs as needed and this, of course, is depending on contributions but they are set up for that. Because the current IGF trust fund that is run by UNDESA is not set up to do that. We can take some of that money to sponsor the national and regional IGFs. And I will keep quiet now because I think it is more important to hear other people speak than me. Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you so much, Chengetai, for your words and especially for the finances announcement. That sounds very interesting for not only to establish national/ regional IGF but especially for the different initiatives that are planning to start and in some cases they just need a little funding to start with. Thank you so much.
I want to just finish introducing the rest of the team. So I want to introduce Laura Hutchison who will be one of the Rapporteurs and Sandra Hoferichter, that's fine. More or less. Okay. Thank you. And Yannis Li who will be our Remote Moderator and Twitter Moderator. We are going to try this. And she had help us to define the hashtag for this session is going to be hashtag IGF initiatives. So with that let me just turn to Helen ‑‑ Christine who is going to start the session. And thank you very much. I will be circulating just some sheets for your ‑‑ identifying you and showing information about this session and other mechanisms of coordination. Thank you so much.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Thank you, Ricardo. And let me start by thanking Marilyn and Ricardo for organising this session and thank you, Chengetai and Janis, for coming to this session. For those that are new let me welcome everyone to this dialogue session. Let me call it like this and just a few remarks about national and regionals. You may know from the IGF website that there are 11 regional IGF initiatives, 20 national IGF initiatives, four other initiatives mainly focusing on use. We welcome not only coordinators, representatives of the initiatives but also participants to the initiatives as well as others who are trying to make a new national or regional initiative in their part. So everyone is welcome to put in their two cents in to the session.
So quickly about how we are going to run this session, first of all, we are going to divide the session in to two segments. So ‑‑ and we hope that all interventions will be precise and short so that everyone has the chance actually to talk and to put their point of view. The first part will be focusing more on issues. So on topics, on key issues. One of the ideas is to try to identify what has been discussed or will be discussed for those who have not yet convened their annual meeting, what has been discussed in terms of issues. We will try to identify whether the Rapporteurs and everyone, what are the commonalities of issues that we can actually maybe report back as an issue that is pressing coming out from the different regions, but also if there are any uniqueness in terms of topics that we really have to look at. And let's say that we will take maybe 60 minutes plus to do that. And before going in to the second segment of the session we are going to hear from the feeders workshops. We have two feeder workshops, Workshop 139 and Workshop 140. So we will listen from them. And then we will go to the second segment which will be more discussing the languages between the nationals and the regionals initiatives and the IGF. And also how to strengthen the different initiatives. So this is the idea. So I will pass to Laura to start. Ellen to start. Sorry.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Thank you, everyone. We will start with segment 1. We wanted to share amongst as Christine said as orgainsers but also participants to share about the issues and the themes and topics that came up, to get a feel for the content, and issues that you have had or are going to have. So I think I'd like to as we said running this session as a dialogue open up the floor. We had a session earlier today that was around CCs. So for New Zealand where the ccTLD and we are involved in our national initiative. And I know some others are and we had a great sort of time just going around introducing your name and what initiative you are from and listing, say three, two or three of the top issues and topics that are featuring in your initiative or you think are going to. And as I said it will be really useful for the transcription and to get to know each other. When you make an intervention you could introduce yourself, your name and your initiative country or region.
>> AUDIENCE: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Anat Bala. I have had the privilege and the pleasure of chairing the Arab IGF MAG for the past few months or six, seven months. We have had three face‑to‑face meetings and a couple of WebEx meetings with the groups in preparation for this year's IGF. It is going to end up being 11 on November 26, 27 with a pre or Day Zero if you want to call it on November 25.
I am not sure that our region is different than the rest of the regions and in general but the security issues in our region have made it a bit more interesting than some of the other regions. You know, what we have gone through in the past few years and especially in the past few months has made it extremely important to make sure that the group that is dealing with the IGF gets closer together and be more engaging and be more engaged. One of the issues that we have to deal with in general in the region is related to security, related to their tendencies of the Governments to really watch what's going on, and, you know, look at the data that's being transmitted in some cases probably stopping the Internet. Civil liberties, Human Rights, all these rights. And these have been on the top of things and these take a special meaning in this area.
What I am going to talk about for one or two minutes, I do apologize I have to go to a 3 o'clock meeting with ‑‑ at Francophonie group, but we do have an issue of cultural aspects, if you want to call it. And that is related to the ability of the people to listen to others properly. And it is basically how we are running. I mean because it really makes a difference how people get engaged. Because of this whole security situation and because of what's going on in the Arab regions you see tension amongst the people in the area and I know this is ‑‑ and I am talking about how we are running our business probably more than anything else.
And you see people tend to the point that we are not always necessarily listening to each other. Another issue is related to representation. Are the people on the ‑‑ that do the work, do they really or are they really representing the groups that they are representing. And I ‑‑ I am representing Lebanon. Am I representing the Lebanese Government? And in my case I have an official letter. But do the Governments understand what they are doing when they are sending representation? And does the representation believe that the Government believes everything that's going on and that applies in the same way to some of the other groups, whether it is the Civil Society group, whether it is academia. And any of the other representation in our technical community, private sector. Now this is a part of the struggle.
This is the third year I guess for the IGF. It is a part of the struggle we are growing. But it is actually the issues that we are dealing with related to more or less the Government in our area are not necessarily clear on what's going on. Their level of awareness is really low and this makes more of a responsibility for us to really reach out. Our Civil Society in my mind is not as strong as it should be. We still have a long way to go. And the same thing applies to academia and its representation.
Going back to one issue that's important and that's to Chengetai and the whole IGF, it is basically related to funding. Funding, funding, funding. Without funding it has been a struggle for us to get people engaged. It has been a struggle for us to have representation and people that follow the efforts and really get moving with it and be able to learn to contribute, engage and to be productive in this area.
And I have ‑‑ we have a lot of people from the MAG around the table and I leave it up to them to continue the rest if they have other things to do. And thanks a lot for having this Forum. It is excellent and I hope it continues and I wish you success. Thank you.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Thank you for those thoughtful contributions.
>> FAYCAL BAYOULI: I am Faycal Bayouli. And I am a member of the Tunisian MAG and member of the Arab MAG, too. So I will talk about the national MAG in Tunisia and I think the idea of the Tunisian MAG who attend the IGF in Nairobi and the official launching of the Tunisian IGF was in September 2012 and then after ‑‑ and many ‑‑ we media and to have the term of reference the Tunisian MAG we have the first elective assembly of the MAG in March 2013 and this assembly with this we have 13 members. We have three from the Government, three from the Civil Society, three from the academia and three from the private sector and plus one from ‑‑ to do Secretariat.
So this process I think that the political environment in Tunisia what we call Arab Spring create this kind of process of multi‑stakeholderism was created and in 2013 we have our first IGF in Tunisia. And now we prepare our IGF for 2014 and I think two elements are important in this process to create the national ‑‑ the national MAG. The political environment is very important. I think this is one issue and also I return for the finding especially for the future, how to survive. We create a national MAG but important is to continue and as our people say the finding is very important. So I encourage all countries to create this national MAG because it is an exercise for democracy I think. This model of multi‑stakeholderism is very important in the national level especially for countries who are ‑‑ they are not a lot of democracy. So it will be ‑‑ it will create dynamism for the people in different fields. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: Hi. Larry Toro, Russian IGF. Well, I work for the ccTLD, Russian ccTLD and we have again for five consecutive years been one of the major orgainsers and sponsors of the Russian IGF which is flourishing so far. And well, checking on the Website of the Russian IGF, and listening to my colleagues I just realized that, you know, after the third IGF I thought oh, gosh, what I'm supposed to do with that. I mean how can I actually leave with this IGF because we already discussed all the issues and we have got all the speakers to present, I mean they have presented at our IGF. So how could I be able effectively to market that. But thank God, Mr. Snowden, Mr. Putin and some other people we do have quite an ambitious desire to meet all the challenges for last year, this year and for years to come. I just realised some of you may have heard that the Russian Government was particularly harsh when it came to the Internet because that common belief within the Russian Government common circles is that the Internet basically is the prime source of political unrest and turmoil in the country and therefore as much as it should be controlled, regulated, and a special legislation is needed to bring everything in order in‑house as well as to impose ‑‑ I mean underline the importance of imposition of the universal code of behavior on the Internet and emphasize the importance of the international regulation most likely under the UN body.
So with all that in mind when we had our first IGF we decided to be very practical, to try the ‑‑ to try the down‑to‑earth approach. And one of the major issues was the Internet economy. We tried to expose our Government to the reality of the Internet being an engine for socioeconomic growth and development and to show how important it is for the country's prosperity. And another issue which was somewhat unique for the Russian IGF this year was new gTLDs across Urasis. It covers one sixth of the world's territory. And within Urasis we had only six or seven new gTLDs which is quite remarkable compared to some other regions. So we decided to examine and re‑examine that issue and to see what is right and what is wrong about these new gTLDs and how they would affect the state of affairs on the Urasian domain name's market.
Janis was and Chengetai were talking about some prospects for these interlinking between regional IGFs and the global IGF and with all of that in mind I just realised that basically what we should talk and I would invite everyone to discuss the issue, what could we learn from each other because not all the IGFs, even those present in this room were established and promoted in a most conducive environment. We do face certain challenges usually represented by our Governments. So I believe that we could share some survival technique, if you will. That's No. 1.
No. 2, I believe that we still underestimate each other's potential when it comes to certain personalities, activists and expertise and we tend to underestimate the importance of that direct local regional IGF, the local regional IGF communication. Because the pool of international experts usually presenting at those IGFs is very narrow. This is another story. And we are very soon, even for those that just started their IGFs or about to start those very soon we will face these challenges of running out of interesting people who could ignite the audience, engage a broader public‑at‑large participation for years to come. And that's another challenge. So how to create some kind of database of good speakers who could be like, you know, like an ambulance. You just whistle and they are already there. Hopefully with Chengetai's funding. This is also a challenge. You cannot market this event by doing everything just on your own. Whoever people are attend, I mean in your country or in your region this is a very narrow circle. So with that I guess I will just pass the floor to my colleague, anyone?
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Yes, thank you very much. If you can focus more on the issues we were going to, we are going to talk more in the second segment about strengthening the various initiatives and ideas to do that, but thank you to give us a heads up. I would like to pass the floor to the African IGF. Please introduce yourself.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, Chair. My name is Mokhtar Syc from United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. As you know when we see Secretariat ‑‑ to us Secretariat of African IGF. I am going to give a little bit of background to the African IGF and after I give the floor to my colleague to present the outcome of the last African IGF meeting held last July in Nigeria.
As you know I am going to talk too much about the issue of the African IGF in Africa. The Internet ‑‑ the issue of Internet Governance in Africa, but Internet Governance Africa has been very active during the WSIS process. We had several regional meetings organized between 2002 and 2005 in Bamako, Accra, Addis Ababa, Cairo, Douala, Johannesburg and Tunis. And during this meeting several Delegates from Africa made a lot of discussion to finally create this African Internet Governance Forum in 2012 in Cairo. The first meeting was held in Cairo in 2012. And the second meeting in 2013 in Nairobi and the third meeting in 2014 in Nigeria.
How this African IGF is organized? You have ‑‑ all African countries are members of this African IGF, Government private sector and Civil Society and we have subregional IGF in five regional African. You have the West African Internet Governance Forum and you have the South African Internet Governance Forum. You have the East African Internet Governance Forum. You have five members of East African countries. Five countries of East Africa and we have a Central Africa Internet Governance and Arabic Africa in the national Forum. And the bureau is composed by the hosted country. We organise African IGF since 2012. Each year we send ‑‑ usually reply ‑‑ answer several questions and provide some provision to organise this meeting and are going to support all this process. I give an example. This year we organise this meeting. When we organise this meeting in Nigeria, we have more than 1400 participants. And this year in terms of budget provided 150,000 U.S. dollars to support this activity. And Government of Nigeria also provide a lot of country.
The issue of the bureau it is a ‑‑ the Chairman of the bureau is a country Chair, is a country hosting the current IGF. And the members are representative of the subregional IGF plus the African union and UN initiative will support the Secretariat. This year what we have before, when you look at since 2012, when we look at the participants more than coming from the private sector and Civil Society, you don't have a lot of participants from Government. And this year we made a lot of effort in order to get a lot of members of Government to ‑‑ on the issue of Internet on governance and this year we have 41 countries participate at ‑‑ at the government level to participate at this IGF in Abuja.
Also this year it was very particular but it is the same time we evaluate the WSIS+10 process and why this is a meeting in Abuja and discuss on several issues like the issue of cybersecurity and the issue of the WSIS+10 and the issue of DotAfrica and several are a priority for Africa. And what we did this year is prepare an issue paper for this African Internet Governance Forum. Before people come we have the programme, you have several sub‑Committees or submeetings and this year we prepare one document. It is an issue paper for this African IGF. What are the key issues we can discuss. Instead everyone gets a document. When you go to any session, you know, what are the key elements you shall discuss with this dynamic area. And it uses first time you organise, prepare this document. This document is prepared by UN ‑‑ we have some consultation with the team and we prepare document in three months. Very helpful for understanding the participants to the issue of the IGF and also as a way forward, what is a need ‑‑ what are the needs for African country. What are their priority, and I think we have a meeting after tomorrow, Friday to discuss more in detail on this issue of African Governance Forum. I am going to give the floor now to my colleague Mary to present the outcome of the meeting of ‑‑ in Nigeria. Thank you.
>> MARY UDUMA: Thank you very much. My name is Mary Uduma and I am wearing two caps. One is the African IGF held in Nigeria and then I chaired the local Mult‑stakeholder Advisory Group. For the African IGF we had a free conference and we talked about the IANA transition because we thought it was very good that we look at that. The workshop was devoted for that and attendance was good and we had a lot of people follow us online. And then most important that happen to us at the African IGF was that IGF Secretariat supported us with the remote participation. Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
>> MARY UDUMA: Okay. And we had another one on data protection organized by organisation international ‑‑ Francophone, Francophonie and then public access by the library section and knowledge management by the ECE. So those ones prepared us and we had ‑‑ we partnered it with the general sections with the ‑‑ at a global level. So we talked about global access, regional and national IGFs. We talked about the issues that are in African IGF. There were presentations, and we also looked at our recommendation on policy access, content creation, dissemination and use Internet as an enabler. We have recommendations on this. So I am not going to read all of them but I think they are on our website. I want to get to where we looked at what is particular to Internet, African Internet Governance that is what we call African IGFs that are guidelines and efficiency. Coming for the first time that issue those at least understand what IGF is all about and how they can cope with us. We also engage with partnership with ‑‑ we will work towards having a dedicated website. As of now our website is a page on ECE. So we think that we should have a dedicated ‑‑ it is already done now. Okay. Fine. Stand‑alone. And then we should operate upon an inclusive mailing list where everyone will be able to express themselves.
And the other thing is that as you said Government has not been taking part so much and the business sector, the private sector we could have the technical sector come in, technical community, sorry, the business community is still lacking. We are able to get the Government to come because ECE provided money to sponsor Government representative but the business community also need a sponsorship as well. And we said we didn't have money for business community. But I think we need to encourage our business community, does the community that is not yet taking part fully in our IGF.
Do I go on with the Nigerian IGF or I stop there?
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: If you would like to offer perhaps the main topics and issues from Nigeria IGF. Yes, the topics. Make two or three just sort of quickly.
>> MARY UDUMA: All right. For the Nigerian IGF we also patented it in line with the global IGF but we had a different theme. Okay, but if you don't mind can we continue or come back to the Nigerian IGF, another person can say something. Thank you. I will come back to this there because I am trying to pull up my notes.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: That's lovely. Thank you very much. Being aware that we are sort of getting in to our time and we have many initiatives here to speak to, I would like to I think, first of all, remind people, remind myself about doing reports that I know we sent Chengetai to talk about participation, sort ‑‑ those reports that go in are an important part of sharing all of that and that we don't have time to go through all of that today and focus on the topics and key issues, two or three so we can hear a bit more from some other initiatives. We have Subi and Marilyn.
>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Sorry, Mrs. Chair, the programme, I mean we understood that the first segment is feeding in by the Workshops 139 and 140 because I have to leave. So I think that we move to second segment before we finish the feed in part? I am not sure I understood correctly.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: It was supposed to be between the two segments, but we can make two interventions and then move to ‑‑ since you have to leave. Thank you.
>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Hi. My name is Subi and I am part of the multi‑stakeholder group of the India IGF. This is a new initiative and I also convened the Working Group in the IGF which is trying to get the first initiative off the ground. There has been a tremendous amount of work in progress that has been made. There are key issues because when we speak about India or China there is power in numbers. We are looking at still trying to connect the unconnected. And we believe the next billion will come online from South Asia and these regions, so as far as progress on the national initiative is concerned India has also just hosted the Asia‑Pacific IGF. And I see colleagues here around the table that will report back on that. As far as Telecom was concerned we have had a reasonably successful story. But IGF was unfolding where conversations are beginning, but the good news is when you have a majority Government that comes in to play because the Internet drove more people to come out and vote you become more sensitive about issues around the Internet. Then you begin understanding that this is something that grew out of the folds of the Government and the core values have to be nurtured and preserved.
So we have a MAG in place which has representatives both from the academic, technical community, media and Government. There has also been a Working Group that was put in to place which had representation from all the stakeholder groups. Every single decision that gets taken as far as choices of team and this year we are looking at connecting India for empowerment. For us access remains a big challenge and an issue. And when I say that it is not physical infrastructure. The Government has initiated a new project which is the National Fiber Optic Cable Network or no fund which I believe is a lot of fun for a lot of people. They are looking at connecting 250,000 self‑governments and this would ‑‑ this is also called follow the fiber. Where one of our biggest challenges remains power. There are villages where there is no power that exists and connections are impossible. Along with infrastructure there is the issue of digital literacy and media literacy and capacity building which is a very, very important challenge.
As far as the initiative is concerned it is informed by what is happening globally and also the region because this is a space where India sees leadership potential in terms of people who speak the language. So the Government is now looking at coming to the table and also being on the table, but one of the key issues and I want to bring this back to the whole perception of national and regional IGFs because it was mentioned that there are 20 initiatives in the region and about 11 in country, am I correct? So the other way around. 11 and 20 and this is a number that has to go out. And what is it that we can collectively do to make this go up is something that I am very keen on listening in. Because as a member of the MAG this is one space where I think we have to do more.
In terms of visibility I see so many of us here but I would like to see more people who are coming in and listening in. So probably a main session that looks at national and regional initiatives so that these stories can be told are better linkages between best practices and now there is a new initiative that has taken off which is looking at five key themes, best practice for our way. We have actual take‑aways that we can take and go home and create formats where we can respond to. As far as ‑‑ I am going to be quick. As far as key themes and key issues digital trust is very, very important, because what we want to see is a connected, open and universal Internet. So when things which harm digital trust come out there is a reaction that talks about data localization and data serenity. These are issues that are deeply problematic and require discussion and debate. So that's one of the main themes for this year's IGF. We are looking at access and Critical Internet Resources. We are also looking at Internet for growth and how we can have stable policies that can encourage more people to engage. And we are looking at multi‑stakeholderism which is again an important issue, because when we go back to the IGF website and you are looking at motivations of how is it that you can have more national and regional initiatives the question still ‑‑
>> MARILYN CADE: We had two segments. Maybe we can finish the best of that in the second set.
>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: I will wrap this up as far as issues are concerned. The emerging issues remain data localization and cyber jurisdiction and also importantly the right to be forgotten. So this is what India is looking at right now. Thank you so much for listening. And I will be happy to respond to any questions that somebody might ask. Thank you.
>> MARILYN CADE: May I be next after you go to the report from the workshops? Is that okay?
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: That would be great. Can we have the report back from the Workshop 140?
>> AYMAN EL‑SHERBINY: Thank you. Let me introduce myself. My name is Ayman El‑Sherbiny from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. ESCWA is the umbrella organisation and I am the cofounder of the Arab IGF process. And I am heading the IGF executive bureau for joint coordination as well as a member of the global MAG. So I have in my capacity with the Arab IGF and my colleagues have designed Workshop 140 and I have had the honour to moderate it. The title of the Workshop 140 which has been chosen as a feed‑in workshop here is the Future of the Global and Regional IGFs Post‑2015 and this was ‑‑ this took place today morning and we had seven panelists in this workshop. And let me read the intro to understand the context. "The UN General Assembly is currently examining the possibility of extending the IGF mandate for a further five of years or ten years period which encompasses an assessment of IGF's effectiveness so far. This workshop, the 140 came as a platform for all stakeholders to address and discuss their own achievements with the global and the regional IGFs as well as identify the scope of further strengthening." So this was actually the main context. So there was a dimension that relates to the global IGF, how can it be better, how can it be stronger. And the other dimension was related to the regional IGFs. So as far as this session is concerned I will ‑‑ should I feed in the two dimensions, the future of the global IGF and the dimension of the regional?
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: No, the key findings.
>> AYMAN EL‑SHERBINY: Generally speaking as I said we touched base on how we see the future of the global IGF. So some of the important findings or observations is that we ‑‑ panelists, let me give a glimpse of the panelists, what they are representing. Three of them were from the Arab IGF community, mainly Christine, Qusai and we had four from non‑Arab IGF. One representing the African IGF and the Russian IGF as well as Parminder from IT for Change and remind me if I forget and Chengetai was there but he couldn't make it also for other commitments. Maybe I forgot a time. So we had this like input from several IGFs. One of them was from the floor from Mary from the African IGF as well as Nigerian IGF. We had some Tunis IGF. We had the flavor from the national, regional and the global and a host set for research purposes, but we had a field from the ground as follows: First of all, we had also Wolfgang Kleinwachter on the panel and he is a board member of the ICANN. So we had this diversity. So the take‑home messages is as follows: First of all, there is a need for strengthening the multi‑stakeholder model and for instigating it at the national level. Some people prefer to use the country level. But anyways, the idea is to work on what has agreed to be coined as the foundation. The foundation is the national IGFs as Subi has said. Rightfully there is a number that needs to grow significantly.
We have 190 something countries in the world. So we aspire to this number of national IGFs. We should feed in to regional IGFs which should feed in to the global IGF. And this is the second point which is the regional global linkages. We have observed the weakness of this linkages between digital IGFs and the global IGFs. This ecosystem is loose. And this is something that we all agreed in the workshop that to strengthen the linkage between the regional and the global and to design it as part of the ecosystem. So, for example, one of the ideas came up which is very important for Chengetai to consider that the Secretariat has the participation of regional IGFs representatives as part of an obligation on the regional IGFs, not only as nice to have. So sometimes some of the regional IGFs will go to the MAG to bring their priorities bottom‑up. Sometimes they don't go.
But what we suggest is to make this part of the modis operandi of this linkages from regional to global and from the regional to the national. And from this we start to build the ecosystem or the pyramid from national to digital to global. And this requires budget consideration which Chengetai has said at the beginning there is going to be some kind of pooling of resources for the regional mechanism. Maybe it goes to engagement in the global MAG. This is one element. We have recognized also the diversity of models. So not all regional IGFs or national IGFs necessarily need to have the same type of umbrella or champion organisations. It is something of specificity to each region and each country. And we acknowledged and recognize this need of flexible case by case basis under the evolution of such kind of mechanisms.
The last thing that this workshop has discussed and was important is that we all share a common interest in strengthening the global IGF. The regions do have this interest. And we recognize other processes that run in parallel that also works on strengthening IGF like the NETmundial and that ultimately most of the panelists agreed that the processes consolidate each other. There is no competing processes in the global landscape, but rather it is a kind of consolidation of the same target mechanism which is the global IGF. We all wanted to be more ‑‑ a little bit more of our outcome generating. We don't use the world output but of outcome generating. So it has teeth and can really induce change but this is ‑‑ was agreed to be evolutionary. And this is not like a black or white but something in the middle between 0 outcome and full output. So the home ‑‑ the take‑home message is what I have provided ‑‑ hopefully I haven't forgotten anything, but this is what I can remember from the morning session. Thank you again.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Thank you very much for the feedback. Before I give the floor to Marilyn to intervene I will kindly ask you to be really short because we have already consumed half the time of the first segment and not everyone did get the chance to talk. To please limit yourselves to three minutes. One other thing that you might want to explore as you talk about the topics we heard, for example, from the African IGF on the IANA transition and the global IGF. Marilyn, please go ahead.
>> MARILYN CADE: I am going to take us back to the agenda and ask all of us to try to follow it in our responses. This is not a place to give meeting reports as tempting as that may be. And I know that sounds a bit strong but let me really ask you to take that in to account. Otherwise we are not going to get to this really great discussion we need to have. I act as the chief catalyst to the IGF USA. I am not going to talk about our organising structure, but I will just say that we have ‑‑ we do not call our advisory group MAG. We call it a Steering Committee. It is totally open. Anyone can join. The criteria is they have to commit to the principles. So we have a fairly Sarge steering Committee. It is probably about 60 or 70 people. That probably makes us a little different and I only mention it of mentioning the diversity.
We launched the IGF USA in 2009. We did not have an event in 2013 partly because our Government was closed at key times speaking of the influence of external events. We concluded our ‑‑ we did our IGF USA in July of this year which is a customary time for us. The topics that are similar to or reflected from the IGF itself are ‑‑ we actually did a session on Net Neutrality. It was not our intent to do a session on Net Neutrality. That is not something normally that would happen in the IGF USA. But we were motivated by the NETmundial call for further work on Net Neutrality. And the fact that there would be a session here and the next question is were there external events that influenced your programme. And we did a session on the Internet Governance Ecosystem and we did a session on the IANA transition and the accountability mechanisms. And I want to emphasize in our case there was more emphasis on the need for affected accountability mechanisms at ICANN than just ‑‑ not just on the IANA transition. We instituted innovation that I mentioned and we did a policy slam which is really exciting, but it was a really exciting way to identify recommendations that we thought we should take forward. And I will mention what one of them was. We identified a missing group who must become involved and participate in the IGF at all levels and that is the innovators and engineers, researchers who are building the next generation of products and therefore creating some of the perhaps new applications but also challenges. I thought this was a kind of innovation that would be worth mentioning. We were heavily influenced by external events like WSIS external activities, WSIS+10, the action line review and the NETmundial experience and the UN GA decisions for the overall WSIS review. And because there is a heavy representation in our Steering Committee of people who are knowledgeable or actively involved in some of those settings. Thank you.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: So we have about 30 minutes left for this first session which again to reiterate the agenda we want to talk about topics, key issues, links to external events. So 30 minutes, three minutes each we can fit in ten of you. If we could ‑‑ we will go back to Mary and keep a list.
>> MARY UDUMA: Thank you very much. What we focused on was harnessing a multi‑stakeholder framework for Internet Governance and growth. That was our topic. And then one of the things that we talked about was building a democratic framework for Internet Governance in Nigeria. And again we thought of how and therefore the ability of Internet access in Nigeria. So we looked at connecting to the exchange point to drop the post of making calls through the Internet within Nigeria. So Internet Exchange Point they should be a mandatory connection by all ISPs to that Internet Exchange Point. That's one of the key issues. We also talked about the IANA transition. And we found out that nobody knew about it at the national level. Nobody knew about it. And it was Jamison that gave us that. And after the programmes, that's why we introduced it again in the African IGF. We talked about NETmundial as well. We also looked at ‑‑ one thing we do is after the programme all our recommendations we send it to our Government. Some of the recommendations we have made in the past. They have adopted and been working with that. I think I want to stop there.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Thank you.
>> MARK BUELL: Hi. Mark Buell from DotCA Canada ccTLD and also coordinator of the Canadian Internet Governance Forum.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Can you get closer to the microphone?
>> MARK BUELL: The Fifth Canadian Internet Governance Forum will be held in a little over a month in Ottawa. Like Marilyn said we also don't have a MAG. We have a loose‑knit group of people who are interested and will feed in to a process that we have to identify the topics. And we are a bit unique in how we identify our topics. We use a couple of processes. The first is we conduct a national survey of Canadians to find out what their top of mind issues are related to Internet issues. We do that every two to three years. Consistently it has come back that Canadians are most interested in cybersecurity and digital literacy. And we also follow my profile media events. So in terms of external issues impacting our Internet Governance Forum, things like Snowden revelations had a major effect last year. So we see what's going on in the media. How we can fit that in to the topics I just mentioned.
Finally we use our IGF as a Forum for public education as well. So like you said for Kenya there was little knowledge of the IANA transition in Canada. That would be overstating it. There is little knowledge. There is next to none. We are using in October to have awareness raising on the IANA transition. It means this year in October we are exploring three issues. The first of which is lawful access and that's being driven by some legislation that's before our parliament right now that will give ISPs full immunity from prosecution if they turn over your browsing history.
Secondly, we are looking at Canada's digital economy and specifically a couple of Government initiatives in that regard. One is anti‑Spam legislation that was recently put in to effect and looking at how that affects Canadians and Canadian businesses. And we are also looking at Canada's digital economy strategy which is a little less than a year old but seeing if it is moving the Internet file forward in Canada. And as I said we are doing a session on the IANA transition but that's more related to education.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Thank you for that concise listing of some interesting topics. We had a gentleman over here. Yep.
>> HISHAM ABOULYAZED: Thank you. My name is Hisham Aboulyazed. I am with the National Telecom Authority of Egypt. We are hosting the secretary function for the Arab IGF. As some of the speakers have mentioned the agenda itself has been developed and it is not yet convened. It will be in late November 26, 27. The agenda is composed of main four themes, subthemes I would say on the access and infrastructure that came as one of the most important topics for the region, specifically about the broadband affordability and the changing business models for ISPs with a little bit of reflection on Net Neutrality aspects as well. The second subtheme was about Internet global policies. And here we have issues related to Internet principles developed at NETmundial as well as the globalization of CIR and the processes related to the IANA transition and ICANN accountability.
The third subtheme was about openness, responsibilities and here the attention was given to content regulation issues as well as the open data and multilingualism on the Internet. The fourth and last subtheme was about privacy and rebuilding of trust. Some of these subtopics of it were about child online protection which is one of the topics that come high on the agenda in the region as well as the big data analytics and privacy dimension. Regarding the second question in this segment of the session how the global agenda will reflect on the community at large and here it is not just about the event of the annual event of the Arab IGF, we have a public mailing list that is open for anyone or elsewhere to engage in the discussion. And this mailing list turned out to be very useful to capitalize on the community's efforts, because with NETmundial, for instance, the community was able to mobilize themselves and actually establish an informal Working Group that submitted a submission to the NETmundial conference. This was one thing. The second was a similar effort with the IANA transition consultation and another Working Group worked on drafting a contribution to the mailing list that was established for this purpose and it was submitted on behalf of the community at large.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Thank you. We have a bit of a list. We will add Mexico to the list. We have a gentleman next and then here and then Edmond and then Mexico. We have a bit of a list going.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I am Bahaf, cofounder of Internet Society among ‑‑ and member of the Arab IGF MAG. At first I am glad that to see ten people from my country in the IGF and it is a first time. Last year was most one or two. And I think it is a good result for what we have done the last weeks.
In fact, about the issues, we have a lot of issues related to Internet Governance but mostly the infrastructure and monopoly of the Internet services by the Government. Also privacy and security. If under content, Arab content, talking about politics during the situation you know in Yemen. So we in Internet Society thought about how when we discuss many issues what we can do.
We support a national IGF. Some of the friends said you are going to do a national IGF while stakeholders didn't know exactly what IGF was. What's the problem? We can teach. We can let them know what's ‑‑ I mean Internet Governance. So we invited some people from ICANN and write and CC to prepare some events. We meet Minister of ICT twice to explain to them and to the Government towards ‑‑ and we launch ‑‑ we said Internet Governance week and in Yemen we had many workshops for stakeholders, one by one and the last day we bring them together to discuss. It was some people call it a mini IGF, mini IGF. By the way we have a plan to launch Yemen IGF next year. We already started working on this. We are in the first steps. We are fresh in the fold. We are looking forward to help from all of us for this ‑‑ from those who have experience in national IGFs.
Also would like to thank Arab IGF MAG also for their support all the time. Thank you.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Thank you for those topics and experience developing that initiative. Yeah.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello. I am new here. I come from Indonesia. So the same like U.S. and Canada we don't have MAG. We actually have a fluid people, nonstructured people but we believe in one principle which is multi‑stakeholder. So our financial processes as well as our decision making processes was coming from that. We might not be able to give you specific topics because what we provide we have two national IGFs. The first one was in 2012 right before we held IGF in Bali. Because you would like to see that IGF 2013 in Bali as a momentum for Indonesia to step forward in IGF. And we held it August two weeks ago which is ‑‑ we were able to get more stakeholders. What the more important for Indonesia is creating platform in which people can speak freely as well as mature as well as have a good dialogue on IGF. The specific topic that might be a bit unique for Indonesia is sovereignty. The Government would like to discuss as well as the creative industry. Because we would like to make Indonesia more better as a user but also a producer in economic development. So that's the thing.
And the plan for the coming years as we would like to make the ID IGF, we call an Indonesia Internet Governance Forum more institutionalized. We would like to be a series of capacity building that can help all Indonesians to have an understanding of Internet Governance. Thank you.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Thank you. And UK.
>> LAURA HUTCHISON: Thank you. The UK IGF again very similar to Canada and the U.S. in that we don't have a MAG as such. We have a sort of loose Committee, kind of enter topics and convening sessions and we try to use members of that Committee to take the lead on sessions. Many of our topics have already come up. As usual Marilyn stole all my thunder. We have had sort of the IANA transition and the NETmundial and ICANN accountability and also cybersecurity, network filtering which I am not sure has come up yet and IPv6 are our key topics this year. Thank you.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: I am going to Asia‑Pacific, regional IGF.
>> EDMUND CHUNG: Edmund Chung from DotAsia and we serve as a Secretariat for the Asia‑Pacific regional IGF. Following from what was just said we also organise around a ‑‑ what we call MSG, Multi‑stakeholder Steering Group that is somewhat loosely formed in a sense that anyone can volunteer to become ‑‑ to be on it. So far it hasn't gotten out of control. That's not too big. I think we have 50 or 60 people on it but we have an understanding that if it ever gets out of control we might have to put more structure around it. This is our fifth year and it is still growing a little bit. We had a decent gathering of about 350 people in Delhi this year. However that's a very small number considering I guess the diversity of our region.
So going back to I guess the issues, I think a few items, a lot of the issues that were raised are similar to the topics that are here at the global IGF. I guess that's ‑‑ part of the explanation is that we have a pretty diverse region. But there are a few things I wanted to highlight. One is a pretty strong youth IGF component that we have built and this is the first year that the youth IGF is fully integrated in to the regional IGF agenda. So we can see it side by side as part of the regional IGF. We like to work on exporting this and getting this to ‑‑ this concept to more initiatives as well. We have a continued challenge to improve Government in broader industry participation. That's a theme that's coming out. Probably not just us but for regional and local national IGFs. We feel that we have an improving richness of the content that we are developing but it is more ‑‑ and building on that I think it is towards a more ‑‑ a set of more tangible outcomes of substance and which will I think we hope to in turn promote participation. And one important aspect I think a few people here mentioned as well is the possibility of a tighter feed in to the global IGF and how that could happen, what the thing ‑‑ so on the IANA transition part, I don't know whether I have a minute or so. On the impact on that, I think that's ‑‑ Jen can spend one minute on it.
>> JENNIFER CHUNG: Hi this is Jennifer Chung also from the DotAsia organisation helping out with the APR IGF Secretariat. I am going to give a little more detail on the four subthemes. The first one is enabling access and second a security and DNS. And the third is Internet and Human Rights and fourth is IGF in the future Internet ecosystems. We did have within the fourth subtheme, IGF and future Internet ecosystems a few sessions on the IANA transition and in particular participants from the AP region were very interested about the feasibility of, you know, the U.S. Government conditions, to the outcome and the process and how they can get more transparency on the judgment and details of the timeline of the transition and the definition of what the global multi‑stakeholder community is and what we expect to see after the transition in the longer, you know, run. And common concerns came out included how to integrate and strengthen participation both at the regional and global level within this construct. I would like to pass to one of the why IGF Ambassadors. If he can talk a little bit about the youth IGF which was run concurrently with the APR IGF this year.
>> AUDIENCE: Okay. Busam here. I will be very specific and brief on what we talk about in why IGF. So the participants mainly come from different areas of Delhi, mostly undergraduate students age 18 from 25 to 26. Some of them are working or doing internship. And we have four areas of discussions. The first one access, how to overcome an equal access of Internet. We think that rather than institute Internet, not just a software or a community it is a platform of voice and that's where the voice, the youth voice can be heard and concerned a lot about unequal access between across the country, their own country India where cities they have a lot of affordable mobile access to Internet while there are many areas like the rural areas in the village are still lacking behind in Internet access, especially on the areas of infrastructure and also the gender equality because a lot of women lack access rights to the Internet. And the second topic it is about openness. We talk about on ‑‑ whether the Internet should be censored in the national security sense. And we the participants think there should be a lot more transparency from the Governments and a formation of a panel with the three stakeholders, the Government, the business and the Civil Society to oversee the censorship policy of the Government and to try to reach to a more equal and transparent censorship protocol of the Government. And the third one is just security. Discuss about how to secure our own data in this mobilizing world because becoming the most fast growing mobile market in the world that care a lot about the Facebook data, the personal data and they discuss how the three different stakeholders can cooperate together to become more ‑‑ come up with a better data practice, security on a company level and also on a personal level.
And the last thing is driving social change through various amount of ICT technologies. So we talk about the three different kinds of topics and they come up with a lot of ideas or a lot of problems that their country is facing the challenges they face. So it is time for them to come up with solutions or through ICT technologies how to drive social change and how to enable the people that are not able to access the Internet in the rural areas so that they can bring up ‑‑ develop their own community and bring up the economic development and so on and so forth. So these are the four specific areas we discussed in the view of IGF in Delhi, India. Thank you.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Thanks very much. We have two final interventions in this section of the session. Sandra from EuroDIG.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you. And I promise to be very brief. We had actually three influences to define our topics. One was the multi‑stakeholder process to define an overarching stake. This goes definitely in to the direction of the known relations discussion. The other one was, of course, NETmundial which influenced our IGF not only by the discussion but also by our procedures we integrated. Because it took place in Germany we integrated it in to the EuroDIG process, to get answers from the NETmundial. So this whole Internet Governance or EuroDIG process was designed somehow around NETmundial and the third level came up because we are in Germany and Germany is very economic oriented, the European industry or the weakness of the European industry and the global economy level was another topic which was one of the main topics. We produced, we were influenced by NETmundial and the way we produced our outcome. Our messages are out of custom. By tomorrow hopefully you can come to the EuroDIG booth and try to get one. We tried to get very brief bullet points to formulate what has been discussed in our sessions for every Plenary and for every workshop we did. Please come and get one tomorrow because I don't want to carry them home on Saturday. And well, side topic on the European agenda, of course, copyright and data protection, but I see this is versus accessibility which is not such a big topic in Europe but in other region as I just realised here. Thank you very much.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Thank you and Emmanuel.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Emmanuel. I am from Net Mexico, the ccTLD of DotMex. I am working besides my real day job as a prospective sales manager, for Mexico I work as a Secretariat of the Internet ‑‑ of the dialogue to Internet Governance. That's our initiative group for local IGF effort. We kind of similarly follow‑up process like Canada, like Columbia and U.S. We don't call ourselves a MAG and not even a Steering Committee or something like that. We just try to keep it very informal. Loosely. We call ourselves an initiative group or group initiative in Spanish. Our main purpose is to increase dialogue and increase understanding of Internet Governance topics within Mexico. We are not a legally established organisation or something very formalized. We are just a regular group of people, of people working on a middle basis coming from the different sectors. We come from the five sectors, the traditional five sectors, academia, Government, the community, the business sector and Civil Society. We started being ten people from these five sectors and now we are running almost like 14. Our main topics are ‑‑ in Mexico the main topics are access and digital divide, how to reduce the digital divide because Mexico has 40% people connected to Internet, Net Neutrality and compliance and copyright. And we were influenced by similar process like NETmundial, NTIA stewardship transition towards the IANA functions. We are now currently debating the Plenipotentiary Conference to establish Mexico's position for October and I believe it is what we are discussing right now.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Thank you very much. Thank you. I think we have raised a lot of good issues. I was going to open one last call for issues and influences if there are any initiatives here that didn't get to sort of briefly go through theirs.
>> JAMES MUSA JEB: Thank you. I am James Musa Jeb. I am from the private sector. I just need to make this intervention because when report from the African was mentioned talk about private sector participation, really I must comment, Mary is the champion for Nigeria and they are doing very well. There is need for improvement even at the regional level even involving the private sector. You cannot compare the private sector in Developing Countries to Developed Countries. Developing Countries are still ‑‑ just sustainability. So there is a need for encouragement at this level just like when Internet started businesses were encouraged even in the Developed Countries. So they need to know that there has to be that kind of consideration if you want to get business on the table. Because always asking what is the need for us. So they need to be part of it to realise it. And lastly just to encourage my colleague there, so what can we do to sustain. We ask the question to keep the momentum of Internet Governance in Russia. So I think you need to ‑‑ I don't know if it is work but basically the scientific evidence that is available today will continue to do better projected as we mention. The affect on the economy, on the social well‑being of the people and well, my two cents.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: I think that leads in to the next session which is talking a bit more about recommendations for how there are linkages between and how we support the national and regional initiatives and link them to larger. I will hand over to Christine to Chair the next session.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Okay. I think during the next 60 minutes if you want we would like to maybe focus more on how can we first discuss how we can support national and regional initiatives more and how can we better strengthen them and strengthen the linkage between them and between the IGF. That's on one side. But also maybe we want to explore an issue that has been mentioned, the issue of funding. So that's an issue that we can actually maybe listen to the IGF support Association a bit more what it is and how it can support.
One more thing there was ‑‑ there was talk about how to link further and get more policymakers on the table and interested. This is an issue that you want to address maybe. And we want to maybe come with an output of what are the key messages that we would like to put forward to the IGF taking stock session on the last day. So again please make your interventions short so everyone can talk. Please.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I am Marlena Sukoloff. I am from Belarus and I have identified myself as EuroDig because I was introduced to the Internet Governance process through DiploFoundation and my first Internet Governance meeting was at EuroDIG in Geneva. Now I am going ‑‑ I have dared to take the floor because today we have discussed the possibilities of strengthening or empowerment, participation of a thousand Eastern European countries including Balkan countries, Belarus and Ukraine and to strengthen their input in to EuroDIG and to make their voices heard at EuroDIG.
So we have agreed that there is one issue which is ‑‑ which has completely fallen out of the attention at the Internet Governance Forum and EuroDIG. This is awareness gap. We termed it ‑‑ we turn to pay attention to digital access lag, there are not so many Internet users but in countries like Belarus and Ukraine we have more than 60% of Internet penetration but awareness of Internet Governance issues is very, very low. Even people who register their domain names, the businesses if you ask them what ICANN is, they will never answer. They don't know what is it. So I think that and we discussed the possibilities to build this local national awareness. So ‑‑ and I think that we'll put forward some suggestions but still this awareness gap is a very important thing. And the other thing which is a Belarussian experience it is about external pressure for some ‑‑ the importance of external pressure and transparency for some specific countries like Belarus, for instance.
And to be short I will give you an example. So now I am working for a Human Rights organisation, Law Trend which is engaged in the Internet freedom project and there were rumors in Belarus that UNDP, United Nations Development Programme is going to conduct a workshop on hate speech online in September. And we tried to find out when this workshop will take place, who will participate and how can we participate or just learn something about what is discussed and until now we have learned ‑‑ we haven't learned anything.
So I think that at the UN level, so because Belarussian Government is working with UNDP generally, not even with the Council of Europe. So I think that it is very important that these organisations and Internet Governance Forum and ICANN and all the other international projects and processes were transparent. And so that Civil Society in countries like Belarus was informed directly, some information sent to them because another way we will never get them. So thank you.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Thank you. We are having Mexico and then the Arab.
>> AUDIENCE: You ask for principles in order to keep it national or keep it working, right? I have a few principles that we can follow there in Mexico in our group. And our principles are keep it flexible. You need to have the same multi‑stakeholder structure for every country. I mean every country has to find its own proper structure in order to work properly. Keep it in diverse and try to bring all the relevant stakeholders to the table. I mean this ‑‑ but trying to maintain a manageable number. As long as you are not a multi‑stakeholder but matching group of people. Keep it diverse on funding also. In Mexico we don't do the event. Our annual IGF, local IGF if we don't have at least four principal sponsors that are coming from each stakeholder involved and keep it equal footing and this is very important. This means that everyone must have the same amount of power or within the table of negotiation.
Within the Latin American region we have other examples of multi‑stakeholderism that really are not equal footing. I won't say any names but it is very obvious. Agree to disagree. This is very important to have a real multi‑stakeholder in Mexico. We try to keep it that way. We are not afraid of challenging any Government proposal or perhaps the government challenge any existing ccTLDs or any technical community proposal. We just ‑‑ we probably need to build on this multi‑stakeholder group. We were very interrelated in the fora. So this helped build out the friendship relations previous to building this multi‑stakeholder. Hence it is very common. We have this confidence to agree to disagree and tell why certain actions wouldn't be suited for our local IP system. Bring on the hot topics to the table. We better have previous regulations and previous hot topics to be discussed within this multi‑stakeholder table or fora in order to avoid any unwanted surprise that will affect the Internet negotiation.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, Christine. I am Charles, the Vice Chair of Arab MAG. First I am sorry for being late for the session, but I got stuck in the other session and did not expect that, but I understood my colleague, Hisham, made already a good summary on many things. Regarding the second part I would like to share what I think a lot of people mentioned since yesterday, too. It is good sometimes to have an interregional maybe to follow the global IGF themes. So we need to concentrate on the end users. We can talk about access and connectivity and so on but let's make the concentration. What's in our region for Arab IGF? I think we should concentrate what matters for Arab regions and countries. Maybe it is good to have a short experience between the different regional IGFs, not only the global. I think it would be good because I understood Hisham, he made me a very nice summary and Janis Karklins made it is nice to have conference calls and maybe we can do it with the other regions. And the last thing is funding which is very, very important and what my colleague said it is covered. We don't need to say the same things again. Maybe to have especially for, for example, like in our region we need more participation from maybe small private firms not only the Government. Sometimes even the private firms it is good they will need funding. Civil Society the same. Funding will help the continuation and at the same time maybe bringing more to the table and to be more active. Thank you.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Hossam.
>> MARY UDUMA: First I want to ‑‑ can I? Can I go ahead? Do I have the floor? All right. First, I want to ask just as mentioned about funding, we had a particular experience this year. One of our financers is a Government agency because we are not a Government agency per se, I belong to this the ccTLD. The regulator that used to fund us said this year that they are not going to pay money in to the ccTLD account because IGF doesn't have its own account. That IGF should have its own account. So the structure I wanted to know whether anybody can share about the structure in your own country and the funding and whether you have a separate account for IGF in your country at the global level, whether it is a separate account so that we will be able to copy, because my understanding for you to open an account there must be a structure. There must be something that you have to open account. So we have managed it for two years. This study gave us money but the regulator said this year they are not giving money to the ccTLD because it is not the same thing as IGF. Nigerian IGF. That's what I want also to bring to the table if we can share.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Okay. We are going to answer your question I think as we move on.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, Christine. My name is Hossam Badran, a member of the Arab IGF. I am with the Qatar Foundation currently. I wanted to have two small points to share. One regarding what was mentioned also before relevance of regional and particularly the national IGFs. I think fortunately in the regional national IGFs sometimes we shy away from the current and pressing issues that are on the table. The ecosystem that affect Internet users and affect the community and we just sit in some comfortable seat to be observers and not to be in the seat of drivers and addressing policy issues. This is quite unfortunate and we have them to act in a post fact way and try to only damage ‑‑ do damage control. This is part of the culture in the Arab community but I think this is something that with the current climate that we have and something that has to change. The ‑‑ and I heard from the Canadian experience a lot of interception. Now it is perhaps time to address it. Why don't we have something similar in our region? There are legislation on the table for surveillance or public RFPs to buy from Government, buy equipment. And there is no ‑‑ Internet community is just listening or observing what's happening without having any stance which is quite damaging.
The second point I'd like to make is the point of funding and be part of the MAG. This year we had challenges in funding the third instance of the Arab IGF. So I am very interested to seeing how the process of funding is evolving. I was quite encouraged at this IGF there is a support IGF support Association being formed. I would like to ‑‑ I am a member of that Association, but I would like to hear more about its proposals, its vision, how to address and how to raise funds and if there will be able to support to regional and national IGFs. I note we have board members on the table. So if they can enlighten us, it could be a very good and moving exercise. Thank you.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Marilyn, you have the floor.
>> MARILYN CADE: Perfect timing. I want us to think carefully about how we spend the next three minutes. We are being asked to provide a summary, I am not going to call it Consensus but sort of like what are the key messages that we want to take forward in to taking stock. And I think our two Rapporteurs and the Moderators and Ricardo and I can work on that, but I'm just going to note that there is so much rich information coming out that it is going to be really hard for us to make sure that you agree. Make sure you have signed up and we can read your handwriting on your e‑mail address on the sign‑in sheet. So we can circle back to you because we have a day to be able to do that. That's my first point.
The second point that I want to just make is that for the IGF USA we probably mirror quite interesting to me the principles that Mexico is operating from and that Canada is operating from probably are very reflected in the IGF USA. We are strongly to adamantly to strongly than that opposed to reporting structures between national and regional IGFs for ourselves and cautious about why that would be a good idea for anyone. So I am just giving a different perspective and that's the point we need to show that there is different perspectives on this.
We also are very committed to the organic nature of the national IGFs and to their ability to really focus on local, that is national issues and to self‑determine how much they are reflected in to the IGF itself. I will just say very quickly that there is no such thing as the global IGF. There is just the IGF. I know that people have started using the term national IGF, local IGF, but the name of the IGF is IGF because we have to fight for the extension. So my one point I will just make that I hope will be a common theme that could come out of this group is building support for the extension for the IGF. And the second thing is I think we need more work among the coordinators and others before we can think about what kind of services that could be really advantaging the national and regional IGFs. We heard a couple and now I am going to talk very quickly about the Association.
Let me say one other thing, historically we used to convene the coordinators at the open consultations. And I think that would be to me I'd like to suggest that we return to a convening of the coordinators and any of their representatives during, actually right before the open consultation where we ‑‑ there could be work on the sharing of information about admin, management, resources, funding, those kinds of things. We prepare for it. We don't do it in the middle of trying to plan the programme but we actually put it on the agenda. And it is a commitment and we do it in a room where we have remote participation and that means those who can come in early, blah blah blah. So that's one thing.
On the Association, the Association is founded specifically to deal with building financial support for the IGF. And as a part of that will try to develop funding to help come up with supporting mechanisms for the national and regional IGF but we don't know what that is yet. We are meeting tomorrow for the first time as a board, as an executive Committee. And we will begin to talk about that. But the other area that the Association has founded to address is that the funding that goes through the UN can be used to fund participation for MAG members or speakers, for Civil Society, NGOs, technical community and Governments. It cannot be used to fund the participation of businesses from Developing Countries.
And that is a big gap, too. So one of the things that the supporting organisation identified in its founding principles is that for groups who cannot be funded through the normal mechanism that they ‑‑ that should be something that could be done directly. But for much of the rest of it it is really undetermined. We are going to be looking to the Association members to guide us. I happen to have the signup sheets. The membership fee is $25 for an individual. So if you haven't signed up yet let us know and we are going to need your guidance in it. Thank you.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Thank you, Marilyn. Sandra, the floor is yours.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Sandra speaking not on behalf of EuroDIG but I am speaking as a participant in the German IGF. You may be surprised that I made the same observation that there is an awareness gap among the citizens. That's not only a problem of Developing Countries, that's the same problem in a Developed Country like Germany. If I talk to them, then they actually say why should I participate. I don't understand. And if I try to explain them, they ask me are you a communist. Did you all want us to participate in these things? Honestly that's how they answer. Are you sort of a communist type of person and I say no. You have to understand you are using the Internet and you should participate and there I elected my Government. They are dealing with it. And that's actually the totally opposite of the things that we are discussing here, promoting the multi‑stakeholder model. This is not only an issue of Developing Countries like Eastern European or Africa or elsewhere, we have the same problem in Germany and probably in many other Developed Countries in the world. If they want to participate, if they responded yes, that's an important issue. I want to follow up here. I agree with you, that it is challenging to stay informed. I mean we all know how fast this circulating mafia is moving. How fast one event is catching up to the other. It is so difficult for a Civil Society to stay involved in the processes, to follow the process. Also because there is a lack of understandable and available material that's what we identified for Germany. Germany is not covered by the six UN languages. How should I, who is participating in all these processes, translate all the knowledge which I have some challenges to understand everything in English, but I have to translate it in German to explain it to my community. This is another lack, it is not only a lack of funding but it is a lack of resources in terms of getting informed and you are facing a similar problem about Southeastern European countries.
And then I think there is a lack of funding mechanisms, probably not a lack of funding. I think there is a whole lot of money around in the world but I think it is a lack of how we organise to give that funding to the various invited participants. And then I wanted to like take up a possibility to answer your question on where did you put the account. For EuroDIG we had the same problem. We grew up as a grass roots initiative and everyone was paid from any organisation around in the field, but if you want to put a little bit of professional in the whole process you definitely need an account in order to be operable. And we were looking for a structure for in a country in Europe and probably you can do this only for regional initiatives and not for nationals, because we had the chance to look for a country where any Association bylaws have the lightest and flexible possibility which was Switzerland in that case. It was much more difficult to do in Germany.
It was so difficult to do it under Brussels law or French law. We decided the law in Switzerland was the lightest one. Just pick up one country or region there and study them ‑‑ for the Nigerian it is going to be difficult. You have to operate under Nigerian law.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Next Mexico and then Hisham and then the gentleman here.
>> AUDIENCE: Yeah, briefly comment on what we did on Mexico. This same problem of funding, yeah, because we are a very loose group. We don't have a legal persona. We don't have a ‑‑ we haven't been institutionalizing in to something more formal that comes from regulation or Presidential decree or something like that. As I explained we are a group of persons, of individuals that work on a personal basis. We don't even represent our business or constituency, but we come from institutions that have, of course, like every business or like every ‑‑ we have accounts and we have financial mechanisms. What we did is ‑‑ we have two problems. We are to contract the buildings and the catering of food and to contract the individuals. So some organisation must be in charge of signing these contracts. In that case we convene with my organisation should be in with signing those contracts. But since the funding will be very diversified we managed to find a third party in order to pay that third party and that third party to channel all these funding from the five or six sponsors that manage to sponsor our event. And those sponsors gave the money to that third party and that third party serve as a bridge, contractor between the building that we rented and the spaces and the catering. So that's the way we manage to resolve that.
>> HOSSAM EL‑GAMAL: My name is Hossam El‑Gamal. I am a member of African ICT, Vice Chairman of the largest business Association in Egypt for IT Companies and a member of the MAG of this IGF. So for me it is the first time, in fact, to listen and to interact and follow discussion regarding regional and local IGFs. So please bear with me. I have a few questions. I will put them. The first one, the main IGF is coming from UN mandate. Now the oldest is good initiatives but they do not have any institutionalized approach. While it can survive for short term, but then for sustainability issue there will be problems. There is a question about should it become a NGO type and then what is called local MAG become the board of that NGO somehow and respecting that board, the multi‑stakeholder approach, the issue itself is very good. But then in many of the countries not enough promotion, visibility of the IGF. And the value proposition of the IGF. So while the good initiative is coming from few people that are trying to put something together but the buy‑in of the different stakeholders is still missing. Some countries will have some Governments supporting. Some countries will have some private sector supporting, but then who stop them from going back to the global IGF instead of having the local IGF, et cetera. So the more upfront projection of the importance of having the IGF for every and each stakeholder and maybe it would be a good idea to go in contact with representatives of stakeholders. So there is the Ministry of ICT. So this is representing the Government.
There is a business Association which represent the ICT companies. There is an academic institution that may ‑‑ accordingly you have really the different pillars and that you can really start something and while starting it with the mandate, you have to agree on a sustainable model. Because you cannot already ‑‑ the main IGF is struggling having funds. Unless if you want to do this for the benefit of your country, then certainly you want to have a mechanism that will provide sustainability within.
How to really be inclusive, this is really important, because it is good to start a initiative and good to have the ownership behind it and push it. I am going, coming from an NGO I would be a NGO guy. This is ‑‑ from the beginning it is very important to have the inclusion of the different stakeholders from the beginning, to have a multi‑stakeholder from the beginning. Start with a good IGF and good stakeholder and then the decisions are coming from the people from within at the end.
So it is a challenge, but at the same time there is a lot of value of doing it for all stakeholders in any country. And I think if all together different national and regional IGF initiatives come together and agree on the model, this is the most important thing. You being here you can discuss a model of what is the best model of having a local IGF. What is the best processes of building it. What is the value propositions that we are going to project to our country, to our people, et cetera. That's it. Thank you.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Thank you very much. We are having ‑‑ please, sir.
>> TOSHIAKI TATEISHI: So I am Toshiaki Tateishi from Japan. Japan Aerospace Association I am Vice Chair. And the same thing in German in Japan, the IGF awareness is very low. The activity is not so good. I can say that IGF Japan is not so active. But so I'm thinking we ‑‑ I want Association to organise the IGF Japan from 2010. And so sometime we annually report something to that. But people don't have so much concern. So nowadays ‑‑ so we are co‑organise specific field conference or something. So that's why the IGF, we localize with national IGF itself is very important. So should be held. So as ad hoc we make some comments about, for example, the measure of harmful information or illegal information on the net. So people easy to gather. So we co‑organise as IGF Japan and then the people can be aware it easier. So that's a way nowadays we do it in Japan. Thank you.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Hi. I am going to contribute as for the New Zealand national IGF. Ellen Strickland. And I think, you know, it is really important to us in terms of the links that as a national IGF that as other people have said that it comes from the bottom‑up, that to us it is about the mindset of serving the Internet community and having an initiative that really has that multi‑stakeholders and that you have the variety of people and that it is owned by the community. And ‑‑ but I'm really interested to explore, you know, as InternetNZ we engage in International Governance and we find the exchange in links between the two. In building our agenda it is easy to be in touch with the Mac and its planning to look in the media what topics are hot and what's happening in the programme, but how we link up from New Zealand to the regional to the international, you know, tangibly what do we do, how do we work with you as other initiative is something that we seem to try lots of little things and I love to have a discussion about that. We've tried last year, we had fellows from our Net Huoy. We brought four fellows as well as board members. We found it stimulating and they loved it, but they felt the energy required, they have day jobs and expecting them, you know, getting a lot of the community to ‑‑ we've tried remote hubs and that's something that has been of real interest, the time difference kills us, especially in New Zealand. I mean, you know, it is going to be bad for somebody wherever it is. It come back to us as the orgainsers to come here and sort of writing blog posts back about what's happening. And we have documents that we have sort of collaborative output documents for each session but that's very hard. So I'm interested in things like the output document that EuroDIG did. Having those outcomes is potentially another modality. I think there is a lot of ideas there.
One of the things that I really liked that Marilyn said that I think part of it is a process of us as initiatives talking about those modalities and have a bit of a network and relationship amongst us to develop ways to do this. I don't think there is any one right way.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Sorry, having Paul and then you? Paul first.
>> PAUL RUBIG: I wasn't paying attention to you, Christine. But she can go ahead and ask a question.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: And then Africa.
>> MARY UDUMA: My question is this, in a country, I don't even know who is in MAG for the IGF. Okay? So why not we link national regional to the MAG, the IGF MAG? Who are the people, they don't bring back information to us in our countries. I don't know whether it is the same thing in other countries. So is it possible for members of the local orgainsers like the Mexican group, one of them will be picked as a MAG member. So the person can bring the local perspective to the discussion at that level and some of us, I don't know whether it is the same in my own country. Those that go for MAG I don't know them. They are not part of my organising Committee. They don't do anything for us.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Yes.
>> MARILYN CADE: I am going to make a point of order if I could. We have 12 minutes left. I think that gathering these kinds of questions might be feasible but probably not answering them. We might have different views about them. But if we can gather traditional questions I think that most of us have a hard stop at 6. Oh, it is? Sorry. My apologies. Then ‑‑ I still think we ought to gather the questions.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Before I give the floor to Paul maybe to refresh our discussion a bit more, we did talk a lot about survival techniques, if I am going to use the terms that were put forward by Janis and Chengetai. I think we should spend more time like Ellen was saying about the modalities of the process. Like Chengetai was saying it is a two‑way process and here ideas ‑‑ the idea of linking MAG members to the regional and nationals. The Workshop 140 in the morning, one of the ideas that were put forward which was why not actually have some representatives from the MAG come from the coordinators or members of the bodies that are on a national and regional. Other ideas that were put forward on this table today by Subi was to have a main session maybe during the IGF that is focusing on national regionals. Maybe we should explore more of those now and discuss them a bit more. So Paul, you have the floor.
>> PAUL RUBIG: Thank you very much, Christine. My name is Paul Rubig and I work with the RIPE NCC. And we are involved in quite a few different IGF areas, be it national or regional. Initiatives in Germany, UK, Azerbaijan and EuroDIG and Arab IGF. We provide funding for what I mentioned but resources from our organisation. I wanted to make a comment on to a few of the things that I heard here and maybe a comment that brings something on what I would think would be good for sustainability going forward. First of all, I like the idea that you are bringing forward that it is probably nice to see that you can use one model and share that. I don't share that opinion because I think the richness that we have is that approaches are different. And I think that this is something we can always learn from each other using one thing. I don't think one model fits all. So I think that would be very possible. What I do believe though is that dialogue is wonderful. But good governance at home should lead to some kind of demonstrated achievement in either sharing knowledge or capacity building or whatever that particular national or regional NOG feels is important to see. I can speak for my organisation and what I think is a good way going forward, we have had a lot of these IGFs be them local or global initiatives happening for some time now. What is important for my organisation or the technical community portion that my organisation represents is that we actually ‑‑ that good dialogue starts at home. Right? And good governance starts at home and only then can you bring something to a global effort when you at home understand what you have shared or any capacity building that you have built out of this. So our concentration on what we can do in the area of public and private partnership or what we can do even in our own technical community in these national or regional kind of efforts to bring something positive for movement going forward.
So I think this is the thing that we will be concentrating on and I think on top of that when you look at the regional structures or having worked in the EuroDIG and in the Arab IGF area what we need to make sure you do is you fuel the different stakeholders to keep them engaged. I think there is a natural propensity for a group to show some kind of leadership which can be quite detrimental in how you get the others to join or feel that they have a sort of ownership to contribute a sustained contribution. Because this energy can fizzle out very quickly. I have seen that personally in some of the different areas.
How do we get that energy back up again? One thing that I can say is positive and I know it is setting up precedent and I am sure my e‑mail box is going to fill with e‑mails when I say we have just signed an MOU or about to, I have to put all of my name on all of this, we are about to sign an MOU, a three‑year MOU between the RIPE NCC and EuroDIG where we are committing resources, quite a lot of them but not only financial but also from the staff side in being a partner with EuroDIG moving forward and making sure that RIPE NCC could be an organisation that could bring that technical community bit in to EuroDIG. And I am so happy that EuroDIG has approached us for this and we went right back in to our community. But we will get the technical community interested in their efforts. And I think that's something that we think is positive with EuroDIG and I hope that the RIPE NCC can do that with other groups as well.
>> MARILYN CADE: I did want to make a comment about the idea of there being designated seats for MAG members that come from either the national or the regional IGFs. I will just say speaking for the business community right now because I'm pointed from the business community we would not support that approach right now because we think that the diversity participation. But to the issue of the not having the flow of information back in to the community that is I think a big challenge where MAG members, a major responsibility of a MAG member is to work with their own community to bring information then in to the planning for the IGF. I think there's a different maybe ‑‑ if I could look at it a little bit differently, Mary, as what is the process by which we ensure the better flow of information and access to information and having the coordinators have a regularized attendance or someone from the national and regional IGFs having a regularized attendance at the open consultation sessions, I think would probably actually give more of what you are looking for. We have established, for instance, criteria that MAG members cannot submit workshop proposals. MAG members are supposed to limit their participation to no more than three events because they have MAG duties. So, you know, when you think about the fact that this is a very heavy workload, giving additional work between the national and regionals. So if we think about it as an information flow problem and try to come up then with further work on what the ideas are to address because the question I think is a very valid question.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Laura.
>> LAURA HUTCHISON: Thank you. Laura Hutchison from the UK IGF. I wanted to pick up on a couple of points that a number of people have made. Starting with Paul's suggestion and reflecting the value in the discussion and it is a brilliant point and it is what the IGF is intended for. There seems to having a current shift of having a more outcome based approach such as with the EuroDIG outcome document. I haven't quite thought this through. It may be an opportunity to sort of depending on what happens maybe with the IGF this year in terms of outputs and exactly where that goes, whether a more issue based approach through the regional and national IGFs could be an opportunity. The first half of the session here kind of looking at all the issues that everyone is talking about is a great opportunity to be able to share knowledge and information and best practice between ourselves. We've got a poll of resource people. Someone made the point earlier that you underestimate the power of regional national IGFs as a pool of resources. We have a pool of people that can input in to sessions based on topics or issues. If inputting from regional national directly in to the MAG perhaps in putting a list of topics, these are the topics that have been discussed and should be represented on the global IGF agenda as well as through resource people might be an idea. Thank you.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Edmund.
>> EDMUND CHUNG: So on that particular topic actually I guess the Asia‑Pacific IGF has been I guess lucky in a way to ‑‑ we've always had the support from APNIC and from us from DotAsia and that's probably one of the reasons why we are able to keep up the process. The ‑‑ I wanted to pick on ‑‑ actually the reason I put my hand up I wanted to go back to what Marilyn was mentioning and discussed earlier about the relationship with the ‑‑ including the MAG as well. I think that's probably a good, interesting thought where Marilyn mentioned that some more regular participation from the regionals and the nationals at those open consultations because being on the MAG I don't ‑‑ I don't even know exactly how it is formed. And the process how it is ‑‑ how people are picked. I don't think that's more important. More important is that, you know, the input comes in to the ‑‑ during the discussion. So whether you are a MAG member or not I don't think ‑‑ I don't think it should matter at that level. But how do we, you know, try to encourage people to actually be there whether, you know, not only being there but if they can't be there, remotely participate. It is probably something that we should explore further. How to encourage that, you know, interaction better.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: If I may intervene as well. MAG meetings are more or less open nowadays and are actually Webcasted and open consultation. So maybe an issue to look at is how to support regionals to send someone over to the consultations. And Janis was mentioning there is an early consultation this year that's coming probably the end of November or beginning of December. So this is something to look at. One other idea that I want to put on the table it is a discussion I had earlier today with some active members from the Asia‑Pacific region. We are having a ten‑year anniversary literally next year. So maybe we should look within our national and regional initiatives what can be done to re‑energized this activity. This could be a good thing to look at to recapture this energy again. So Paul, you wanted to comment.
>> PAUL RUBIG: That was a great point and I wanted to expand on that a bit. I think what I am missing because I am on the MAG and I am looking at what is important in the different regions, the region we represent is 76 countries. Very diverse. It is all over the show. How do you gather the points of what's important in the EuroDIG and what's important in an Arab IGF or Azerbaijani IGF? What's missing is a central repository be it in the or regional takes place, a short summary of the topical issues of IGF are brought somewhere in a space where they can be collected and people can take a look at what those issues are. I don't think that people are aware of what's important at EuroDIG or the AP IGF that you have got going. Where does that information get fed? So where is the central repository where we can bring some of these things together?
The second thing is, Christine, I love the point of finding some way of funding people to come to the open consultation that are regionally based that can feed in and help the MAG understand the local issues. We know that's a big point in Arab IGF. I know that the right things you see does have funds available to actually bring members of one IGF community to another. And we are very serious about that. We have brought people from EuroDIG to the Arab IGF. From Arab IGF to the EuroDIG. We love this. We think it is very important to get the different messages of either the regions or from a national perspective somewhere else. So these are two points that I am hoping can be expanded a bit more and I think the funding would be great. And repository to be brought forward to see the issues would be great.
>> MARILYN CADE: How many people here read the reports of the regional and national initiatives? I am serious. How many of you read all of them? But that's my point. I think the recommendation that Paul just made is we need to synthesize an executive summary. So the reports all stay there but the thing you have, the one page per initiative with color pictures that makes it sexy. Did I take that as a recommendation? Maybe I wouldn't say sexy. But ‑‑
>> HISHAM ABOULYAZED: Actually to this point since the Web page of global IGF has information about regional and national IGFs I think that place should be a repository where the main points or summary are stated there. The dated reports are something else but the summary needs to be linked to each of these IGFs, regional or national.
>> MARY UDUMA: I want to take back, Marilyn, the business constituency believes in diversity.
>> MARILYN CADE: Business community.
>> MARY UDUMA: Okay. I am sorry. It is the business community believes in diversity. Nobody's opposing to the diversity. The ideas will come from all over. Even in our ‑‑ at a local level the business constituency or business community should be part of the local, local organising Committee. If that business community is part of it, they go to MAG. They bring back ideas from MAG. And when we are organising our own, the diversity multiplies and enriches what we do. I agree. I don't know your name.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Christy.
>> MARY UDUMA: Christy. That one way or ‑‑ I'm sorry. Don't refer to me. One way or the other we would have to link. I don't see us, you know, disjointed IGF, regional IGF. National, you know, IGF. So there must be somewhere the linkages will come. And when we ‑‑ when we ‑‑ we were planning national IGF we normally look at what the IGF is saying. Then bring the local environment. Bring our local need. Bring our topical hearts, topical issues in our country and then we adapt it to be able to organise our local IGF. Okay. So my point is that I think it is taken already, there must be a way that we get that linkage. If it is possible, when the call for consultation comes out, it should be ‑‑ coordinators of local or regional IGF should be contacted. Then they have their own funding to come. They may only need funding from anywhere. That's what I am thinking.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: I am having Canada and then Sandra.
>> MARK BUELL: I quite support the idea of having very short perhaps bullet point summaries of what happens at each IGF. And I think it would be a good idea if some kind of template were developed that everyone could follow so that it is a standard idea. I'm not entirely sure I would be supportive of a centralized repository. I think would rather see more of a clearinghouse for information that links out because, you know, we post part of the Canadian Internet Forum. When it is over we post all the videos of all the discussions online and there is a lot of rich content there that you may not see if it is in a repository, but if it is a clearinghouse pointing you out to these resources it might be better served.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: And the question was reading the reports, I must admit I don't read the reports from all the regions. I do follow the discussion what is going on here. But I only read or produce the reports for the EuroDIG. But what I think the IGF could be the place for Governments for policy or for business people to visit if they want to find out something about any region in the world. If new Government, any region elect and parliamentarians like to keep on what's happening, the IGF website could be the place where they go and get information on what's going on in their own region. Another example is a business entity likes to do some investments in a certain region and that could go up to the IGF website and visit the reports and latest reports and get some ‑‑ some ‑‑ some real good information about what's going on in this community. For this reason here I agree with ‑‑ for this reason yeah, I agree with Mark that it would be good to have at least some obligatory way of metrics or submitting on a ‑‑ we give each region an opportunity to represent their outcomes. Let it be a powerpoint or brochure, what is the best way to do it in the special region. Thank you.
>> MARILYN CADE: I am going to ‑‑ we are going to try to think about concrete things. I am going to offer two thoughts here. One is I think what we are talking about is in order to improve the impact flow both ways between, and I really want to caution people just from I'm not speaking for anyone else other than the United States in this case, we are a very diverse country and it is very unlikely that we would agree to report to another entity. So ‑‑ and I think that's true for Mexico and I think that's probably true for Canada. So just a little comment there. The initiatives are all very diverse, but what I'm hearing in terms of commonality is having an easy to use, look good, not too expensive to print 10, 12, 15 page or even 25 page depending on or 30 depending on the number, but that ‑‑
>> PAUL RUBIG: You lost me after 25.
>> MARILYN CADE: But the point is Paul, I think that most everyone is ‑‑ each of the initiatives is going to want to have a page. So let's just say you thought about that. Then I think we ought to be thinking that the resource that's needed is editorial support. As opposed ‑‑ so the content gets submitted. And we want to say that one of the supports that would be needed would be the editor copyrighting type support that would turn it in to a nice, easy document that could be downloaded, et cetera. That's a resource request and I think it is a very valid resource request. The other thing that I think most of you are not aware of and I would say we were not aware of at IGF USA is that we would be able to have a website, a Web page and list serve support from the Secretariat that would be very, very helpful to us. Continue to kind of gather the idea of what the ‑‑ what the calls to action or the ‑‑ but the final thing that I'm ‑‑ I want to ask us to go back to at some point is this year the Chair invited us to respond to a very important document to provide examples of the impact of the IGF. He got only 15 responses and they were not from us for the most part. He's asked us to consider how we ‑‑ how the national and regional IGFs, would we perhaps take, I don't know, an invitation from the Chair to take up a topic or to take up a request to respond to something? I think we need to spend a few minutes talking about how that would work, because an invitation from the Chair of the MAG to let's use a specific example to have a session that is relative to follow‑up on to the NETmundial principles. If it were an invitation, we would probably welcome it at IGF US. And our Steering Committee would decide whether or not to do it. But I don't see how direction at this point could come from the MAG of the IGF in to the national and regional IGFs, but he is asking us to consider what kind of formal request for information might work or what would we think would work. And we need to spend a few minutes on that.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Okay. I think what we should maybe think a bit about is when we receive such an invitation. So it is again I like to look at it as both ways. So we receive an invitation and probably go back to our communities and try to see what we can do with that. But again I think what we can do here around this table is maybe suggest how are we going to gather whatever is going to come from the regions and how is that supposed to impact what is going to happen on the global level. I love the short messages from the initiatives, but then who is going to read them and are they going to come on time for the next IGF agenda to be shaped in the way that addresses the needs for the different regions. I'd like to spend a bit of discussion around what do we propose to the MAG, to the Chair of the MAG, to the stocktaking session to take from ‑‑ is coming from the wealth of the different sessions to any account.
>> PAUL RUBIG: Thanks, Christine. I am with you, Marilyn. I think that it would be great ‑‑ speaking as a MAG member it would have been great when we came together as a MAG for before we even came together that there was this document that came from outcomes of what had happened in the different national and regional initiatives that would be sent to me. Hello, you are a MAG member and you are coming on board and you have particular skills that you are bringing to this crew. And here is a document that is going around the world. And when you come together with the rest of the MAG wouldn't it be lovely for you to take this as a document that you would read that helps you to kind of understand some of the regional initiatives or things that people are concentrating on from the regions?
I would love something like that as a MAG member. I think the second thing and asking for that resource, Marilyn is right we are asking for a resource to help compile that. So that's a concrete request. How that's going to look I guess some committee could be formed for that. I am not sure we have the time to delve in to what that would look like and what the responsibilities would be there or would or wouldn't. We need more people in the MAG and in the open consultations that champion the regional and national initiatives because there aren't enough. When I hit that mic as a MAG member I am always pushing for a regional effort. But there's not anyone that really champions that inside the Secretariat or inside that structure. So I think that that kind of a resource needs to be there. What exactly it would be I'm not sure, but I would love to see someone that pushes that as a cheerleader or a champion a bit more.
>> MARY UDUMA: What are the report we send to the Secretariat? Asking us to send ‑‑ to report to Secretariat.
>> MARILYN CADE: On the website one of the requirements that is in order to be listed on the SA ‑‑ as an IGF initiative, national and regional IGF initiative there is certain criteria you need to follow. You need to do a report each year but there is no defined format. There is a little bit of information you have to provide. But it is really pretty flexible and the reports vary. I mean are we asking to make it more defined beyond what it is? Because we are trying not to provide burdens to the ‑‑
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: I think one of the ideas were to have a template maybe in a way that can be filled. And if I recall right we have something of that last year. We had actually like a questionnaire that was to be filled out and there were concrete questions asked and how do the stakeholders look and what are the topics that you discuss. So maybe something along that a bit shorter because it was a bit lengthy but again to do what. So to pass to MAG members here is an idea. Listen more. Right. Emmit.
>> AUDIENCE: Sorry again. I had to be out and may say things that have already been discussed, but when I hear some group needs to send a report to another group, immediately what comes to mind something that says we are going to do X with the report that you sent or we are looking for why in the report that you sent. I don't know this feedback. I don't know what happens with the report. And to ask for something it would be nice to know and I'm sorry, this is me. And probably the other members of the group know better than I do.
But what happens with that report? What feedback goes back and forth. You know, for example, the MAG receives this report from the regional IGF, for example, Arab IGF. They look at it and they look for X, Y and Z and then they send back information and they request more data and they advise and they help. I mean that to me it needs to be clearer. And if it is clear I apologize because it is probably my ignorance.
>> MARILYN CADE: Sorry. I need to clarify this. So the coordinators used to meet and the criteria that was established was worked out across the coordinators. It is very minimal and the criteria in order to be listed as an IGF initiative is to provide a report of what you are doing. I don't understand what you mean by what are we doing with it. It is so that you can receive recognition and be listed on the website. It is pretty minimal.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Maybe the question to be more constructive is how can you actually use those reports to impact the IGF. And here's a thing to take from the question. And I think that's worth looking at because I mean one good idea that Paul said if we have a short and simple we can give it to MAG members. And we can suggest when they come from a region at least read those of this region and be proactive in communicating with them. So that's one part. But on the other hand, maybe from my personal experience here I can say that what I have seen impact the agenda of the IGF was the presence of people that actually carry the flag of the region. So I'll take from the example of the EuroDIG. Many of the modalities that are used at EuroDIG were incorporated in to the IGF, the flash sessions they initiated at EuroDIG. Many of those issues were brought up but they were brought up through the people sitting around the table and giving those ideas. So ‑‑
>> AUDIENCE: So you are saying the presence of the representatives at least of the regional MAG, the regional MAG at the MAG is important? And both ways ‑‑ both ways reporting is necessarily ‑‑ necessary and it is good. So we need to improve that as quickly as possible.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Someone wants to comment?
>> MARILYN CADE: Just to clarify we are talking about at the consultations, their open meetings. The MAG is there. So many other people. That's what we mean?
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Of course, we don't have ‑‑ sorry. ‑‑ influence and who will be on the MAG. So this is not something that we actually can ‑‑ we would like to see more linkage between the MAG and the regionals but at least we can say more participation from the regional coordinators. Not everyone has a MAG like function, but at least from the Convenors and participants add the public consultations that are there. Yes.
>> MARILYN CADE: Just to clarify you keep using the word regionals. We are talking about both nationals and regionals.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: So I always find it very long to say. Let me always say nationals and then you understand I mostly say regionals.
>> MARY UDUMA: Just for my education how is Mark constituted ‑‑ just for my education. How is constituted first and how you select members second and what diversity you put in to MAG?
>> MARILYN CADE: There are 54, 56 members and I think it is ‑‑ that's close. 50% of them are Government seats. Those are regionally distributed. The remaining 50% of the seats are split between the technical community, the private sector and the Civil Society. Both the technical community and Civil Society are slash academia. So academia can come in through either the technical community allocation of seats and if an allocation of numbers and each of the stakeholder sectors has to put together a process and the CSTD Working Group on improvements to the IGF set out criteria that sort of laid out the idea that the process that each group established needs to be open and transparent. There needs to be geographic and gender diversity. It doesn't say 50% of this and 50% of that. It says diversity. And each of the groups runs a process. I can describe the business process. You can probably describe the technical community. The Civil Society runs two consultation processes and two different groups of Civil Society provide names. The names go to the Secretariat. They end up going to the Secretary‑General. It is ‑‑ Mary, it is eight or nine seats per group. I'm not doing the math very well. And then those have to be within that group geographically diverse. And the goal is to have the term no more than three years but the appointment is one year at a time. Not everyone stays on for multiple years.
We had a problem last year in the past where we had people in seats for six or seven years and that has been fixed. So there's a rotation. The idea being that three years would be sort of optimal and there might be one year exception, but the decision is ultimately taken by the Secretary‑General. You have to show support from your stakeholder sector, I don't mean stakeholder group like at ICANN but the mere community. So you need to be able to show that you have support ‑‑ if you are a business you have to be able to show that you have been supported by a wide group of business.
>> MARY UDUMA: Thank you very much for the education. Having implemented that for years you find out that those who represent your region they are not part of your region. If it is necessary that those that are actually implementing are spreading your gospel of multi‑stakeholder approach of Internet Governance should be part of designing, part of bringing back information to the locals. That's all I brought to this.
(Talking at the same time).
>> MARY UDUMA: You may have to look at it again, whether it still works well.
>> MARILYN CADE: I am going to make a quick response. Remember when the MAG was set up, the national/regional initiatives didn't exist. So when the ‑‑ one thing to think about that this is feedback about ‑‑ with the growth and strengthening. The second point, Mary, is a major criteria is supposed ‑‑ for the MAG members is supposed to be that they work with their sector. This is touchy, Paul, but I am going to do it. Perhaps the other issue is how satisfied is your ‑‑ yes. How satisfying is your representation and outreach and can you really take on the work that is required. And if you can't, then how does feedback get provided so that somebody just doesn't stay in a position but the position is opened up? That's kind of touchy but I think I got it out.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: Just to make sure I understand Mary's proposal, are you saying that at least at the global MAG there needs to be a representation and exchange of ‑‑ let's say a representation and both way exchange from the regional MAGs to make sure that these people that are on the seats of the MAG that are from a certain region are connected to the MAG that are in the region and not necessarily separate. And even though it was designed at the time differently we probably need to propose that at least those representations, at least one or two people, whatever, from the region are there, are part of or condoned by or whatever by the regional MAG to make sure connection is there and presentation is there. Feedback, back and forth representing the initiatives, representing the projects and make sure that the global MAG is taking in to account those regional activities. Marilyn, you should listen to us sometimes.
(Laughter).
>> AUDIENCE: You know, I am just asking if this is what it is.
>> (Off microphone).
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Quickly.
>> MARY UDUMA: The response is that currently there is disconnect between IGF and the regional initiatives. Because the MAG members of the IGF don't have ‑‑ they are not part of the local organising or implementing Committee of the national or regional. My regional may be, but when you come to national if somebody from my country is a MAG member, at least the person should know what we are doing. Should be able to be part of what we do at the local level. It should bring back the message and tell us yeah, this is what it should be. Most of the time we go back to such ‑‑ what is IGF doing so that we will be able to follow the IGF. Instead of just having somebody that will educate us.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: We have hit on an issue that's quite complicated. There is not a solution that you are proposing. But it about that relationship between the initiative, the wider IGF is done. I think open consultation is part of it. Yes.
>> AUDIENCE: I want to say that even though I agree with Mary's comment I would like to tone it down a bit. We may need to look to specific cases. I would like to say in the Latin American region, in the Caribbean our nine representatives and our Mexico representative, Marlena Diaz are very in touch with our IGF initiative and they are in ‑‑ have the responsibility of building the lack of IGF. I don't have any complaints on that. We should be making that issue very specifically and very case oriented.
>> MARILYN CADE: We got to make the expectation clear that if you are a MAG member, that part of your responsibility is that linkage back and forth. And that's the thing I am thinking is an important thing to continue, to re‑enforce as a message.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. Just to add one thing because I know what Marilyn explained I was from the first MAG. I was on the first MAG as you remember and there was no regionals. But we can maybe recommend something for the selection of the MAG. And the second stage if it was extended after maybe to take in to consideration that when you select the MAG members, what one ‑‑ what you said is important, they should be in connection with the society. There is some regional members, maybe to choose ‑‑ involve them or at least put one of them or two on the MAG. Something like this. But something like this.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: So I am aware we have been going for over three hours now and we are supposed to wrap up by 6. We have Rapporteurs Laura and Sandra have been working hard to capture the two segments and the messages in the last segments, the messages that we want to take forward in the taking stock session. We would like the opportunity for them to feedback to you, you know, what we have captured and get some comments. And then Marilyn is going to be taking that to the session, to the taking stock session. So a chance to sort of wrap up with them about what they are taking forward. So I will hand over to the Rapporteurs.
>> LAURA HUTCHISON: Thank you. Sandra and I have kind of worked against the two sections. So I have sort of focused more on the issues section. I am going to lead on the second section. When we opened starting with the issues and there was a lot of focus around how the political situation in a country affects the issues for discussion and how regional/ national IGF is a good opportunity to showcase the national model or Democratic process in the country, in terms of issues that have been discussed I have tried to collate these, what has been discussed. There was a lot of focus on Government surveillance and issues around civil liberty, privacy and human rights. Internet for driving social and economic change. I think a number of initiatives, you have discussed issues around those sort of areas. Child protection was another headline issue as was public access and capacity building and digital divide, Net Neutrality. And then a lot of topic was data access by ISP, sort of data protection type issues. Spam legislation, issues around openness, covering kind of rights responsibility, local content and multilingualism and network filtering, IPv6, a lot of discussion around youth IGFs and the kind of overlap on the issue‑based approach from a youth perspective. And then there is the more sort of external Internet Governance kind of issues. Topics around new gTLDs and NETmundial and IANA transition and ICANN accountability as well as frameworks for national IGFs on the kind of governance model in a national/regional arena. I think that kind of sums up most of the topics. Just hand over to Sandra.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you. As for the second part I took notes and tried to summarize ‑‑ I took notes of those things where I realised they are uncommon for all the things because I think it makes no sense to list all the topics. So what I say we have more awareness gap in the Civil Society, academical sector and Governments. It is a challenge for Civil Society to be informed and stay informed of various issues, either timing issue for countries like New Zealand or if it is just a language issue or even others. Then a lack of funding mechanisms, not necessarily funding but funding mechanisms to get people more engaged and to a debate there is a lack of understanding, the need to participate and engage for many people because as it was said on some points, sometimes people think that okay, I am just delegating it to my government. I elected them and I will deal with that issue, but now they are not. And there is not really the awareness that the multi‑stakeholder approach is not understood.
This is not ‑‑ this is sometimes also a cultural issue as our colleague from Japan mentioned it. This type of how you deal with things is totally new for this sort of culture in Asia sometimes. Then would like to catch up with what Paul had mentioned. Original IGFs should try to create alliances with leaders of their respective community. If you have an alliance with a leader or a partnership with an organisation, which brings in the community because we all do not have the resources to reach out to broad communities. So we need those key leaders which brings their community in and make them actually part of the whole process. And then the last part of the discussion was about the linkage between national/regional IGFs and the global IGFs and there was Consensus that better participation in the regional, better participation from the regional and nationals in the global debate is required. There should be a place where we collect all the outcomes from each region. And it has to be discussed how this could look like. Either if it is an extensive book or posted reports, edit brochure which combines all the things, I think this is something which we can bring up for discussion.
And then I think the last part of the discussion I am not really sure if there is Consensus in the room, that there is the proposal on the table that the MAG could be actually extended by representatives from regional IGFs so that if ‑‑ so that they actually become part, a member of the MAG. Maybe not all of them but maybe some of them, but this is a proposal I just heard. And I am not really sure if there is Consensus about this in the room or if you would just like to bring that forward. Thank you.
>> MARILYN CADE: I would say I don't support that as a Consensus statement. I support that we should report out that that was discussed. I am not sure though that you meant extended or that it should include and that was why ‑‑ do you mean extended which would mean to add more seats or did you mean that the representation should include? It could go either way, but I just wanted to point out that extended might mean adding more seats while the other approach would be to incorporate.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: I don't really care how to do this. I mean if you need more seats ‑‑
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: It is a discussion from the floor.
>> PAUL RUBIG: I agree with Marilyn there. I probably wouldn't be in favor of saying there was Consensus to extend the MAG. To be honest with you I am not even really quite sure ‑‑ I mean yes, it was discussed and sure it needs to be brought forward because it was discussed. But I personally don't ‑‑ I'm not really quite sure if I am seeing where that would be. I think there needs to be a lot more discussion on how you would put something regional or national inside of the MAG. I think there are other ways to do that rather than saying let's extend the MAG, because I think that in most cases because if you heard what Marilyn had described as the process for choosing people to be on the MAG it is pretty complex. When you get in there you probably find you have most people involved in these kinds of areas anyway.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: I'd just like to suggest I think we clearly don't have Consensus on that. But I do think that there has been an important discussion about the linkages between IGF initiative coordinators and MAG members. And I propose something along those lines. And that there needs to be further discussion. So I liked that bit we had about another issue that we said there is a few potential solutions to this. We need to have further discussion. I propose something along those lines and ask for further comment. Yeah.
>> MARY UDUMA: I don't think there is any Consensus. It's just me that brought it to the table, right? And it is a concern for me because of what I ‑‑ what is on the ground in my own region. So I'm not saying that is the Consensus but it is something you should think about. The process of selecting MAG previously before you have this ‑‑ before these regional and the national initiatives came up. You need to rethink on the process. I think that's what I think I want to bring to the table. You should do everything whether it still is ‑‑ should this still be that way. Or you should think about that now they are ground firmly. More countries are aware of the IGF, and every country if you want them to go to the Internet, leave them out.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Thank you. I think that definitely should be captured that it is about reconsideration. We have a few comments starting with Laura here.
>> LAURA HUTCHISON: I am going ‑‑ picking up on what you say. With my Rapporteur hat it was clear there wasn't Consensus, but it is important to make the note that maybe we want to see more linkage between the regional/national IGF and the MAG that we couldn't decide on. And participation from the MAG members should be encouraged in regional/national IGFs.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: We have four.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I agree. For sure there is no Consensus but at the same time to answer maybe some of Marilyn's members, not to add more members. It is just ‑‑ I think ‑‑ as I understood, I tried to summarize, but it seems I confused everyone. I meant when to choose maybe the same different constituencies as Marilyn explained from the business and maybe try to have some of these already existing in the region. Something like this. But not to extend for sure. So this is maybe.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Can I suggest, I mean obviously as Marilyn outlined the process of the selection is something that the UN does and the Secretary‑General does and that perhaps what we could suggest is that in relation to the statement we've made that as part of the review of the IGF that considering the MAG in light of IGF initiatives could be done. Yeah.
>> CHRISTINE ARIDA: Encouraging MAG members is not capturing maybe the discussion. I think we should talk more about the responsibility of MAG members put towards.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: That's really good.
>> AUDIENCE: I believe that regional representation is paramount, is very important. But if I have to choose between stressing regional representation and stakeholder representation I believe stakeholder is more important than having regional representation. I wasn't aware that the MAG seats ‑‑ 50% of the MAG seats are for the Governments. I believe that's not equal footing. If I had to choose between regional and stakeholder representation, I would like to stress out the latter. It is just my thoughts off the top of my head.
>> AUDIENCE: Let's be clear on one thing, nobody is saying that there should be regional representation without taking in to account the stakeholder representation. That's one. Two, we are not saying anything about the number of people on the MAG. They could be 54. They could be 40. They could be 60. Whenever a decision is made to extend ‑‑ a decision is made to extend the IGF after beyond 2015 there needs to be a thinking of how the selection process has to make sure and disagreeing to make sure that the regional representation is there. But to make sure that regional transition and connected with the regional MAGs. Listen, if we are going to grow this thing to be something useful for the world, go ‑‑ going in the same direction we cannot continue this disconnect.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Your point is taken. What's important is that when the MAG was originally set up these didn't exist. It wasn't there previously. We have got a couple of comments here.
>> EDMUND CHUNG: I am not suggesting this to be in the report but thinking out loud on this particular subject, we keep talking about linkage and representation. Thinking out loud suggest concept of liaisons. This is the way that we wrap it around, might be easier for people to understand and liaison may be an official ‑‑ on official basis. It may be already a MAG member. It may be some other person, right? I mean that's ‑‑ maybe that kind of concept merits some thinking about.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: That's an interesting idea and I think that's why it is important we maybe capture some of those things and we want to have that ongoing discussion on this.
>> PAUL RUBIG: Thank you. Actually I can't speak for the other stakeholders but I know very well how the technical community does their selection and in this it is already stated that we do have the geographical balance coming from the technical community. I can't speak for the others, but it is in the document very clear. So although the UN does rubber stamp this at the end and accepts the people that are brought forward it is very much done from the stakeholders who they are choosing to put forward to the UN. The UN is not going to say wait, the technical community, we don't know that guy. For instance, as an example. If you feel that you need to change the MAG configuration and that this needs to be something that's stressed there, you must go to the constituency and say we need to change the way we choose this particular group on the MAG.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: You are talking about the regional sort of geographic distribution but that's not the same thing as initiatives. I mean we have mentioned where you have the geographic person and then no one within the region that's involved in an initiative. So is that a disconnect?
>> PAUL RUBIG: That probably is the case from the Government perspective. I can probably see something like that, but if I look at the MAG members that are coming from the Civil Society, business and the technical community, I would be very surprised if any one of them had never been to a regional or national IGF ever. I think that it would be quite surprising how they would possibly get voted on from the community to sit in a global setting. So ‑‑
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: That's interesting and I think it is another mechanism but all the more reason I think this is a discussion we need to take forward. I wanted to raise one other thing which was about us as a group and our engagement in the consultations. It was something that got raised about that used to be a meeting prior and to, you know, for sort of coordination but also to encourage engagement in the MAG meetings.
>> MARILYN CADE: The coordinators used to meet at the consultations and we had a time slot and Chengetai was there with us and the Secretariat was there with us. And that what ‑‑ so we didn't meet to coordinate. We met to share information and resources. I was proposing we think about re ‑‑ at least piloting that and trying to do it at one of the upcoming consultations, but to make sure it is done in a room with remote participation capability. Because it is a disaster for those who can't travel and it needs to be done outside of the schedule of the consultation or people won't be able to participate in it.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Thank you for the clarification. I think being outside was what I meant. How does the ‑‑
>> MARY UDUMA: Was asking the coordinators which one you refer to, please? We decide.
>> AUDIENCE: To answer your question who are the coordinators? Who are the coordinators?
>> MARILYN CADE: Every initiative has to identify a key point of contact. That's how you submit your reports. And there's an open list that you can sign up on. I didn't ‑‑ I wasn't able to get a printout of it. But each of the initiatives has to have a point of contact that they give to the Secretariat. And so Mary, it is up to each of the initiatives on who that is. But when the coordinators met it was always an open meeting.
>> MARY UDUMA: If I take the West African IGF we have national focal points. That's how we manage the West African IGF. We have national focal points and we signed some paper to say we are committed to doing the ‑‑ to be a coordinator. So everything that has got to do with West African IGF it goes to that focal point. There is nothing like that because as we said the MAG started before the other initiatives. We are in a new era. We need to reform. We are proposing a reform to you. You reform the MAG or the processes that are coming up to be able to be part of your own process.
>> MARILYN CADE: To be clear what was being proposed? The idea was that whoever is responsible as the key point, key contact point for the initiatives would have a meeting in conjunction with the public consultations. So I'm not sure what was ‑‑
>> MARY UDUMA: I don't know whether I made point clear. I will get ‑‑ I give you an example of the West African IGF. In West African IGF here is a national focal point from Benin. That is the group that organizes the West African IGF coordination. So I don't know whether you are referring to the same coordinating group.
>> MARILYN CADE: Yes. I mean you guys.
>> MARY UDUMA: Those are the coordinators that actually correspond to the Secretariat on IGF. If it is the African IGF it would be the coordinator of the African IGF, if the West African is listed as a coordinator. Those are the ones that send the reports and are on the mailing list and basically have the contact with the Secretariat.
>> MARILYN CADE: I think I would be right in understanding because of the way that Africa has deployed ‑‑ you have national initiatives. You are subregional and you are regional. So you could potentially from the continent have Benin. You would have Nigeria and then you might have the Wast African coordinator and then you might have the West African coordinator. You might have 12 participants in the coordinator's group.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: You had a comment or question?
>> AUDIENCE: I think it was a really interesting discussion and what I learned from this session that when the process of the global IGF was set actually there were no regional initiatives in either national ones and so on. And maybe it is time to revisit or revise these processes to have more positive impact on regional and the national initiatives. The main goal from here is actually to convey messages from regional and national levels and needs to be expressed to the uplevel and the global IGF. Reporting is a very good actual mechanism. Whoever may be what could be enhanced as to get benefit from these reports and to be reflected in the decisions of the MAG and the schedule and the programme of each IGF annual meetings and so on. Thank you.
>> ELLEN STRICKLAND: Thank you very much. So I am aware we are five minutes from a hard stop. So I want to thank you all very much. Thank the Rapporteurs. I think we have delved in to the contentious parts of the report. I want to wrap it up in to the taking stock session and how this will be reflected going forward.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for everyone's participation. I just want to share with you I counted from the seniors list we had five regions. Arab IGF, TLD, even if they didn't speak but she show up, African, Asian and Persian IGF and 13 more between national initiative or project of national initiatives which are represented here which I believe is very important and really appreciate the participation of everyone. Some of the participants also encourage the fact that we should have more and more national IGF sharing with us, their experience and in some way facilitating between each other the exchange that some of you have mentioned that will be beneficial not only between the ‑‑ this IGF and the national/ regional IGF but also between ‑‑ could be between national IGF. The other fact that fortunately the Rapporteurs did an excellent job strategizing all the different topics or trendy topics that have been phrased at your IGFs and during the last year all the forecast for the coming month. The list also of potential mechanisms or ideas to facilitate the exchange between this event are your initiatives also have been noted. And I will say that there was really interesting ideas that were shared and we took note of them. We will be ‑‑ as we mentioned at the beginning we will be taking to the taking stock session as part of the outcome of this meeting.
I want to also to invite you to start working on our next year meeting because it is going to ‑‑ as you know it is going to be a really important one and we could start thinking about what have been the implications of the last ten years of the IGF, for the national and the regional IGF. It was just mentioned that when the IGF started there was no ‑‑ there was no regional/ national IGF. It has become as one of the ‑‑ I will say one of the most important outcomes of the IGF process is the process that you have been leading in your countries and leading in regions and it will be good to show that perspective and maybe the survival of your initiative will be jeopardized if we don't review the mandate next year. That's my invitation for thinking about starting working. We have gathered all your e‑mails. We will try to trigger again the coordinating list. Have a regional e‑mailing list that we will be using and explore in a better sense to convey some of the great ideas you have shared. Final words?
>> MARILYN CADE: I have one point that I mentioned when we started and I would like to just mention it again, as all of us know that we are in the second, we are in year nine of the IGF. This is phase 2 and we are in the fourth year getting ready to go in to the fifth year. There is a document, a letter circulating among Civil Society and the private sector here calling for positive endorsement of the extension of the IGF. And that will come up further with the MAG. The debate has been within the Civil Society and business group ranging from some calling for a permanent extension to more practical understanding of how the UN system works to just calling for an extension. But I think within the national and regional coordinators and initiatives that that concept of the extension of the IGF might be a worthwhile, further thing for us to all think about as well in terms of, you know, is that something that your initiative is prepared to endorse or to support. I think endorse might be the wrong word but to support.
>> MODERATOR: So thank you very, very much to everyone. And hope you enjoy the rest of the week. Thank you.
(Applause.)
(Session concluded at 1800)
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This is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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