IGF 2016 Main Session: Trade Policy and the Internet

Title:  Trade Policy and the Internet

Date/Time/Length: 8 December, 16:30-18:00, 90min.

About:

IGF was established as a global multistakeholder forum to address Internet-related public policy issues. But an increasing number of such issues—including domain name dispute resolution and access to registrant data, the use of encryption standards and source code disclosure mandates, and cross-borders information flows—are now also being dealt with in trade fora such as the WTO and in trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

There is a need to ensure that discussions on trade policy are not isolated from broader multi-stakeholder discussions of those same topics. In particular, because national trade ministries and trade negotiators do not always perceive these as being Internet governance issues, but view them simply as trade issues.

The session will be to open multi-stakeholder discussion, between trade officials, experts and Internet stakeholders. Participants will include government officials, former trade negotiators, prominent trade experts, industry representatives and civil society representatives.

Agenda:

●     Briefing (10 mins): As this is a new topic for an IGF main session it will open with a neutral expert briefing on the substance and processes of trade negotiations that affect Internet issues.

●     Debate (25 mins): Panelists in the debate will focus on the process of trade negotiations on Internet issues and their interrelationship with Internet governance institutions.

●     Panel discussion (15 mins): Participants in the discussion will focus on the substance of topics dealt with in trade agreements: what issues are included and why, how well do they reflect stakeholders’ interests, and what issues are missing.

●     Q&A and open discussion (30 mins): The session will be opened to the floor.

●     Summing up (10 mins): The moderator will seek to draw together some conclusions and ask for concluding remarks from panelists.

Policy Questions:

1.       How can multistakeholder Internet governance support digital trade?

2.      Is there a limit to the Internet policy issues that should appropriately be included in trade agreements?

3.      How can trade negotiations live up to the ideal that Internet policy issues should be developed in a transparent and multi-stakeholder approach?

4.      How can the IGF fulfil its mandate to “facilitate discourse between bodies dealing with different cross-cutting international public policies regarding the Internet” where these concern trade?

5.      How can developing countries’ interests be better represented in discussions on the Internet and trade?

Chair(s) and or Moderator(s):

Main Moderator:

Emily Taylor

Floor moderators:

Maryant Fernandez - EDRI - Belgium

Roxana Radu (Diplo)

Remote moderator:

Ayden Férdeline (NCUC) – UK

Bruna Santos (Youth Observatory) - Brazil

Rapporteur:

Maria Beebe - Techwomen - USA 

Host Country Chair: TBC

Panelists/Speakers:

Civil society

Burcu Kilic (Public Citizen) - Turkey

Jeremy Malcolm (EFF) - Australia

Susan Aaronson (GWU) – USA

Technical community or Private sector

David Snead (Internet Infrastructure Coalition) – USA

Private sector:

Joseph Alhadeff - Oracle - USA

Government, Academia and independent

Mohammad N. Azizi (Afghanistan Telecom Regulatory Authority - ATRA) - Afghanistan

Lee Tuthill - WTO – Switzerland

Juan Antonio Dorantes Sánchez (Trade expert) - (Mexico)

Marcela Paiva Véliz (Trade expert) - (Chile)

Floor moderators:

Maryant Fernandez - EDRI - USA

Roxana Radu (Diplo) 

Participants will be engaged and interact in the following steps:

1) Awareness of the theme – Briefing

2) Debate – Panelists will bring in most important questions

3) Roundtable discussion – Panelists will bring extra aspects to each other's questions

4) Open discussion – Audience will bring more questions and comments to the debate

5) Summary and next steps – Moderators will summarise the session contributions

Remote moderator/Plan for online interaction:

Remote moderator:

Ayden Férdeline (NCUC) – UK

Remote participation plan:

●     Remote participants will be fully integrated into the session using WebEx

●     Social media monitoring and input will also be present via the session hashtag #digitaltrade

●     Remote moderation team will feed into the session twitter feed with a glossary of terms and elicit participants inputs.

●     Integration with the intersessional work of BPFs and DCs will also be part of the session with outcome documents referenced for the audience.

Connections with other sessions:

This main session will refer to accepted workshops which deal with different perspectives of digital trade. The workshops which will be referred are:

●     Aligning Multistakeholder Norms and the Digital Trade Agenda

●     Trans-Pacific Partnership: Good or bad for the Internet?

●     Meet TISA: The trade agreement you’ve probably never heard of

●     Boundaries and Best Practices for Inclusive Digital Trade

Desired results/objectives:

The expected results of this session are to fulfill the need to ensure that discussions on trade policy are not isolated from broader multi-stakeholder discussions of those same topics. In particular, because national trade ministries and trade negotiators do not always perceive these as being Internet governance issues, but view them simply as trade issues. The session will provide information and call to action about the theme.

The next steps predict interlinking the different areas of action in digital trade and coalitions which mobilize citizens to be involved in this theme.