IGF 2020 - Day 4 - OF23 EU Delegation to the IGF & the Youth IGF

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the virtual Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), from 2 to 17 November 2020. 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 event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record. 

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>> YULIYA MORENETS: The majority of us have our mind on the COVID crisis.  What you think about youth and digital, quite often, you think about technical solutions, about innovation, but what we would like to achieve today, and to focus on is the role of young people, in youth, of the development of the policies, of standards, and of course, of legal aspects and the role of young people in cyber.  We have a role to play in digital cooperation but making the digital transformation of our societies faster and easier.  They have a role to play as elderly people, as executives, as, of course, women and men, and all people that compose our society.

But young ‑‑ we would like to have the direct dialogues who take the decisions for their countries, for their regions, for their companies and councils and young activists would try to make things useful ‑‑ useful things for data development of our countries and during this COVID crisis.

My name is Yuliya Morenets, and pleased and honored to be joined by our distinguished guests.  We have the minister, Dr. Sidi Ould Salem, who is the porte‑parole of the government of Mauritania.  Please be welcomed.  I will be switching now in French.  So to welcome those.  You have the translation in the chat room.  Mr. Minister, merci.

(Awaiting English translation).

We have with us as well ‑‑ I'm switching to English for ‑‑ and we have with us Bocar Ba who is with SAMENA Telecommunications Council.  It's the council it's the term says, of different telecom companies based in the Middle East, if I'm not mistaken, Bocar Ba.  So we will be discussing their role of the Telecom Sector, which is quite important in empowering young people for their ‑‑ in the innovation and also in ‑‑ in the activism to help during this crisis, COVID situation.  We do know that the ITU, the specialized ITU agency of the United Nations has as one of their strong strategic priorities the empowerment of young people.

So it will be interesting to discuss with the Bocar Ba in a while and thank you for joining us.

We have with us Casper Klynge, the vice president of Microsoft Corporation.  It's always nice to have Casper Klynge to with us.  Thank you so much, Casper Klynge, you are also the former diplomat and actually the former first ever diplomat and ambassador.

We have with us Professor Rolf Weber from Zurich University working on international law.  Thank you, professor, on joining us.  And we work on the artificial aspect of blockchain and one we say blockchain and artificial intelligence, we immediately think about young people and innovators.  So we'll be very ‑‑ we will have a lot to learn from you, as well on these aspects and thank you for joining us today.

We have with us the representatives of the youth IGFs and different youth committees present in our studios as well.

So I would like to welcome them, and also to remind that, please, you can put your questions and your comments in the chatroom.  We have also the livestream on the United Nations channel, YouTube channel.  So you can put your questions and comments there as well, as well as on our Facebook page of the global youth IGF.

So please be welcome.  Before we start this conversation between the executives and the young leaders, I would like to bring a very strong message, video message to you that was sent to us by the UN Undersecretary General Fabrizio Hochschild who is not here with us today physically because it's night time in New York, but I would like to propose you to follow me for this message and then we will be back for our discussion.

Let's go.

>> FABRIZIO HOCHSCHILD: Warm wishes to you from New York.  It's great to be able to contribute to this session.  You have so much more interesting things to say than I.  So I really will be very brief.  I thought the framing the subject was really quite curious.  I was told the subject is youth activism in the digital sector.  I thought that was a little ironic because, of course, the digital sector would simply not exist if there was no ‑‑ (No audio).

Under 30‑year‑olds had been kept hidden away in a dungeon.  I think if that had been the case, I don't think that we would have a digital sector today.  Youth activism, basically constitutes the vast part of our digital work.

But now, and this is my main point, I would argue that we have created or you have created this beautiful thing, but we have a challenge no longer technical but much more social and political in terms of maximizing its benefits and curtailing its malicious use and its unintended harms.

We have to work harder now to make sure that the great invention, your invention is inclusive, safe, and secure.

COVID has shown just how dependent we have grown on digital technologies.  By now most of us cannot work without them, can't socialize with them, and can't have pleasure without them and, of course being they have worked immensely in response from COVID, from tracking to sharing cures, et cetera.  But you have to acknowledge that those who are not connected have been left further behind, have been left more vulnerable.

And those who are connected have also grown more exposed to digital harms such as disinformation, data robbing, security breaches, et cetera.

So how we now steer this tool that grew largely through initiative, through entrepreneurship, with very little global steerage, how we steer it will determine what our digital legacy, whether it will just be a magnificent thing that benefits some or whether it reduces the bane of our age, growing exclusion and inequality and whether the majority will be left safer or more vulnerable.

So then I will put before you is the challenge for your generation and I really look forward to the initiative and the leadership and I have no doubt youth across the world will exercise in that, and I look very much forward to learning from you.

Thank you.

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Please be welcome.  I think we had a slight technical element as can happen always.  It was my screen share as well.  So we do apologize for this and we will put the great message and powerful message of the Undersecretary General Fabrizio Hochschild on our Facebook page and the YouTube as well later on.  So to see it properly in a proper manner.

So I think it was a quite powerful message brought to you by the UN under Secretary General saying that, well, you know, it's not only technical.  Today we need to try to see how this benefits ‑‑ the benefits of technical innovation can get value.

And by saying, this I would like to return to the young activist and first turn to Alan from Kenya.  Are you with us?

>> Yes, I'm with you.

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Do you have the camera?  I think you have a question.  So he will be happy to bring this to our panelists.

>> PARTICIPANT: I'm having a problem setting my video.  I don't know why.

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Do you have a question to the panelists so they can start the real dialogue and the conversation?

>> PARTICIPANT: Yes.  Sure.  Can you hear me?

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Yes, we can even see you, which is quite great and please, you have the floor.

>> PARTICIPANT: Okay.  Thank you.  My question is:  We as the youth, we are the future generation, yeah?  And we have great minds of innovation.  So what is the government doing, respective governments doing to ensure that they support the youth enough, the innovation that they have with regards to the COVID‑19?

Thank you.

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Thank you, Eileen.  Thank you for asking your question.  And I ‑‑ I will maybe turn to minister Sidi Ould Salem.  I don't know if you got the translation in French.

(Awaiting English translation).

>> SIDI OULD SALEM: (Speaking French).

(Awaiting English translation).

>> YULIYA MORENETS: (Speaking French).

I think it was foreseen, sorry, for a slight trouble for people who don't speak actually French, it was said that the translation will be made by the UN translator, but as always we are in a technical environment.

So we just would like to summarize what Mr. Minister said, that actually, he has stated three main issues in African developing countries that we face when we speak about the technology and particularly during these difficult period of COVID.

But as well, he ensured that a lot of things are going in Mauritania, such as the national council for young people.  This is the question I would like to ask the minister, if in ‑‑ to ask the minister, what will be the role of young people in setting the policy and the functioning of this, the national digital council, as well as the incubators and I before I this question minister ‑‑ minister and I will translate what he says afterwards.

(Speaking French).

>> YULIYA MORENETS: (Speaking French).

And I'm sorry, I will switch in English.  There are two or three main things raised by the minister.  It's what is going on in Mauritania, they are providing the free open spaces with the WiFi connection, if I understood correctly that will be accessible to everyone, to everybody, and he's kind of saying that young people can be, you know ‑‑ can also take this and can be ‑‑ they can participate in the policy development by using this space as well.  We don't have Internet today, but also it can facilitate them to be connected.  So also to bring technical solutions as well.

And he also said something very interesting about the chain of values, the digital values, but also he pointed out a few elements about the importance of skills, and then it brings me actually to Casper Klynge, I know Microsoft Corporation, you took the problem seriously this year and you developed this program on digital skills.  But before we go on, this and we would love to know how does this work and how the young people can enter this program and how can they benefit.  Because what we are hearing from the minister.  Young people in developing countries, they do need this, but I believe in the developed world as well.

Before we turn to this, I would like to call Adya and we will try to answer it afterwards.

>> PARTICIPANT: Okay.  Good morning, distinguished panelists.  Thank you for the opportunity.  Greetings from Indonesia.  I'm humbled to raise a question to the panelists.  They have revealed the disparity among students across the globe.  Could the honorable panelists share some initiative to improve the situation that might inspire young people who are watching right now.  Thank you so much.

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Thank you, Adya, for your question.  I think this question goes quite well with what Mr. Sidi Ould Salem underlined about the importance of skills and digital skills that can bring opportunity and to the question I just raised to Casper Klynge, and learn more how people can enter into this program and be part.  Casper Klynge.

>> CASPER KLYNGE: Thank you for your kind word on the beginning supporting your work.  I think with you are the questioning as old as I am, it's a pleasure every time you have an opportunity to engage with the youth and younger people and to our friends who just asked the last question.  I just spent more than three years in Indonesia and Jakarta and it's great to reconnect with a country that I miss quite a lot, especially sitting in Europe now in the middle of winter where it's dark and cold outside.

I think both to the minister but also to your question and the question from the youth panel, we are in many ways in this unprecedented situation that everybody is talking about.  And the conclusion that I think that a lot of us have reached whether we work in civil society or minister in Africa or whether we work for a big technology company like Microsoft, we really need all hands on tech to get us through the global pandemic.

I would say that the global pandemic is the not the main focus area.  That's the transformation that we are seeing around the world which is driven by technology and digitalization.  What COVID‑19 has done, is, of course, accelerate a process that was already there.  And I think in some areas, we have benefited from the increased focus and the need for all of us to come online, because today's not just a nice thing to be.  It's a need for ‑‑ a necessity for all of us to uphold jobs to make sure that our economies will not sell for more than they already are.

And on this one, we really need to make sure that whether we work for government or private company, we need to add all the resources available to do our part to get us through this.

And as you highlighted, our small contribution to this is actually a big initiative that we launched a couple of months ago, a global skilling initiative where the aim is initiative to train more than 25 million people around the world, in ten different learning paths using LinkedIn, and GitHub and Microsoft Learn where we are trying to identify based on data the areas where we will see a gap between skills in demand and what competencies are currently available.

So this is free of charge.  You know, I will be very happy to share a link in the chat here where everybody regardless of where you are sitting in Jakarta, or whether you are sitting in, you know, Africa or South America, in Europe, you can get access to these learning paths, and for a very small contribution, actuals be able to get a certificate when you have completed these different learning opportunities.

And these are things and these are skills that we know also working from our ‑‑ for our customers and partners to come in demand.  So it's things like software developers and graphic designers and IT help desks.  So it might not be ‑‑ it might be quite obvious skill sets but we are seeing that the gap is really increasing between what we have and what will be in demand also again accelerated by COVID‑19.

It's to make it increasingly focused on cybersecurity which I know is a big topic for today's debate.

That is unfortunately the flip side of the coin as we digitalize our societies, we increase the vulnerabilities.  We have seen a number of attacks happening over the last couple of months.  We published in Microsoft several examples of the devastating impact of the cybersecurity attacks, and it doesn't really matter whether you are, you know, a minister in Mauritania, we are all subject to these attacks, and we have to upskill our abilities to mitigate the risks that we have seen from cybersecurity attacks.

That's one area where we work with you.  Can we have a feedback mechanism where we are listening to younger people.  What do you guys need?  Can you find ways of working together with you and providing these skilling opportunities so that we can help drive a more safe and secure society, that will uphold what is, I think, the fundamental need in the 21st century, that is the technologies is really driven by trust.  We have trust between people, between societies and the technologies that we are using.

So we are super delighted.  We trained ‑‑ we just looked at Europe, more than 2.2 million people as of today, but this is not the end of the process, we will continue to push ahead and please feel free to take a look on the opportunities.  We are quite proud of what we have been able to do so far.

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Thank you, Casper Klynge, it was very clear.  And the link that you just mentioned will be very helpful, I can imagine for everybody to have the link and to understand how the skills program that you mentioned, developed by the Microsoft Corporation together with LinkedIn actually allow the young people who are jobless or looking for the job or just would like to become the inventor and have the ideas to get new skills and get digital skills that the minister just mentioned.

(Speaking French).

So exactly this link will be very useful to understand how the young people can enter this program and how in a concrete terms they can benefit, but afterwards, you know, bring to the market new professions and new innovations and new technical solutions as well.

But you mentioned something and I can't imagine that you just mentioned cybersecurity and we can't imagine that in the new skills initiative, the cybersecurity skills are part of it, and then the new skills probably on cyber diplomacy and how we can raise the trust of the society in digital.

So thank you, obviously, for mentioning this and we'll work a lot on this cybersecurity skills as well.

So the link will be very well welcomed and we will put this in the comments of the YouTube channel and the Facebook.

I would just like to remind our audience that we are discussing the role of the young people and the youth activism in digital.  We had a multilingual, somehow it happened in French and English with me trying to translate, but I hope it also demonstrates that Internet is multilingual and we can all, you know, if we have the common values to share and the ‑‑ for example, the very ‑‑ we can all communicate.

I would like for you to put your comments and questions in the chatroom as well, and I would like to turn to Dawn from the Philippines.  And I think you have also a -- the floor is yours.  Please.

>> PARTICIPANT: Thank be you, Yuliya.  And thank you for this wonderful opportunity to join the amazing group of speakers for this event.

My question ‑‑ I think most of my questions are already answered.  So I think I will just focus on emphasizing the young people who are largely dependent on digital services.  So I would like to ask, how does the government see themselves and the private sectors across cybersecurity and online risks in the midst of the pandemic and also in the age of this information?  Thank you.

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Thank you, Dawn.  I don't know who would like to pick this question.  Bocar Ba, would you like to go with the question of Dawn but I also have a question for Bocar Ba from the SAMENA Telecommunications Council.  And I do know, for example, that on the part of the SAMENA council, they work a lot on education, for example, during the COVID.  So telecom companies can do a lot, for example, by giving the platform or allowing, you know, the SMS services, is what is so but I know the vice chair putting on his Twitter that is one of his powers is empowering youth.  Can you give us your perspective and bring in the answer to the Dawn question.

>> BOCAR BA: Thank you very much, Yuliya, and good afternoon to all of you.  First of all, I would like to thank you for giving me the pleasure to be with you today, and to have this conversation today.

I would like to emphasize that this is not ‑‑ this is a conversation that should have happened earlier and we cannot miss it.  Now, let me spend about two or three minutes and look at the global context and the ground realities in which we are today.  Especially from the perspective of the Arab region.  The south Asia and Middle East and north Africa.

Number one, youth population is driving demand for Internet application by fueling the mobile data consumption market.  That's number one.  See commerce and online games application have also grown significantly in the past years due to the popularity among the young population.

The youth is at the heart and is a key driver of a role of innovation with a focus on mobility, internationalization and competitiveness.

And believe it or not, in the region, almost 108 million young people in the Middle East alone, and this is the largest number of young population to transition to digital in the history.

Why am I showing that?  It shows the youth are a tremendous resource and even bigger opportunity and challenge.  Thus, we need to harness this resource for the Next Generation through capacity building and human capital development endeavor or human capital investment.

Now, what are we doing?  And I can speak on behalf of not only the telecom operators but also the private sector at large.  You mentioned at the beginning ITU, I am chairing the private sector of the ITU.  So what the industry is doing to support the youth, innovation to fight, for example, COVID or during the COVID time, and I would like to come up with some example.

The telecom and ICT ecosystem in the region is among the greatest catalyst of growth in many low‑and middle‑income countries.  They are not only part of the ecosystem as a consumer but also as contributors and innovators and the private sectors recognizes that very well.

That's why we see young people developing new technologies to help in the fight against COVID‑19 and this innovation can include, for example, low cost ventilators were developed by young people.  3D printing medical supplies.  Using in some country, shipping containers, or leveraging technologies to innovate, contact tracing as we have seen, for example, in South Korea.  Or remote learning and redistribution of goods to name a few of the examples.  Now coming to the question asked by our colleagues.  To bring this innovation to practical life, and to where they are needed most, a number of collaboratives have been undertaken by telecom operators by the sector, and their strategic partner and the young innovators.

And this collaboration within the industry, have created an enabling environment and this has mobilized youth‑led start‑ups to turn idea into actionable solutions.  I give you just two examples.  In the Arab region, programs such as Zain, which is a telecom operator based in Kuwait and many other countries.  Zain Innovate Center, ZINC, are unlocking opportunities in Kuwait, and entrepreneurial, the ultimate aim of ZINC is helping young innovators turn their idea into productive project that would be marketed locally being regionally and internationally.

The second example, and you have referred that Bahrain, and others they are supporting the Bahrain youth by promoting innovation creativity and the upskilling of future generation of technology expert.

So just to give you an idea what is going on, but, of course, the Undersecretary Fabrizio was talking about leaving to one behind and this is a global trend worldwide across the entire private sector and government.  We should not leave anyone behind.  That means youth.  That means disability.  That means vulnerable people.  We want them to be a part of the entire value chain and that is driven by innovation.

Innovation comes from the youth.  I hope that answers the question, Yuliya.

Thank you.

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Thank you.  Thank you, Bocar.  Thank you a lot for your answer.  And it's showing as well your answer is actually very detailed and showing us that a lot of things are going in the Middle East and the young people who would like to achieve something and would like to be useful in the societies, they can ‑‑ they have institutions, and now there's telecommunication council will probably take into account this youth perspective as well and your members are taking as well.  We will have the links the initiative that you mentioned for them, we will put afterwards in the ‑‑ in comments at the YouTube channel and the Facebook as well.

We also have ‑‑ because now we have the Middle East perspective, let's say, but we have the question in the chatroom about if the Microsoft Corporation projects on skills is a worldwide project or one region.  I think that's a question that Joao from Portugal is bringing to you.

Just very quickly if you could give us this answer.  Yeah, probably it's very interesting for them.

>> CASPER KLYNGE: Could you just repeat that?

>> YULIYA MORENETS: I was just saying that Bocar Ba brought us the perspective of the Middle East, from the telecom industry, but young people are asking, and Joao from Portugal request the problem of the Microsoft skills, is it worldwide or region focuses and do we have different projects.

>> CASPER KLYNGE: Thanks a lot for repeating the question.  This is a global initiative.  I hope I reached everybody to share the link where you can go in and see these different ten learning paths that are available and you can see the different skill sets that we're trying to support.

And a couple of points here.

We hope this will be a contribution to the more traditional educational services that will be, of course in this sphere of government and public sector around the world.

We think with the insights and the links with LinkedIn, and GitHub and Microsoft Learn, it's something that's worthwhile, since we are on the brink of a quadmatic transformation which goes to what Mr. Bocar and the minister mentioned earlier.  We are trying to avoid a digital divide.  I think we have a digital divide locally.  We have it even inside countries of Europe where those who have access to high‑speed broadband, primarily living in the more urban areas, that it’s easy for them to cope with the global pandemic like COVID‑19.  But even in the European countries, we have people that are without the same access, keeping their jobs and contributing to the economies, et cetera.

If we zoom out and look at this at a global level, it's so evident that it accelerates what we are looking at requires us to focus that everybody is on board on the bus.  It shouldn't matter where you live.  We have to ensure that the 3 billion people who don't have access to the Internet, they will get that access.  In the world of economy, had the digital economy, the areas that you are working in will require us to have access to the Internet and have basic and fundamental skills.  I think that's one of the big, big global challenges and I'm very happy we had Fabrizio speak to this in the beginning and I wanted to commend the work of Secretary General for Heil lighting that this is not only an issue for one part of the world, this is really something we into Ed to ‑‑ we need to make sure that we are bridging the gap on digital skills.

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Thank you.  Thank you, Casper Klynge.  The answer is yes, we intend to have this a global initiative and actually work on the digital divide with the initiative on digital skills.

These people left behind, you want the ‑‑ that he mentioned one of the biggest issues of our century, indeed and during the COVID crisis.

I would like to turn to Professor Rolf Weber.  Switzerland is in Europe.  We had a more or less European perspective.  But Switzerland is not part of the European Union.  We have a question from Monica before we go and turn to Professor Weber as well.  Monica.

>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you.  Hello, my name is Monica as you may know by now.  You have touched, like Casper and Bocar touched on this topic of programs but, however, my question is do you plan or down if any regional or international institutions would put forward the young NGOs proposing solutions to the COVID pandemic.  National, European, or United Nations or other investment fund that will be focused on proposals from youngster NGOs for digital solutions related to the caused poverty, unemployment or lower quality of medical services, plus concrete or specialized funding to youngster start‑ups for the digital services in the 2020 situation.

Thank you.  Thank you in advance.

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Thank you.  And we will bring this question first to Professor Rolf Weber as far as what is going on in Switzerland if we want to ‑‑ well, for the innovators, for the start‑uppers.  When we think about actually Switzerland and the digital, we obviously will think about cryptocurrency and about blockchain and the facilities.  It's what all young people have in mind, right?

You are the professor of law but also you are practicing at a well‑known law practitioner.  We want to know how it is in Switzerland for youth to have access to the funds to the start‑up what is going in Switzerland from this point of view.  And then we will go back to the other panelists.

>> ROLF WEBER: Thank you very much, Yuliya for this highly interesting panel invitation.  My position at the end is not so easy, because the legal perspective is usually not the most attractive in a dissertation.  Let me say up front before I turn to blockchain and artificial intelligence, what we see at the university level is a traumatic change in the education and I think it's a change in favor of the younger generation.  Instead of boring lectures in the classroom, we offer our insights now online, and facilitating access not only by Swiss students but foreign students.  And this whole change in the education has caused quite a lot of headache for the older generation.  The fact that it worked out quite nicely, I would say over the last six to eight months shows how important universities are considering the attendance of young people.

Now, I move to your principal question about legal environment as well as the ability of young people to start ‑‑ start‑ups in Switzerland, about a year ago, maybe slightly more, a member of the federal consulate of our government has publicly said Switzerland wants to become a blockchain nation.  And this is of course, a marketing argument, I have to admit, but I do think that this statement goes along with quite a lot of efforts in Switzerland to facilitate the creation of small start‑ups and successful implementation of new business models.  And this does have a certain tradition.  If you look back a couple of years ago, for example, bit coin has chosen to have its head domicile in Switzerland.

And shortly later, there's another currency, and if you look at the seven years ago, he what was really a young leader.  And these two practical examples show that Switzerland tries to be open for new ventures.

The regulatory environments and I won't go ‑‑ the regulatory environment in Switzerland is quite liberal.  It's quite flexible, because we have a new law that covers 20 or 25 legal provisions.  Most parts of the blockchain area, artificial intelligence is not yet regulated.  So we have a lot of room to maneuver to apply artificial intelligence big data analytics.

If I compare the new laws, the European Commission wants to regulate about ten times more provisions than Switzerland, this is also a good sign.  So overall, I do indeed think that the younger generation would see open arms in Switzerland to incorporate companies.

Obviously, as I said, I don't want to start now the marketing campaign for Switzerland.  Switzerland does have different other issues, such as the high living cost.  If a new start‑up is created, but we have a number of organizations supporting new enterprises in the context of COVID‑19 crisis, special funds from the government which otherwise is a little bit less open to blockchain and artificial intelligence and is taking more time to implement blockchain and artificial intelligence.

We have existing and starving startup and youth start‑up such funds do not have to be repaid at all, or only of six to eight years without obligation to pay interest so there's a couple of opportunities are existing in Switzerland.

We also have coming back to the question of Monica, NGOs which support initiatives of the young population and basically, since I don't have time to go more into the details, I would like to invite the younger generation to write many he directly an email if you have any specific question to the actual legal environment in Switzerland.  Thank you very much.

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Thank you, a lot, Professor Weber.  I think you brought two very interesting points and very detailed ones online education and as well on the situation in Switzerland.  We are four minutes left before the end.

So I see a very logical channel, actually, going from the online education and just mentioned by Professor Weber, that opened the door to the new skills that will offer the Microsoft Corporation project on digital skills and then we will have born the new projects and new innovations maybe.

We can turn to the Middle East, or the initiatives that Bocar Ba just mentioned to bring the value to the benefits and actually to raise the value of these innovations, as well as in Switzerland as mentioned by Professor Weber as well and then we go to the policy level mentioned by Prime Minister Sidi Ould Salem, with the incubators that are created.  And so this young participation of young people.

Of course, all is not rose and the voice of young people is maybe not at the level that the young people would like to have, but still there are things and also the most important is to have the access to this information that the executive leaders just brought to us.

Just to maybe add our conversation today, we have one question, and the floor will be opened for your comments but very short in one minute.  We have a question from Leonard Shultz from the youth community by asking and saying that the IGF itself is not the decision‑making space.  How do you take the discussions and the thoughts give and thrown out by the youth communities to the suggestions?

I do have already the answer.  The first answer to this question, with the example of youread.youth.EU.  The young people can advise and influence the policies and the strategies the.EU.  So things are happening, but I would like to turn to our distinguished speakers in they would like very shortly in one minute, please, say what ‑‑ how will they answer this question?

I don't know who would like to have the floor.  The floor is yours play.  Rolf Weber, but very short, please.

>> ROLF WEBER: You already mentioned EURid and I wanted to mention it depends on the older generation to really include the younger generation into the discussions.  About 12 years ago, I have cofounded the Swiss IGF and at that time, there were two or three representatives of older generation.  Now, the Swiss IGF is basically run by five, six, representatives of the younger generation.  So we have been very intentional in including the youth.  I was glad to hand over my task to the younger generation in the meantime.

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Thank you.  We know that you are very active and you stay very active in the Internet Governance sphere.  It's a call to young people to create and engage and be in the regional or the national levels and maybe to create or cocreate a national IGF or the youth IGF.  I don't know if Bocar Ba or Casper Klynge would like to add something, Bocar, please?

>> BOCAR BA: Yes, very quickly.  I would like to frame most of the question into a few answers.  From a private sector perspective, the way that we look at this digital space, we subdivide into the demand size and the supply side.  We are taking care of the supply side, which means building the infrastructure, laying down the fiber and putting 5G in place, integrating the IoT.  That's fine.

Now, we need to stimulate the demand.  The government is playing a role, which is putting together the right policies and regulation to incentivize and increase the demand.

Now, coming to investment and coming to innovation.  Innovation will be driving the future.  The money is available for funding those projects provided that it has sustainability.  Now, concerning the youth, they need so have an alignment as a stakeholder between what they want to do, the private sector and the government.  There are some institutions, IGF is one of them.  ITU also is integrating academia, SMEs, and innovators.  ITU can be a point of contact.  At the broadband for sustainability development, we are promoting a number of initiatives and we have spoken about digital skills and we are creating a Working Group.

There's a gap that has to be filled.  Those entities exist.  The funding is available, but they need much more guidance in which direction no move, and within the given I cannot elaborate but solutions exist.  It's a matter of alignment and organizing agenda together.

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Thank you, Bocar, and well, you know, if you want to have something done ‑‑ and have the influence and participating policy development, please stay engaged at the IGF, at the ITU and institutions is practically what I hear as well in a very short and summarized manner.  I don't know, Casper Klynge.

>> CASPER KLYNGE: I will be very brief.  I know we are running out of time here.  Listen when we look at how the world is going to evolve over the next five years we see that 149 million jobs will be established in digitalization.  Our view and also my personal view is we have to use data in merging demands, future demands with the supply side and that's part of the skilling initiative that we launched in Microsoft, making available if you go to the link that I shared, you can zoom in on individual countries and you can see different sectors what we expect based on our own data, it will be in demand over the next couple of years and how many people with those skill sets that will be available.  I think that's a modern way of doing it.

If you ask me what my wish list will be, I think it's basically three things.  We have to invest more in access, broadband access, making sure that everybody will be able to come online.  The second thing is what we discussed today making sure that we have the skill sets that are required of tomorrow, that's a dual responsibility in my view between the public sector and the private sector.  We are trying to do a small part on our side.

And then the last thing is when you look at all of those activities, we have to make sure unfortunately that we continue to focus on cybersecurity.  We know that the COVID‑19 has hit all of us very hard.  Unfortunately it has not hit state actors and non‑state actors who are using every single minute to attack our critical infrastructure, even the hospitals and the WTO ‑‑ sorry, the WHO, we have seen pretty vicious attacks over the last couple of years.  We have to make sure that we build up our resilience and, again, I think that's a situation that requires all hands on deck.

>> YULIYA MORENETS: Thank you, Casper.  So better ‑‑ you know, stronger upskilling programs and the promotion of these upskilling programs and I think it's very well summarized by James Paek, invest more in education especially in demand skills for the jobs that we don't even know, that they don't exist today but they will exist tomorrow.  I would like to turn to Mr. Minister, we have two minutes left.  And I would say as we started in French.

(speaking French).

We probably have technical issues we will end with this great summary by saying, yes, invest more in education, especially in ‑‑ in demand skills, and maybe this will allow us as well as by bringing the young people in the policy making and in the development of policies and the development of standards by promoting these cyber diplomacy among the young people.  We will try to reduce this gap between those left behind as said by the UN under secretary and all of those very well connected.

I would like to thank our distinguished gets for being present today and being present.  And we apologize for technical issues.  Yes, we are learning and hoping to become professional studio.  We are not there yet, but thank you for being with us.  Thank you for our audience for great summaries in question and thank you for those who followed us online.

We will make sure to bring all of this information in the comments on YouTube channel as well as the Facebook.

(speaking French).

Thank you for being with us and bye‑bye.