IGF 2022 Day 3 NRIs Multistakeholder and ‎multidisciplinary modus operandi of Internet governance: 20 years after the original WSIS where are we?

The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. 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, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

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>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Well, good afternoon.  It is our ‑‑ we are beginning our session from NRIs ‑‑

Okay.  Now we are do.  The session is multistakeholder and multidisciplinary WSIS and what we have been doing the last years.

As we all know, it is ‑‑ I think we are almost 20 years after we started this process this dialogue process back in 2005, as the second part of the WSIS, as a way to develop not only our economies but this a social way, our communities, taking advantage of what Internet is, and has been during the last years for this purpose, particularly.

We know that when we as community started this work, we had found differences between societies, several inequalities, several difference between our particular countries and regions and many of those continue because not all of our societies are the same.  Not all of our societies evolve the same.  And currently, one great example we had was regarding to the pandemic.  As we know, in that part the moment in our history, we had a chance to see that many, many people were preventing to get online to get connected to study, to work, to contact between each other.  And those are the kind of things that were established as a goal from the beginning.  We continue to work with them.

And that particular moment, I remember many people I was talking with many people during these days and many of us, that are participating in that IGF didn't know back then.  Actually, many were present at least in the second phase in Tunis, in 2005.  In my case, I was a member of the Bolivian delegation, I was representing academia., for many of us, it was not concrete, coming from a particular stakeholder and working if academic.

Usually these type of events usually gathered only the government sector, as multilateral events, of course, and some in part by United Nations, but it was an important outcome and an important new way of thinking, the digital cooperation and cooperation in general terms that all the stakeholders will be allowed to sit, to give a voice and to speak about how important the things that ‑‑ in that particular moment we're discussing for all the humanity, and that's why, actually, that second phase provided a definition of what Internet Governance is, an initial definition.

And one of the key aspects of this particular information were regarding the participation of the different stakeholders.  Back then, I remember that, of course, government was identified and civil society was identified and, of course, the private sector as well.

But as part of civil society, we know that the key actor is the civil society and academia, which are parts that are currently working together, always continuing with this kind of discussion.

So after all of these years, we now ‑‑ and let me please welcome our dear panelists.  Hopefully we will have everyone also coming online.  But here in the room, we have Mr. And professor, actually, Flavio Rech Wagner, president of ISOC Brazil, among several other roles that he has and he had in the past.  It's a very esteemed member of the Latin American community.

We also have our colleague Osvaldo Larancuent who comes from Dominican Republic.  He's also the chair of the board in the Dominican Republic Internet Society chapter.  And again, he has an important role in the private sector.

And we have Stephanie Teeuwen, and part of the NRI in the Netherlands, and online, we have Jose Felix Hernandez from Spain, from the initiative in Spain.  And we have ‑‑ I hope that we still ‑‑ that we get connected with Cheryl Langdon‑Orr again from Australia.  And I think we have Jenna Fung from Asia Pacific initiative as well.  But very well related with the youth community in there.

And I hope we are going to have Stefan Berres from Chile.  So the idea in this session we're going to have a couple of rounds initially there with our panelists.  We divide the interventions in the initiatives that were started, we will say after the WSIS in Brazil.  It was one of the initial ones where it was deployed and we have some others like the Spain one that were started around 2010.  And then we would like to ‑‑ Stephanie's as well because that started around that time.  And the other group will be the more recent formed Internet Governance Forums.

So I would like in first round, everyone will have around three minutes and I would like you to cover a couple of questions, perhaps, will allow us to understand this important process, and it will be related to the following, how effective the multistakeholder model has been put in the Tunis agenda.  And the second question I would like you to discuss, the difference and the evolution between the 2005 scenario and the existing one now in 2022, regarding expectations and challenges in multistakeholder approach and digital cooperation in the global, regional and national levels.  Of course, you can address both of the questions or if you prefer, you can have one of them, and we will start with our colleague Stephanie.  Please.

>> STEPHANIE TEEUWEN: Thank you so much for the ‑‑ the introduction.  So my name is Stephanie and I'm from the Netherlands IGF, together with my colleague Mary Lane, we are the co‑coordinators for NIGF, I think it's one the older NRIs.  It was officially founded in 2011, but even before we have a long history of sort of a multistakeholder approach on Internet Governance issues actually since 1998 already.

So this best year, after ten years of NIGF, we decided to come together to evaluate where we have been, where we came from ten years ago in 2011, and where we would like the IGF to see, to like ‑‑ like, the IGF to evolve into.  I think the main key takeaway from this exercise is that the IGF is really the place where all stakeholder groups can meet and engage in dialogue than if there might be disagreements.  It's very interesting to hear from the different initiatives and sort of learn from each other and collaborate in different ways.

And so for us, the IGF really remains the place for multistakeholder dialogue and we are very happy to be a part of this discussion.  Thank you.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Stephanie.

We have Jose Felix online from Spain.  You have the floor, Jose Felix to share your experience on some of these questions.

>> JOSE FELIX HERNANDEZ-GIL: Okay.  Thank you very much, Roberto.  I would like to thank the organizers for giving us the opportunity to speak in this session.

Well, today, I will explain briefly one of the issues that the WSIS worried.  That was related to the Internet fragmentation.  As you probably know, this could be an important difference in the experience for different users on the Internet.  The global Internet, all type of innovation can be developed, and it's been a top priority on the Internet Society.

The development of net has been starting already, following the emergence of all kinds of new services and they were all ‑‑ all the economic activity, but it has also given rise to the threat of fragmentation of the network, that also increasingly in the recent years.

Technical fragmentation has increased some of the main clashes and among others are the actions of the environment.  We have restricted the free access to the whole network.  The increase of a widespread application privatizes the assets and the alternate DNS routes.  The fragmentation has increased for a good reason.  One is probably the developing assets to ensure digital sovereignty, which frequently leads to us in order to protect their people and companies from the strong foreign competition.

Commercial fragmentation is something current to the development of the digital markets in which companies complete, and collaborate to offer their services and a real message to their Internet resources.

Those commercial practices could damage the principles in which they ‑‑ the Internet is based, such as a network majority, and the deployment of network based on proper standard and any blockades from the commercial practice services.

Extension of network‑based on proprietary standard.  This is such a rated when a massive number of devices are introduced on the network.  That is all for my side for the moment.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you.  We will give the floor to Professor Flavio.

>> FLAVIO RECH WAGNER: Hi, everybody.  Thank you for inviting me.  So Brazil had an Internet Steering Committee, and CDR for short and this is back in 1995, more than 25 years of stories.  It was a pioneering initiative at that time.  CGI.br they have a long story.  Success in applying the multistakeholder approach for the discussion and the proposition of public policies related to the Digital Agenda and to the deployment of value wide range of initiatives for the benefit of society.  I do not have time here to go into the details of CGI's many success stories.  Still, I can assure that CGI is strong evidence of how appropriate the multistakeholder is for the Internet governance.  At least it was in Brazil.

Maybe a great part of the success in supporting the evolution of Internet in Brazil is due to the fact that CGI is not a regulatory agency or state entity.  As we know from the experience of international organizations dealing with the governance of technical aspects of the Internet, such as IETF, the success of the CGI initiatives comes from their voluntary and wide acceptance by society.

I would look to come back to one of the success stories of CGI, one which is closely related to the creation of this, one is the creation of the IGF in 2011.  This has been extremely successful as a place for multistakeholder debate in Brazil.

It attracts hundreds of people every year, three‑day long event with many discussions, many workshops.  And it has been important discussion of very relevant legislations that have been created in the countries such as the Brazilian bill of rights and the Brazilian data protection.  For the 2023 Brazilian, we had the submission of 96 workshop proposals coming from all sectors disciplines and many of them deal with current challenges.  We have an internet fighting disinformation, discrimination, and hate speech and discussing digital inclusion.

Maybe you noticed that Brazil had a strong.  We are the only country that hosted two IGFs.

And to the very rich debate we have in the country.  And particularly, at the Brazilian IGF.  And this brings me to a second success of CGI and this is the report of a strong youth movement and they have here a very large delegation representing the Brazilian youth.

Regarding the differences between the 2005 scenario and existing one in 2022, that Roberto was alluding to there was a gray change in the way society relies on the Internet and the Internet is now an integral and fundamental part of our daily lives.  And this change brought a lot of new problems and challenges.  Just let us consider the disinformation, the fake news, hate speech, cybercrime and so on.

So it's not more the paradise that we will thought for the Internet 20 years ago.  It's different nowadays.  And whether it will continue to be the chosen path for the discussion of these many new challenges the Internet is facing, it's something to be seen in the future.  So despite the declaration of supporting the multistakeholder agreement and various documents from the US government and other countries.  We must recognize that there is an increasing pressure on governments and legislators to propose and deploy solutions to those pressing problems the Internet has brought, and in many cases a multistakeholder debate is being left behind.

Solutions to these problems from different jurisdictions and cultures may be even quite different and there is here also a complete risk of internet fragmentation, which is ‑‑ I issue as being exclusionary here in Addis Ababa.  And some of the proposals are targeting the continent.  And it's something that the community here is very worried about.  That's my comments.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Inspiring all the work, great work that was done by Brazil and for sure currently is being done.

Now, we're going to move, as I already said to the more recently formed IGFs.  I will ask you to start here on site with Osvaldo.  And I will go with the following questions:  What roles are the most influential when it comes to defining policies in our different countries and this is because the idea ‑‑ one of the ideas, of course, one of the goals of our dialogue is to actually positively influence to the authorities to the parliamentarians, to the governments, in order to land with concrete actions and concrete policies and it's important to see.  According to your experience, remember that I will ask the same to the other colleagues.  And as I was saying it's really important in all of these.

What can we do to promote the regional and national dialogues about emerging things such as fragmentation and Jose Felix mentioning before, artificial intelligence and Metaverse as well as some others wax is your opinion, Osvaldo.

>> OSVALDO LARANCUENT:  First of all, Roberto, friends, colleagues, not only on site, but on the web.

This is an honor for me to be here, join you in these conversations about multistakeholderism.  Answering your question, in the Dominican Republic, we have at first the implementation of the IGF ‑‑ the local IGF from 2014.  So we are mostly new commerce in the process, but after that, it changed, the way the Digital Agenda and the digital policies have been made in the Dominican Republic.

Bar based on an NGO organization, Internet Society, chapter Dominican Republic, we have been able to construction the dialogue with different stakeholders, not only regulators and private sector but academia, and any communities that have engaged in our discussions.  So when we create those connections we immediately create some type of agreements, MO Us, basic ones in order to establish a line of action that can arise from the opportunities that are given there.

Doing that, we have been able to achieve more than 25 agreements, on the communications and access ‑‑ access, but also with the higher education institutions to establish a network academic based on a digital network and our ISPs that are in the process of joining, the ISPs and the different stakeholders.  So this comes together with the hem of the IGF Secretariat.  We have visited the Congress to connect them with the dialogues that are based on the different initiatives to ‑‑ to construct new laws and these have created an environment that changed in 2016 with a government and that arrive and establish a policy ‑‑ an ICT policy that is named digital republic, and started constructing an instructor based on the dialogue.  Both ‑‑ it was at the end a higher level of connection.  After we signed an agreement to implement the multistakeholder approach to start, that the new government took it for ‑‑ as a map and constructed a Digital Agenda that won the prize, this year ‑‑ the prize ‑‑ category number 6 enabled environment, you are our digital agenda and created the opportunities to continue improving the life of everyone on the framework that constructed the digital hanger for us.

So the point of view of the expectations on those cooperations, they ‑‑ they ‑‑ the dialogue and obviously, an open government, open people, that are ‑‑ that have ideas to influence government, it must be based on a dialogue.  And that dialogue, the framework to do that has been provided for the IGF, based on the multistakeholder approach that creates a digital inclusion for everyone in the construction of the different instruments to construct the digital transformation process in an inclusive way.  Thank you.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Osvaldo, for your great conversation regarding this, and now we are going online and Cheryl, I hope you can hear us and I hope you have opened your microphone.  If the colleagues can help us to verify that Cheryl has authorization to open the mic.

>> CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: There we go.  Excellent.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: We hear you.

>> CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: It’s taking a little while to get unmuted.  They are not keen to let us in and certainly they don't want to see must because they won't allow video either.  Interesting.  Never mind.  You can have a tiny itsy‑bitsy screen shot of me.  Cheryl Langdon‑Orr, the current guise of our national initiative is called Netthing.  And I want toes answer some of the points that have been raised but to some extent, many of the things that have been said, particularly by the colleagues in Brazil and what we recently just heard then, are very similar to our pathway.

Australia, it the national initiative in IGF, or predating WSIS has been a firm and avert supporter of multistakeholderism.  So as anyone who was in the original WSIS will remember, the Australian government was very firm on where we are now and now WSIS are turned out.  Not much has change, but we believe it even more so since then.

In terms of our involvement in other fora, you will note that we are very much card‑carrying members of the multistakeholderism club card, and we certainly think that in recent times our return to avert organization from the multistakeholder approach of our national initiative has put us in a continuing good state and growth for the conversation about Internet and I do mean all things Internet, not just governance per se within our borders and across the globe and things like.

Just a reminder that Australia as a key supporter of early IGFs, and the ccTLD operators continue funds and resources to continue in difficult times.

In our NRI, though, we held in our first guise of what was in AUIGF and annual events between 2012 and 2016.  The ccTLD operator AUDA was host and the home for things back then.  But in its own right, committed to multistakeholderism and, indeed, ensured that the significantly interested parties regarding the Internet within Australia were involved within the organization and creation of the events and also where its conversation is headed.

We had a little hiatus after 2016, with ‑‑ in the middle of 2017, in the absence of an ongoing commitment to AUIGF continuing and continuing as a national initiative at that stage.  The government itself, with its newly appointed ambassador for cyber affairs gathered representatives of the key stakeholders, in other words, a multistakeholder group together in our national capitol, Canberra, and made clear that in their view, the value of having a multistakeholder conversation that an IGF might hold, a national IGF offered, was too great a thing to not continue.  And with their support, the current version of our Australian IGF was born.

We had a kickoff meeting in Canberra in 2018 ‑‑ towards the 2018 with about 180 participants across the globe ‑‑ I'm sorry, across country and then the following year we had our fourth Netthing.  That shows the importance, including to decision makers of the value of multistakeholder.  Our organizing committee is, indeed, now and has been since 2018, when we first formed, an independent and very multistakeholder group making sure we are at the table in the organizing committee, the full range from academia, business, government, civil society, industry, and technical friends, including our ccTLD operators back at the table again, and as a prime if not I would declare a major sponsor for the event.

And most importantly, our conversation has very much looked at topics that we were asked to mention here today, most recently on the 27th and the 28th of this month before last, we did have a lot to do of our major focus was, indeed on Internet fragmentation, and one of the most popular internationally based panels in a fully virtual environment was, indeed, on that topic.

And with that, I best stop.  Thank you.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you.  We will go now with Jenna but first I would like to add another question, Jenna, because of your involvement with ‑‑ because of your involvement with the regional ‑‑ the Asia Pacific and it's important also to know, what do you think about the linkage between the local dialogues and the regional ones which is another important thing that we need to analyze in terms of this whole model and the evolution of our dialogues.  I hope you can have the mic ‑‑ you have the floor, Jenna.

>> JENNA FUNG: Thank you very much for having me on the panel.  Can you hear me well?

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Very well.

>> JENNA FUNG: Thank you investigation.  As an individual that works closely with youth in Asia Pacific, I have quite a few questions today.  Internet infrastructure and the issues in cyberspace itself are cross border, and it's for all stakeholders to make consensus decision in order to achieve the principles and the mandates that establish multistakeholder community is very much needed.

We will have discussions to facilitate dialogues with different stakeholder and to discuss public policies and issued to key elements of Internet Governance and eventually produce outputs that are ‑‑ that can reflect our opinion and the real issues at local or regional level.  However, in the existing model, sometimes our ‑‑ the issues that we identify may not directly translate into legally binding policies.  And that's the thing we have to closely gauge.  Of course, like public discourse, is needed but depending on the scope of topic, often the general public, they are lacking experience or knowledge to actually contribute to the issue of policy making.  There's work to be done that Polly making and public policy itself is also accessible to all stakeholders other than focusing on and empowering them with, like raising their awareness of Internet Governance‑related issues.  If we want younger generations to participate in the legislative process, we also have to focus on empowering them and make this process access to them.

We are in the time of process right now.  There are lots of conflicts and like geopolitical tension between many countries at this moment.  Within our region, we are facing digital divide, because obviously, for example, the development of East Asia is different from Southeast Asia or islands and Pacifics sometimes, like the issues they are facing are very different, especially in the context of Asia Pacific, as well as digital literal or access to phishing information.  These are all the challenges we face.  We are currently in an environment that are evolving rapidly and the issues or the environment becomes more complex with a more intertwined relations.

So in this sense, as someone heavily engaged youth NRIs or regional NRIs, I believe there's lots of work to be done on capacity building, and focusing on collaborating with different NRIs or different stakeholders to get more tangible output from the region.  So the concerns from marginalized groups can be reject, and people at high level, at regional global level can raise the concern.

Some countries or territory like Myanmar, their fundamental human rights are being challenged and in that circumstance, often when there's lots of issues, it's hard for them to solve themselves and we need the international community to help with that.

So I think we're taking advantage of our community that is governed by a multistakeholder approach, how can we bridge the gap between countries and regions and how can we gap between knowledge and expertise of certain stakeholder groups.  That's something that we could also consider.  Yeah.

I think that's it for me today.  Thank you.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Jenna.  I will go with the third round, very fast round of interventions.  I would like you to face a couple of questions that I have prepared.  Can we think of proven examples in which multistakeholder dialogue was effective to push changes in the Digital Agenda such as the ones Osvaldo was mentioning in his initial intervention?  What are the expectations for the future of the globe while regional and national dialogues concerning that we have in front of us this digital global compact and perhaps as a way to make the dialogue evolve and the multilateral model to have found an opportunity to perhaps even the local dialogues changed in a way of providing more outcome-oriented results.  What are your opinion about that?  We can go in the same horde.

>> STEPHANIE TEEUWEN: Thank you very much, I think to start off in terms of the importance of multistakeholder approach and also the sort of proven examples of the multistakeholder approach, even though we have all of these local and national.  I think it shows the versatility of multistakeholderism, and then in terms of future expectations for the multistakeholder and for the IGF, within the Netherlands, we sort of formed our vision are for the IGF in 2025 and one the things is we hope it leads to more tangible and guiding results with concrete proposals for national, internet policies and that it tends to inspire substantive dialogue and also with other UN forums that can be applied nationally, and regionally.  I think it's important to keep these types of the discussions within the Internet community, where we can come together for a substantive dialogue and to think about these very challenging issues of our time.  Thank you.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Stephanie.  We can go with Osvaldo now.

>> OSVALDO LARANCUENT:  As a citizen of the Dominican Republic, I have to admit that there must be an action from the government to be open to hear the stakeholders.  That's the first point.  The second is the need for security for a mindset about collaboration, from the different stakeholders, especially from academia, from the technical communities, because they have to fight ‑‑ to fight for ‑‑ to be a part of the discussions to ‑‑ to assess the politicians and the regulators in order to align them with the technical possibilities of the same thing can be done.

This kind of discussions not only in our countries, or in the regions but in the global Internet governance forum, our channels to hear what different countries ‑‑ the challenges that arise from these discussions and maybe inspire to find new ways to communicate in a better way to achieve this opportunity.

So I think this is kind of dialogue has been effective through time, but it's a maturity process?  In the Dominican Republic, we have the Digital Agenda since 2005, where our government was implied there.  It was very positive until 2016.  After we get together and the international society assigned the dialogue.  And the government signed to adopt this instrument and the new government who arrive not only took the work but improved it by including more than 1,000 people from different communities, not only presidential, but online using the app platform, but also going to the different towns to present the document to the different stakeholders.

Many of the current ministers, technical officials in the public sector are part of the Internet Society.

Not all governments are open to discussion.  I know that.  I hear every day colleagues feeling about this, but we have to try and in a moment of maturely, things are going to come through the way we wish.

Yes, thank you.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Osvaldo.  Now we can go online and let's hear now to Jose Felix.  We have just two minutes to this second round.  Can we hear Jose Felix, please?

>> JOSE FELIX HERNANDEZ-GIL: Okay, I believe now it is working.  Okay.  Thank you very much, Roberto.  Yes, it's for final comments, I believe NRIs can have a very relevant role for the contribution of the evolution of Internet.  Well, at least our experience has been that we can influence ‑‑ influence a lot differ stakeholders and this can also have an influence internationally.

So very briefly, what has been done is including all the relevant issues for discussion, and I'm admitting that we organized.

The second theme, which is very important is to try to involve in this meeting all the relevant stakeholders and the representatives from the environment, representatives from the main industries, civil society, and the academia.

So far we have been very successfully active in this.  Third tried to promote the upper peer relation with the contribution of all the stakeholders.  That is it.  Thank you very much.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Jose Felix.  We can go with Cheryl now.  Cheryl, your final remarks, please.

>> CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Thank you so much.  Building on what was said before and again, echoing very much Osvaldo was also referring to in his intervention, Australia benefited greatly, not only in the outreach in the community, but in our policymakers and the government representatives who go beyond our borders and into ITU discussions, WSIS discussions, all of those sorts of things.  We have done that deliberately for a long time.  At one point we ended to be a smaller group of people that walked to go and tape down to can berry to represent the views of our communities, better that be chip manufacturers or other parts, et cetera.

And we found the building of trust and understanding and perspectives through the Internet Governance board that we run and are involved in regional and globally.  It has allowed us to call on each other, and if we don't agree, go through a conversation, which helps drive an informed set of outcomes, which may not be a model that every country can follow, but is certainly a model that many countries should aspire to.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thanker thank you very much.  Jenna, can we have your final remarks, please.

>> JENNA FUNG: Sure, I believe we should take advantage of our roles to make sure that capacity building is done and in order to achieve more answerable output together with common goals and purchases.  I would like to add the final thing, like Exxon, as they pull from the Asia Pacific.  There are things we can do locally other than actively participating in the global dialogue like this.

So taking the initiative so that some kinds of formalities of different stakeholder groups are needed, and then there's a lot of work to be done.  I'm not only referring to this at ‑‑ but like the people or the manpower or time that they can contribute to something that are the challenges that we are facing.

So I believe like collaborations between NRIs is very important and when the youth IGF was concluded in Singapore, this year the youth take an initiative to connect with all the youth at Asia Pacific.  They intend to make it annually and then set topics coordinate with each other to see how much they can participate in regional and global discussions so they can represent the local community and in their own countries.

So I believe there is a lot of things, mean small details can be done in different stakeholder group, and I would like to mention that the youth in Asia Pacific put together a report that includes the youth opinions on different Internet Governance issues, including how they think we should be governed and the multistakeholder approach and youth leaders put a statement by the end of that report by mentioning what kind of challenges youth initiative are facing when they are trying to contribute to policy discussion process, as well as arranging capacity building activity for newcomers.

So I think these are things we should address, and then lastly, we always say we need to engage more stakeholder and in order ‑‑ other than governments.  I think we need more private sector because often those are direct control.  They have direct control over policies or regulations of, like, private policies of those private entities in cyberspace and we need their participation in other districts to get everyone's voice heard.  Often our opinion, it's not only direct to governments, but also to other stakeholder, for example the private sector.

I think we need more stakeholders to participate, that ‑‑ that is not referring to a particular stakeholder group only.  In general, we need more engagement from all stakeholder groups.  That's it for me.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you have.  Thank you.  And Flavio, you close the round.

>> FLAVIO RECH WAGNER: Thank you, Roberto.  I already presented that both Brazilian steering committee itself and the Brazilian IGF have shown at least in Brazil that the multistakeholder dialogue was essential for advancing very important discussions in the country, such as our bill of Internet rights and our data protection law.

Recording my expectations for the future of global, regional and national dialogues, we all here believe in the multilateral model.  We are a like‑minded community and so we are preaching to the converted.

So the NRIs must find ways to improve their relevance and not only the pressing issues of our time, the impact of A I. and so on, but mostly the concrete ways forward for the solution of those problems.  That's the main question, I think.

And for that, among other things we must ensure that governments and the private sector take part this these debates in a more meaning way.  The policymakers, they must be present here in this dialogue.  This will improve the common understanding of all stakeholders that may be the consequence of bad regulations, or public policies and thus help achieve some consensus on the best way forward.

From the experience we had in Brazil, I would definitely say that multistakeholder and NRIs are essential as a focal point at digital cooperation.  We don't speak of only Internet Governance.  We speak of digital cooperation on a much broader sense and for the construction of the Global Digital Compact.  We hope that this communication will be an integration of the Global Digital Compact.  It remains to be seen, yeah?

We have seen very relevant info, come from our multistakeholder model and debates and this is what is to be taken at the global level.  As I said before, not only the internet but also the multistakeholder itself is facing a great challenge these days and we need to keep and reinforce the multistakeholder model, as the future path for future debates and I would say this is not a given nowadays.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much, Flavio.  Well, we are at just about ‑‑ a little bit over the time that we have assigned, but in any case, I would like to give a minute perhaps for local intervention and one online intervention.

Please.  We have two.  Please.

>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you very much for allowing me.  First of all, I would like to congratulate you and also panel for organizing this very important and timely session.

Due to time constraint, I will go directly to my point.  I have a four‑point discussion regarding the NR I.  One is what is our strategy for UN Secretary General?  What is our strategy for the NRI site?

The second one is we gather our best practices under the NRI and this is evidential‑based advocacy and so we need to gather all best practices for the NRI.  The third one is that we need to develop an NRI strategy firm for you, sir.  And the fourth one is what is our preparation for WSIS 2025 review process?

So this is my four point intervention and I must congratulate the Secretariat, and I'm so grateful to hear Michael for supporting all over the world, regarding the NRI.

And again, I would like to give introduction, I come from Bangladesh IGF and we have created already a youth IGF, and parliamentarian IGF, as well as Bangladeshi school of Internet Governance.  Thank you very much.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Yes.

>> I will go directly to the point, since we are speaking about 20 years of WSIS, I would like to bring to your attention and your memory in the case of those who lived that, that another subproduct of the WSIS was the declaration in April 2006, by the General Assembly of the UNs, now known as the Internet day on May 17th.  We have been celebrating that in the suburb since 2009.  So we have done it 14 consecutive years.  And we have a whole week where we get together, the multistakeholder parties not to discuss policy.  That is true.  It's different from the IGF, but to share experiences, know about advances in net technology and so on.  So we have a full Internet ‑‑ sorry, a full week of Internet day talks, events, workshops and do on.  So I will thank all the IGF and their NRI organizers also think about May 17 as another excuse, if you will to get our people together and to celebrate other parties of the Internet.  Thank you.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you.

(Off microphone comments)

>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you.  I'm Nigel Cass Amoor from the Caribbean telecommunication, we convened the Caribbean Internet Governance Forum.  And this year we convened the 18th annual Caribbean Internet Governance Forum.  We started in 2005, and our purpose has always been to foster common Caribbean positions on Internet governance models.  I see some proposals now that we get some concrete proposals out of the IGF.  What I'm saying is that we 18 years of experience doing that in the Caribbean, and we are willing to contribute as much as might be needed ‑‑ necessary.  Thank you.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: Thank you very much.  One of the oldest regional spaces of dialogue in the world.  Well ‑‑

>> FLAVIO RECH WAGNER: Just a quick answer to the proposal from the gentleman from Bangladesh.  Yes, there's a concrete strategy in the direction of the Global Digital Compact.  I hope there is ‑‑ I see Anya here and the NRIs have a coordination structure.  I'm sure we can think of many ideas, collecting best practices as you mentioned to try to see how the NRIs can bring concrete contributions to the Global Digital Compact.  And I'm sure the MAG and the newly formed leadership panel will do that too, how they can be heard by the Global Digital Compact.  I hope the NRIs will be a part of this strategy bringing contributions to the contract.

>> ROBERTO ZAMBRANA: So many things to say, so little time to say them.  At least I want to comment that, indeed, the dialogue, the multistakeholder model is still vibrant, even though we have been looking at several changes regarding the thematic, for example, that was established back in 2006, and all over these years the change of things that we are as community interested to discuss.

The actor as well, some of you were mentioning that the private sector should continue to be at the table.  When this dialogue was started, the main actor as a representative of this sector was telecommunication companies.  Now, we know that the main actors are OTTs, platform owners, et cetera.  Actually, very influential in the current ecosystem.  Spain had a chance to bring to the table these sectors in the last IGF, and as they did, I'm sure some other countries will start discussing these new subjects, inviting the new actors and Jenna was suggesting.  So I think it will continue growing and continue constituting and continue getting hopefully a good momentum for the digital pact in the future and evolve member.  Thank you very much to my dear panelists, Osvaldo, Flavio, Stephanie.  Hopefully in the online we have Jose Felix, and Jenna.  Thank you very much for your attendance and we will see you soon.  Bye‑bye.