IGF Consultations Full Transcript
Geneva
13 May 2009
Note: The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the 13 May 2009 open consultations of the IGF. 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.
[ Gavel. ]
>>CHAIR DESAI: Good morning. Welcome. Let me first apologize for being late. I was trying to sort out some logistical issues about rooms, et cetera, but failed to sort it all out, because there are too many meetings going on in Geneva right now.
Let's begin. I'm very happy to start these open consultations. This time, we have a newly constituted Multistakeholder Advisory Group, and the members of this group are present here to listen to these consultations. And I'm very happy that this has been done and I want to thank the secretariat and, of course, the -- New York and the Secretary General's office for getting all of this organized. We have two things basically that we have to talk about today. One is the organization of the meeting in Sharm El Sheikh. And the second is the review process, the IGF review process.
May I suggest that we begin with the first, see how that goes. We have already had some discussions on this when we met in February. And then see how we can leave enough time for a substantial discussion on the second part, which is the IGF review process, on which, undoubtedly, many of you will wish to contribute.
If that is agreeable, then I would like to begin the session straightaway with the discussion of the program and agenda of the Sharm El Sheikh meeting.
We have had a paper on this before with us through the Internet for some time. But I'm going to request Markus to perhaps just walk us through that and frame the issues so that we can have our discussions.
Markus.
>>SECRETARY KUMMER: Thank you, Chairman.
In preparation for the meeting, we have received comments on the program paper, seven comments all in all. And from these comments, there are some common threads that emerged in the first phase of the process.
In general, you will recall the innovations we introduced in Hyderabad were well received, but there was also a notion that there was room for improvement in some areas, and including the following, but they're not limited to the following, that is, the involvement of young people, gender balance, geographical balance, the linkages between the main sessions and the other events, as well as remote participation.
It was also pointed out that the cross-cutting themes of development and capacity-building had been somewhat neglected and that more attention should be paid to these issues. And a new notion that came up was that it was felt that some of the issues had progressed to the point they should now be dealt with in other formats, and roundtables were mentioned as one of these formats.
Now, from the comments that we have received, it was also clear that there was a need to discuss this further. And there are many questions related to the use and format of roundtable discussion.
As currently planned and mentioned in the program paper, these sessions could be held in a room set up for a large-scale roundtable discussion which could be moderated with participants taking part as equals.
The meetings would be open to both participation and observation. And three possible uses for roundtable sessions have been given. One, issues where there is reasonable chance of participants agreeing to take action together. Or issues which would benefit from comparing and contrasting approaches and best practices that have been successful or provide good lessons learned. Or, lastly, on sharing and discussing best practices, challenges, and solutions, various needs, and also maybe recommendations.
Issues related to this format include the empowerment and protection of children online, but also -- and also the accessibility for people with disabilities.
One possible way forward that was mentioned, that the respective dynamic coalitions could be asked to help prepare these roundtables. There was also a general notion emerging that due care should be taken to ensure a reasonable balance of stakeholders' viewpoints that should be achieved.
I wonder whether we cannot also briefly walk through the list of workshops we received.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Sure.
>>SECRETARY KUMMER: As it is closely related.
As you will also recall, that we had agreed last February to not ask for fully fledged workshop proposals, but more workshop sketches, themes, ideas. The reasoning behind it was that last -- in the previous years, it proved very difficult once people had advanced very much in their planning, had already asked people, possible panelists, and they were very much embedded with their workshops and did not want to merge. So this year, we asked for themes rather than elaborate proposals, with the idea that it would be easier to merge similar proposals in a very early stage.
The deadline we had set was 21st of April. And we received within the deadline around 120 proposals, which is 20% more than we had last year.
We asked the proponents to choose the category. We said the main IGF themes: Access, security, diversity, and so on, including the cross-cutting priorities of capacity-building and development.
Some of these categories may be rather arbitrary, and it can be discussed whether a proposal could be here or there. But we tried to make sure that we were consistent with previous use of these categories. So, for instance, accessibility for people with disabilities could be argued it could be classified under "access," but in the past, we had dealt with this theme under "diversity." So we tried to stick to those.
And we asked some workshops to be reclassified. And when going through the list, there may be a need for others to be put under another heading.
Let me briefly go through the various categories. Under "Access," we have 17 proposals; under "Diversity," six; "Openness," there are 20 proposals; on "Security," 23; on "Critical Internet Resources," 18; And on the cross-cutting themes, "Development," there are 15, and "Capacity-Building," 21.
We have also listed other proposals under "other events," they're not strictly speaking workshop proposals. They are Best-practice forums. They are dynamic coalition meetings. We had not asked for them to be submitted by the same deadline, but we thought, for transparency's sake, we list them nevertheless at this stage. But there will be more of this kind of event will come forward, especially also the dynamic coalition.
Then looking through the proposals more in details, there are certain clusters emerging. And that may also indicate where stakeholders feel a priority. Under "access," we could say a cluster of about eight workshops deals with connectivity, but also the economic crisis and the broadband rollout as a means to stimulate economic growth and to fight the crisis.
Two proposals under "Access" are with mobile access.
On the "Critical Internet Resources," we have eight dealing with transition from IPv4 to IPv6 and six dealing with either ccTLDs or new gTLDs. And then there are two more that deal with critical Internet resources in a more general way.
Under "Diversity," we get a very strong regional flavor. There are six proposals dealing with Arab language issues, another five proposals deal with local languages and knowledge, there's one proposal dealing with disabilities, and two proposals dealing with IDNs.
And there is one which deals with diversity in terms of gender, applying a gender lens to the Internet and citizenship.
Under "Openness," we have seven proposals dealing with intellectual property issues, eight proposals dealing with principles and rights, and seven with openness in more general terms.
Having said that, I counted also some of these proposals that are, in the present classification, classified under "other issues," such as access. But we read it more as openness.
Security, then, we find strong, again, a very, very strong interest on child protection or child empowerment, 16 in total dealing with issues related to the protection of children. However, again, eight of these have been listed under capacity-building.
And 13 proposals are dealing with cybercrime and security. And six proposals with privacy and data protection.
And on the capacity-building, we have two that deal in general terms with education, online education and so on, nine that deal with tutorials, capacity-building in a more -- narrower sense related to Internet governance, and four, finally, dealing with capacity-building in a more general sense.
Lastly, under "development," we have three proposals dealing with I.T. and environment, three the sustainable development, and three in more general terms and also regional terms with development.
On the "other events," I will not go too much into details. They, again, deal with various of these themes we had. There is also a proposal for a roundtable on sustainable development. The role of the Internet in climate change and other environmental issues has been classified under "development."
I think I will stop at that. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Who is going to take the floor? On -- yes, Adam.
>>ADAM PEAKE: Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, everybody. Adam Peake from Glocom in Tokyo.
I sent a contribution to the IGF Web site responding to the current draft of the program document making a suggestion that a roundtable be given over to national and regional IGFs so that they could discuss their various issues.
I think there's broad agreement that these regional and national meetings have been a great success from the IGF process to date. And the roundtable format would be a great opportunity to share knowledge and experiences and general expertise and the challenges that each are trying to -- well, each are facing and each are trying to overcome.
And so it's really that I hope the MAG will consider this proposal during their deliberations and see if we can have a roundtable meeting that is made available for regional and national IGF organizers and participants.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: I saw a reference in the note to a session for national/regional meetings.
Would you like to clarify that, what it was they were talking about?
>>SECRETARY KUMMER: Yes. We had planned a session right at the beginning. But I think you are talking about something different, to have a different format where the national and regional IGFs could interact with each other and develop their initiatives further?
>>ADAM PEAKE: Exactly.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Yes, Adam.
>>ADAM PEAKE: Exactly. There's a reporting-in session, I think it's noted, for the first day. But rather than simply reporting to the whole community, that the people who are organizing these meetings can essentially share with each other what their experiences are. I think there will be common experiences, common challenges, and probably common solutions that they can learn from.
And it's -- I think it's -- they are in and of themselves the national and regional activities are in and of themselves something that we should try to take forward as a success of the IGF and encourage them -- encourage their development for future years. And perhaps the roundtable would be a good means to do that.
>>CHAIR DESAI: (No audio.)
>>FRANCE: Yeah, thank you.
I'm Bertrand de la Chapelle, from France.
Just a follow-up on what Adam was saying.
Actually, at the Hyderabad meeting, there was an agreement among the organizers of the national -- of most of the national and regional IGFs to set up a dynamic coalition to get them together and grow the IGF network. And I think that it is the intention of the participants to organize a meeting of the dynamic coalition that would have basically the purpose that Adam proposed.
So this is the reason why, as there were two different processes, we didn't put forward a proposal for a workshop, as we intended to have, in any case, a dynamic coalition meeting then.
>>CHAIR DESAI: (No audio.)
>>IGC: (No audio) -- Internet Governance Caucus.
I would like to commend Adam and Bertrand for that idea. But I would like to suggest that we also include the IGF remote hubs. There will be quite a number of them this year. And if they could somehow work together to include those that can't actually physically be present, that would be a good idea, as well as on the remote participation.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: George Papadatos.
>>GEORGE PAPADATOS: Thank you, Chair, and good morning.
Regarding the themes approach in the further clustering of having all the similar themes put together, I would like to ask Mr. Kummer, how is this envisaged? Are they supposed to put forward abstracts? Are they committed to the theme? How is this going to take place? And do you foresee any difficulties? If you could elaborate on that. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Markus.
>>SECRETARY KUMMER: Yes. Thank you. This is an excellent question.
And I don't have the answer to this question. I think this is very much something we need to discuss. I mean, this was just done for purposes of classification, to see where we do have a strong interest. And the fact that we have 16 proposals dealing with the protection of children seems to indicate there is a very strong interest in this particular issue. And there are other issues as well.
We had mentioned before the protection of children could be one of these issues, where we develop a roundtable format, that is, we lock all these people into a room, allow others to participate with them, and let them discuss and come out maybe with some concrete idea, some concrete proposals, with a catalogue of best practices, whatever they find would be most useful to further the cause.
But there was a general notion that yet another ten workshops on the same issue may not be the appropriate way forward.
I think the clustering helps, first and foremost, to see where we have issues with very strong interest amongst stakeholders.
>>CHAIR DESAI: IGC.
>>IGC: Yes. Thank you. And this time I am speaking for the Internet governance caucus.
As long as our colleague has brought up the issue of themes, I know that while child safety, of course, is extremely important and will be a priority, we have also noticed that rights and principles in the Internet is also a theme that has workshop proposals, has generated a lot of interest. And I would like to read a statement for -- a very short statement for the Internet Governance Caucus.
The Internet Governance Caucus notes the statement from the program paper, quote, "Some favored the inclusion of Internet rights and principles as a cross-cutting theme," end quote.
This concurs with the widespread support for this concept from various stakeholder groups at the February open consultations. However, we are concerned at the decision to exclude it as a theme this year on the grounds that there is, I quote, "No established definition of this theme, and that, therefore, it should not be discussed at the Sharm El Sheikh meeting," end quote.
We at the IGC are surprised by this reasoning for exclusion and request that the MAG revisit this subject, given the wide support which has been expressed. Given that these matters are specifically contained in the Tunis Agenda, paragraphs 70 and 42, we do not see lack of definition as a reason for exclusion. However, if it is not possible to include this concept until it is defined within the IGF, we ask that the IGF 2009 include a prominent plenary space to establish this definition in preparation for more comprehensive discussions in future debates and meetings.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: The program paper does not propose that. It just reports that some people said that. It is not a proposal. It is simply a reporting. And let's discuss it. There's nothing -- we are here to decide these things now. But there is -- I don't read the program paper as saying that this is a proposal, but simply as some people felt this, some people felt that. That's it.
Maybe people wish to comment on -- start commenting now. Let us not get too caught up in the workshops, because we have the agenda on the main meeting, including themes.
ICC.
>>ICC-BASIS: Thank You, Chairman. On behalf of the members of the International Chamber of Commerce and Business Action to Support the Information Society, and ICC initiative, I'm pleased to provide some additional comments. As you know and as the secretariat has wonderfully captured, we did provide written comments, so I won't repeat what was already captured in the program paper.
Looking at the schedule, I'd like to suggest that on Sunday, the 15th of November, where there is the "Setting the Scene" session, which we think is going to be very useful, particularly for new participants, that we keep in mind that that might be an area where, in fact, some parallel workshops would be useful as well, because not everybody will need to be in the "Setting the Scene" session.
In general, we have consistently requested a minimal number of conflicting events so that people can truly take advantage of what's happening in the main hall. In this respect, we would just put that idea forward as well.
On the national and regional meetings, I've heard, you know, inputs and written contributions about how that would be done. Some have referred to it as a reporting session.
We believe that the national and regional initiatives are an incredible success and have been increasing in the past year. And Sharm El Sheikh is an important opportunity to highlight what those initiatives are about, how they're structured, the kind of outreach that they're accomplishing. Just in terms of creating useful momentum in the day, we would suggest that they not just be reporting sessions, but also allow for interaction, because that's how some of the participants will be able to learn more about the initiatives and go on to replicate in their own settings.
In the afternoon, the opening ceremony session is generally a more formal session, and so following that by a keynote panel session, again, in order to keep the momentum going for the day and keep people engaged, we would suggest that the keynote panel session be shaped in a way that will engage the audience as well and have interaction among a group of people on the panel instead of perhaps having too small a group up there and having people spend the afternoon with, basically, people talking to them instead of having an opportunity to engage.
In addition, on the keynote panel, we would note that a diversity of views will be important, so we carry through the multistakeholder viewpoint and perspectives that we are having throughout the program.
A couple of comments on the workshops in brief. I'll have additional input on those in more detail. First of all, I think that the early posting and the new process that has been used this year is welcomed and has given us all an early opportunity to see what topics people are interested in working on and contributing to sessions or workshops at the IGF this year. So we think -- we welcome that effort and thank the secretariat for the effort to pull all of that together.
There are groups of topics that clearly can be merged or would be better served for the various angles that people have proposed in their workshop proposals by a broader discussion among a range of the organizers and other experts. So we would encourage looking into that.
Also, as we have consistently said, the balance in terms of the number of side workshops and other kinds of events should be considered carefully in order to make sure that the main session rooms are well attended and there's good participation across the board in the events going on.
We would also suggest that, as was done last year, some of the workshop proposals may fit nicely into main sessions. And giving the organizers an opportunity to do a side event or to participate in organizing main sessions along with the MAG in the open consultations and the secretariat would be a useful option this year. Again, we'd also just like to note that there are a number of new organizers who have put forward proposals. And this is welcomed. This is excellent. We support an equilibrium between repeat organizers and new organizers, and also perhaps giving an opportunity for entities that have put forward several proposals to make a choice or merge some of their workshops would be a useful way forward.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Okay. In the back from APC, I think.
>>ASSN FOR PROGRESSIVE COMM: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just looking at the program and trying to pick up on this issue of Internet rights and principles, it seems that on Tuesday, the 17th, the whole afternoon session is being devoted to report-backs from roundtables and workshops. I'm wondering if that's the best use of time there in the sense of it may well be that a thematic of Internet rights and principles could also be run on that afternoon.
It seems that -- I'm not sure what the rationale is of excluding it from plenary debate. But with a significant groundswell around it, it seems that every effort should be made to accommodate it formally in the program and not simply as one of a number of workshops.
I don't know -- it's just not clear to me what the rationale is at this stage. And I would caution against a situation in which those people who are -- feel strongly about it and do not see it reflected in the program adequately take it outside of the forum.
That, I think, is a distinct possibility. And it's something which the IGF should be aware of.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Anybody else wants to comment on this issue? We have -- we have a little certain discussion, is this necessary, first, on the overall theme of the Sharm El Sheikh meeting. There are proposals. One was in terms of opportunity for all. Another was in terms of Internet rights and principles. A third was to see where we could connect it with the economic downturn.
Right now, we actually do not have any clarity on, if you like, the headline for the Sharm El Sheikh meeting and I would like some feedback from you on what is it that you would like to see as the headline for this meeting.
Second, there were issues about how to handle the question of rights and principles, and I don't think we came to any conclusion. There is one proposal, which is that we take the session which has been earmarked for reporting-in and use that for a -- presumably session on Internet rights and principles. We can discuss later as to what form that would take.
I just wanted to emphasize that one of the reasons that the session for reporting in was put in was the feeling that we had -- one of the areas where we had not perhaps done as well was to connect the workshops with the main sessions and that we needed to clear some space for that.
Our experiment in doing it in the morning in Athens, frankly, didn't work. And the idea that it would be somehow taken into account by the presenters in the -- also may have helped in few cases.
We are still struggling with that whole -- so let's not lose sight of that goal, that we have to find a way of connecting the very valuable work which is being done in those workshops with the main sessions.
So can I invite people for comments then on the, first, proposal of the overall theme; second, your views and reflections on how we can deal with the issue of Internet rights and principles; and, third, with the more specific suggestion which has come about the reporting-in. Yes, Jeff from ICC.
>>ICC-BASIS: Thank you. A suggestion may be in the context of dealing with the rights issues that it would seem -- and the paper I think outlined this, that some of those issues seemed to relate very closely to the day where the panel session where we're talking about cybersecurity, privacy, individual rights are an important component of that discussion and that may be one way to incorporate those issues into an existing session. And also another idea would be that would be an opportunity to talk about the work that's being done in this area internationally already and some of the consensus that may have developed out there and bring those learnings into the session. So I think there is a nexus to some of the existing topics already without making it a completely new topic.
>>CHAIR DESAI: So reporting it into the privacy, okay.
Any other contributions on these matters? Yes, ETNO. And then Martin from Nominet.
>>ETNO: As active participants within the IGF, ETNO, the European Telecoms Network Operators Association, view these preparatory sessions as immensely important and we would like to begin by congratulating Mr. Desai for his reappointment and also the new members of the MAG.
ETNO has submitted a reflection document on the draft program format and structure for the 2009 IGF meeting, but I would like to take this opportunity to highlight a few key points contained within that submission.
ETNO supports the proposal for the overall title of the meeting as "Internet, an Opportunity for All." We believe this title reflects very much to the current world financial situation. It provides a positive overall theme, yet it's broad enough to cover all of the subthemes.
ETNO would particularly like to stress the issue of balanced representation in order to achieve a meaningful outcome. And for this reason, we suggest sessions that focus on particular aspects of the Internet must include those parties who are currently directly responsible for the areas under discussion.
ETNO supports discussion of a broad set of issues that are important to a variety of viewpoints and stakeholders. In other words, ETNO respects the-no-topic-is-excluded general principle, but we caution against tackling too many or too diverse a set of issues at one time. Further discussion needs to take adequate account of previous main session topics and the need to facilitate further debate on subissues that would benefit from greater clarity from discussion outside of the main sessions.
ETNO strongly believes that the program should be defined well in advance and that no main session slot left open for official meetings. If no concrete proposals are not covered by the sessions received well in advance, we suggest that the open last slot in the schedule be omitted.
More clarification is also required on the function and role of roundtables. Particularly, there is a three-hour session, would appear to be rather long for such a meeting without that clarification.
One issue which ETNO feels needs to be addressed is the large number of workshops and other events. Whilst respecting the diversity of opinion, we think that the workshops proposed are too many and we urge for similar workshops to merge.
We believe it would be more efficient, if not more democratic, to have many diverse voices in one room instead of being scattered in various rooms.
We continue to believe that it will be best if there are fewer events held in parallel with the main sessions, but with increased quality and that the number of workshops and other events should be reduced and resources optimized.
The IGF Secretariat and the MAG should continue to push for similar workshops to merge.
In concluding, Mr. Chairman, ETNO would like to congratulate both the IGF Secretariat and Egypt as the host country for this year's IGF. The intense amount of preparation and planning that has already taken place is clearly visible, including the use of new technology that will further enhance the standing of the IGF and broaden participation and engagement across the world.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Martin of Nominet?
>>NOMINET: Thank you, Chair. I welcome the synthesis paper that the secretariat has put before us, and I think that this is a good basis to help focus our discussion. So thank you to the secretariat for this continued and effective work.
I would like to draw attention to the general principles outlined in Section 3 which, I think, are a good and solid basis for trying to fit together our work over the four days of Sharm El Sheikh. I certainly recognize the problems of fitting rather a lot into a heavy program, but I would note the important role of the Internet Governance Forum in promoting exchanges between people. And looking at the seventh of these general principles, we strongly suggest that in a very heavily loaded agenda, time does need to be specifically allocated to the objective of encouraging ad hoc meetings.
One key indicator for the success of the IGF, as evidence for need of the forum and how stakeholders have taken the opportunity it provides, is quite how many people in organizations want to be involved. But success always has a downside, and. In this case, fitting everything in and fitting everyone in is obviously a major challenge and ensuring that newcomers are brought up to speed. I'm particularly pleased to see that we're taking time in a busy schedule to try and make sure that we're doing that.
The national, regional and community-based initiatives that have been mentioned at the start of all this discussion I think are very much in line with the spirit of Paragraph 80 of the Tunis Agenda which encourages the development of multistakeholder processes at the national, regional and international levels to discuss and collaborate on the expansion and diffusion of the Internet.
As an organization actively involved in promoting such multistakeholder cooperation with the U.K. IGF, the European Dialogue on Internet Governance, and work on a commonwealth IGF as well as local -- locally based initiatives, we welcome the idea of being able to give feedback from regional and national initiatives and actions.
This sort of cooperation will help us prepare for the IGF. It will also help us draw the widest possible benefit from the IGF processes as we share ideas through wider communities and take actions based on what we have learned.
Turning now to your question about the headline, I must admit I find the ETNO idea of the "Internet, an Opportunity for All" is one that fits nicely with a lot of the workshop -- proposed workshop themes and so certainly would welcome further consideration along these lines.
I do have a slight caution on the merging of workshops. I certainly recognize the need and would recognize some marriage brokering to try to make best use of time and to try and make sure that we were developing the discussion through wider networks rather than just with our immediate friends.
However, I'm also very concerned that this might lead to forced marriages. I'm sorry to borrow your earlier metaphor here, Chairman, but I think forced marriages often don't work and, therefore, the sensitivity is going to be exercised to avoid making rather tricky and difficult decisions.
The comment on workshops and linking them to the main themes, I think one of the main benefits of workshops ought to be to help inform the discussions in the plenaries. And so I would see a value of trying to link workshops through -- to the main sessions and rather than perhaps having a separate day or separate afternoon to look at feedback from all the workshops, actually try to get feedback from the workshops directly into the relevant main session.
And, finally, the U.K. IGF hopes that this year in Egypt we'll see an increased engagement by parliamentarians in the IGF process. This is a real opportunity for the IGF to hear and understand the concerns of citizens via the voices of their elected representatives, and I hope that Sharm El Sheikh will provide the opportunity for parliamentarians to discuss with other stakeholders how these citizens' interests might be addressed. Thank you, Chair.
>>CHAIR DESAI: George and then IGC.
>>GEORGE PAPADATOS: Thank you. I think Mr. Boyle raises some very interesting points. Basically, it seems to me that the workshops have been kind of the bread and butter of the IGF, and there are a lot of people that attend IGFs just for workshops. So by trying forced marriages, I have a feeling that we may lose some in the process or some may take their workshops elsewhere.
As far as the initiative on the parliamentarians, I would like to see a workshop or something similar on parliamentarians, otherwise they would not come. I have suggested in the past closer cooperation with the IPU on this, that we could work something out. At least I'm willing to participate in such an initiative.
The third point is that there is a term that has been used kind of loosely. I have been hearing two different versions, or three, regional and national IGFs, regional activities, multistakeholder processes and so forth.
I was wondering whether the ones that have instituted or initialized those processes call themselves IGFs? If they don't, I wonder why we should call them IGFs ourselves rather than regional initiative or multistakeholder processes. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: IGC?
>>GINGER PAQUE: Okay, I'm speaking not as the IGC actually. I'm reading a statement for a very small voice from the ISOC chapter of the Philippines. The newly -- I wanted to read it before we get off completely the theme of Internet rights and principles because they do touch on it.
"The newly rejuvenated ISOC chapter of the Philippines would like to emphasize our interest for Internet rights and principles as a major theme for the IGF 2009. We addressed this theme with great support as it is currently a vital and emerging topic for Internet governance. This support is in align with the ISOC Philippines upholding the spirit of core values that guide our policy work and our ability to connect, to speak, to innovate, to share, to choose and to trust.
As citizens of a small island developing state, we also highlight the necessity for continued development of remote participation as a tool for the Philippines and for other small island developing states, to improve our participation in international policy-making processes, in particular in the IGF process.
The Internet governance working group of ISOC Philippines chapter is establishing a remote hub for the upcoming IGF that will serve as a means to keep Filipinos abreast of emerging global and local IG issues. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: (inaudible).
>> Hello. Thank you very much. First of all, thank you for the interesting papers that you prepared for this meeting which serve as a good basis for this discussion. I just have a few remarks trying to answer the questions you just raised.
First of all, we also welcome the feeding in of the national and regional initiatives as part of the beginning of the IGF. With regard to merging workshops, we think that especially for small delegations, it is a problem if there are too many events and we think that even forcing some workshops to merge might be useful also for having really interesting workshops that have to take into account different views and different experiences.
So we would at least try to reduce the number of the workshops a little bit and give some incentives to merge workshops.
With regard to the main sessions, we would also support having Internet rights and principles as one of the main sessions because we think that this is a remaining key issue for the whole Internet and should be -- should have adequate visibility in the IGF.
With regard to the reporting-back, we could think of using the slot reserved for the reporting-back for the fourth main session on Internet rights and principles and maybe a proposal would be to integrate in every main session the first half-hour -- to dedicate the first half-hour of every main session for a reporting-back on the workshops that are linked to the issue. That might also help to integrate people from these workshops into those main sessions which is something that we sometimes in some sessions last year missed a little bit. That might be a proposal that instead of having one session on reporting-back, integrating the reporting-back into the four main sessions.
With regard to the overall theme, we think "Internet, an Opportunity for All" is a very nice sounding theme and might be attractive. The only problem might be that it might be too general for people to know what this means, what is being discussed at the IGF. That might be a reason to choose something like "Internet rights and principles" as a title, but we can also live with "Opportunity for All." Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Argentina and then --
>>ARGENTINA: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to comment about the support of having information about regional and national meetings. I take the words said by George, I don't know if they are really IGFs, but we had an excellent experience last year in August with a regional meeting previous to -- yes, you -- the regional meeting held in Montevideo and there will be a new meeting in Rio de Janeiro this year. I think these initiatives are help developing regions and developing economies to have more focused issues in relation with Internet governance.
In relation with workshops and merging them, which I think it is fine because maybe there are many, I think that we should also consider that some workshop names or issues may be more isolated and not that much referred as, for example, childhood protection maybe because it is a new issue or maybe because it is an issue presented by some developing regions. So it would not be good that we take aside those issues that are rarely represented or few and not as many as some others like child protection. Thank you, Chair.
>>CHAIR DESAI: I had the gentleman up here in front.
>>FOUAD BAJWA: Honorable Chairman, I'm Fouad Bajwa from Pakistan. I'm speaking on behalf of the ICT for the civil society group in Pakistan called the Pakistan ICD Policy Monitor.
We've experienced -- as everyone is aware, in 2005, we had a massive earthquake after which the focus of government shifted towards -- we have rehabilitation activities. Since then, there has been no participation from the government of Pakistan, and similarly the civil society groups are underrepresented at the IGF.
The workshop component of the IGF should be kept there because we see this as an opportunity to conduct workshops for parliamentarians and ICD government leaders whereby they can be, once again, re-educated and included into the process.
We feel that bringing in stakeholders and giving them independent workshop groups gives them an opportunity to be -- to be brought online with what other countries are doing in terms of Internet governance. So thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: I have Karen from APC and then did you want the floor, IGC? Okay, Karen.
>>ASSN FOR PROGRESSIVE COMM: Thank you. A couple of points. We would also encourage, I think, linking report-backs from workshops to main sessions. I think it is one of the main points that we made in the February consultation that a lot of people found difficult to see the connections between the workshops and the sessions and that would probably be a useful mechanism to make that linkage a little clearer.
On the main theme, we're also interested by the proposal of "Opportunity for All." But as I think Thomas mentioned, it might be a little too general. It could be opportunities to do all kinds of things, some of which a lot of people probably would prefer that we didn't do.
But -- and, also, I mean APC would certainly support a theme of rights and principles. But another option could be "Internet governance for All," which we also mentioned in the February consultation because it could provide a really useful framework for many activities: Capacity-building, developing country participation, gender participation, diversity of participation more generally, transparency, national/regional/community IGFs, remote participation.
And I think that focusing on Internet governance itself also helps us to really hone in on that very specific thing that we're all addressing in all of the work we're doing at the IGF. And I think sometimes we lose that focus.
Anyway, look, it is just another idea to sort of throw in for consideration. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: (inaudible).
>>IT FOR CHANGE: Just to take forward from what Karen was speaking about, my organization also supports Internet rights and principles as an overall theme. But if it can be moved to a main session, it would probably work as well. And as for the overall theme, I agree that "Opportunities for All" is too generic and does not say anything. And what Karen suggests as "Internet governance for all" could probably be something like "Internet governance participation for all," which brings an element of participation rather than just Internet governance for all. So this was a suggestion. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Okay. Let me see how we can move forward from this point. First, on the whole question of the reporting-in from the workshops, my sense is that everybody wants it in some form. I think there is a general feeling that we probably have done well enough on that front and that we need to do something which improves the feedback from the various workshops to the main sessions.
The two possibilities that have been put forward, one is represented in the draft program which is to have a session for this purpose. The other is a suggestion which has some saying you find some way of folding it in, into the main sessions.
I invite your comments on how you stand on that front.
On the issue of the overall headline, I think that we've had more or less repetition of the views that were expressed in February. And I'm waiting to hear some creative suggestion which somehow manages to find common ground. I am going to ask our hosts in Egypt, I'm sure they've given some thought to -- if nothing else, to the slogan for the conference. Maybe they would like to say a word on that.
May I turn to China, and then after that, I'm going to sort of conscript Egypt into speaking.
>>CHINA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of the delegation of China, I would like to present the position of the government of China on the fourth session of the IGF.
First of all, on the title -- the global title of the meeting, the delegation of China prefers the proposal put forward by Egypt, "Internet, an opportunity for all." We think that this topic is very closely linked to the international financial crisis we're going through at the moment. And in addition, it proves that the United Nations continue to work in order to promote the Internet. As we have said in February, the rights and principles for Internet is not an appropriate theme because the words "rights and principles" don't have an appropriate definition. As a meeting of the United Nations, it is not appropriate to adopt a theme which is not properly defined.
And on this matter, we suggest that we discuss the definition of "rights and principles" first of all, the workshop level.
Honorable Chairman, secondly, on the management of critical resources, the delegation of China feels that, first of all, the title of this theme should be "managing the critical Internet resources."
We feel that this title has been defined last year, after extensive discussions. And we think that this is a fairly neutral title. At the same time, it is a very sensitive theme, and we would suggest that we continue using this title this year.
Also, we would like to stress the fact that under the theme of "critical Internet resource management," we think that JPA is a very important theme and that it's not because we're going to reexamine JPA in September that we can't discuss it at the fourth session of the IGF. On the opposite, it's because we're going to do this in September that we should do it in IGF, too.
Thirdly, now, as to security, the delegation of China feels that this is a very important question. At the present time, security in the Internet, on the Internet and cybercrime is something that has become a worldwide enemy. And here we need to talk about regrouping the energies and resources of all parties concerned and to strengthen the international mechanism in order to promote security and stability for the Internet at the worldwide level.
We also think that there are some vital matters that have not been incorporated on this theme, for instance, how do we promote open source or intellectual property or traditional library resources. These are all very important questions in order to promote dissemination of knowledge.
We also think that this is a theme which should be discussed in the opening title.
We have also noted that some have talked about the URL blocking. On the URL blocking, this is a very sensitive matter.
In order to guarantee the security of states and to guarantee the interests of citizens to fight against terrorism and other crimes, all countries have the right to filter the contents of certain Internet sites. And I think that this is something that all countries are in the process of doing.
IGF as a meeting hosted, under the auspices of the United Nations, talks about URL blocking. Now, will this give an impression to the outside world that the United Nations are against content blocking? Are the U.N. against the practice of certain states filtering some Internet sites so that when we talk about "blocking," should the theme of blocking be incorporated in our IGF meeting? We have to be very careful about that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
>>CHAIR DESAI: I can see quite a few flags up.
Let me say, Mr. Bajwa, you wanted to come back. And then I have Miguel there and APC. Before that, I want to ask Egypt to have a word.
>>EGYPT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning, everyone.
I would like only to reflect here in general format about the themes and the workshop of the forum in Sharm El Sheikh.
I would like to stress again that the theme of "Internet governance, opportunity for all," is cross-cutting for all challenges and opportunities. And for the implication of the financial crisis, let me remind ourselves, Mr. Chairman, that by now, after almost a year from the financial crisis, the ICT sector and the Internet is looked at like a best-practicing for the economies at large, not for a crisis per se. And we have an opportunity within to reflect that on our -- in our forum.
As well, Mr. Chairman, this is the year of the evaluation. And I think the crowd over here and our colleagues would share with me that we need to deliver the message of the importance of this forum and the building on for that kind of dialogue. So we don't like to give any indications of any kind of negativity within. And the theme of opportunities would, I think, reflect that quite in a good format.
I think if you would like us to think of more enhancement for this kind of theme, I would like to suggest "Internet Governance: Opportunities and Challenges," or "Internet Governance Towards Global Cooperation," for example, or to get out of any negative implications for the first theme.
As for the workshops, Mr. Chairman, I think and I would share the views from different colleagues that it is the bread and butter for the Internet governance, and we were very happy to see a number of workshops presented from new colleagues and from new entities as well as older organizers as well. And I think we will be challenging ourselves to overcome the parallelism, but at the same time, maintain most of the workshops presented as much as we can.
For the reporting back, I think it would be better if we can integrate it in each session, not a reporting-back session, so as not to -- you know, to repeat ourselves or to have a more nonactive sessions.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Bajwa, and then Miguel, then APC.
>>F. BAJWA: Honorable Chairman, this is to provide an alternative to the question at hand.
We are all aware that the Internet raises significant challenges for public policy and sustainable human development, both internationally and for individual nations. And the IGF provides that particular platform to its workshops to share and approach those issues.
And most significantly, capacity-building has been an important focus at the IGF.
And what if the idea of "Internet Governance for Development," IG for D, was introduced as a session, instead of the reporting session, for reporting the feedbacks from all the roundtables and the workshops. And this would serve as a stock-taking activity as well, to collect, record, and share information on so many IG-related initiatives by various regions of the world. This may help reduce the concerns of the participants as well as to help to serve as a possible solution to your question.
So Internet Governance for Development may -- IG for D -- may also emerge as a main theme as the IGF continues to evolve in the future.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Thank you. Miguel. From El Salvador.
>>EL SALVADOR: Thank You, Chairman.
Regarding the overall topic, I believe that has to be appealing to the press and to everybody. So if we want to be more precise with the overall topic, one idea might be "The Internet: Better Life for All," instead of "opportunities."
But in that kind of thinking, I share the concerns of Egypt that the slogan has to be positive for the press and for everybody.
Regarding the feeding of the workshops into the main sessions, I will say that that will be the case for the workshops that are related to the main sessions.
And that also takes me to the point of merging workshops.
The workshops that will need to be merged are those workshops that are closely related to the main sessions.
So starting these main sessions, you will need to feed in the results of the workshops. As to the rest of the workshops, the idea of Internet governance for development session might be worthwhile exploring. But a word of caution needs to be said that this session needs to be not choppy, needs to have a follow-through. And it's difficult if you have 80 or 100 workshops, or 60, let's say, and try to make a unified presentation of all of these. But that'll be exactly the challenge. Otherwise, we may lose foot on these sessions.
And let me finish by pointing out that to the youth involvement, I believe we need to strive to the youth involvement.
I was shocked, to say the least, reading this week about this phenomena called "Sex Teen," where the youngsters are sharing not-that-appropriate content without measuring the consequences, even there might be considered criminal activities in some countries, and they are doing it without knowing. And they are also part of the solution. They are the solution to that problem.
And I do believe that in the line of concerns of the IGF, we need to take this really into account.
Thank you, Chairman.
>>CHAIR DESAI: (Off mike.)
>>ASSN FOR PROGRESSIVE COMM: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm Willie Currie, from APC.
I was intrigued to hear the representative from China say that there's no appropriate definition of Internet rights and principles, and then very soon after making this assertion, to assert perhaps the Chinese government's view of Internet rights, to quote, the right to filter the content of Internet sites.
And it seems to me that there's room for a very interesting open dialogue session on different understandings of what Internet rights may be. Clearly, the Chinese government has a very specific understanding of a particular right.
That said, I would support the Chinese representative's point about including the issue of the JPA as an issue under the "Critical internet Resources" session.
I think it would be, in this year in particular, quite embarrassing for the IGF not to address it specifically when it is one of the major issues under debate this year.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: George, and then ICC.
>>GEORGE PAPADATOS: Thank you.
On the issue of reporting to the main sessions, without getting involved into a theological discussion, I think some of the problems can be solved by have the workshops submit a written contribution to the main session as to what it's all about. And if they are content to do that, then we should be content in having on hand one page of what transpired. And that can really compress the time available.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: ICC.
>>ICC-BASIS: Thank you, Chair. Briefly, I wanted to respond to a few of the ideas that have been put forward.
First of all, we would support integrating the reporting-in to sessions and making a concerted effort with the session organizers and the moderators to ensure that the workshops and other events that are related to the main sessions get an opportunity to bring forward key points from their discussions.
ICC/BASIS had recommended that the -- my second point on the critical Internet resources session -- we had recommended that the discussion should be about the root server system more generally, given the JPA and the expiration date of 30 September. And we would remain supportive of that position.
We understand that any issue can be brought up in the discussion. But as we're describing the discussion, we think it would be more productive to have the root server system be the point in the description, recognizing that the JPA and anything before or after, et cetera, would be part of any contributions to that discussion. So it isn't meant to stop discussion; it's just meant to describe it in a way that would be productive and more broad.
Number two, I wanted to suggest that as we're going forward, people have mentioned the need for the involvement of a range of stakeholders, particular groups, young people. I know we've been approached to identify young entrepreneurs, et cetera.
And as we've prepared to come here for this consultation, I just wanted to underscore I think a concern that exists across stakeholder groups, which is, the budget realities and travel restrictions and issues that all of us are facing in the current economic climate. So as we're looking at the schedule, I think we have a real opportunity to shape the program and take into account the range of stakeholders that we want to ensure can come, the various kinds of travel restrictions or authorizations they have to go through, and anything that we can do to make that more possible for them to be present.
My last comment is on the title. Listening to comments especially from our host country, Egypt, and from APC, I was going to suggest that perhaps a combination could be "Internet Governance: Creating Opportunities for All."
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Yes, Parminder.
>>IT FOR CHANGE: I support the Chinese delegate's suggestion that dissemination of knowledge, Internet for dissemination of knowledge should be treated as one of the key themes. It is one of the most important international themes at present, and I think it is relatively underrepresented in the IGF scheme.
Access to knowledge is becoming a main theme in WIPO, and its connection with ICTs is also being explored.
I think the "Openness" sessions or "Openness" slot was the one which was supposed to take care of access to knowledge issues. But it's more dominated now by privacy and security dichotomy. And, therefore, probably we can use the theme of "Access to Knowledge" in the "Access" slot. And that -- I also support the suggestion by Bajwa and by Miguel that IG for development should probably also be treated as a separate theme and not only as an overarching theme where it actually disappears and there's no real discussion on it.
So probably the "Access" theme can explore access to knowledge and IG for development as the two subjects within the theme.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Yes. Bajwa.
>>F. BAJWA: This is a statement I would like to read in support of Mr. (saying name) and the ICC were sharing regarding youth participation.
This is from (saying name), who is not present here physically. Net-Aman is the youth Internet safety focus group of the cyber peace initiative launched by the Suzanne Mubarak Women's International Peace Movement. Since our inception, I have had the privilege to engage with different stakeholders to help identify the means by which the online rights of youth in Egypt are protected, in addition to carrying out our primary mandate of raising awareness amongst youth on how to use the Internet safely and responsibly. In this endeavor, and with the help of our partners and affiliates, we have been quite successful in our outreach, delivering our message to tens of thousands of school students between the ages of 13 and 18 from different socioeconomic backgrounds and varying geographic locations around the country.
As an active member of this focus group working on this campaign, I must admit that I myself have learned a great deal from the youth I have interacted with.
Africa as a continent is a late-comer to the boundless opportunities floating in cyberspace. Although Egypt is a relative leader amongst African nations in terms of Internet penetration and usage, there is still a great digital divide between us and more developed nations of the world. Furthermore, the predominance of youth amongst Egyptian Internet users and the fact that the younger age groups represent the minority of the Egyptian population, in addition to the widespread Internet illiteracy amongst the older age groups, creates quite a challenge in Egyptian society, pushing Egyptian youth center stage as an important stakeholder in all Internet-related issues.
The recent surge in Internet access in Egypt and the Middle East and North African region, MENA, that occurred over the past ten years took place after the evolution of the Internet to its current Web 2.0 state. This has resulted in a perpetual acceleration from 0 to 100 kilometer per hour in Internet usage, especially by the younger age groups. Without really understanding what the implications are, apart from the crucial issue of privacy and security, that most users have little awareness of the social, political, intellectual, and economic benefits of the Internet and not as of yet have been taken advantage of adequately.
At this point in time, raising awareness to these issues is vital, but not nearly sufficient for future generations to reap the potential rewards. The key lies not in just raising awareness and providing security, but, most importantly, empowerment, empowerment of youth in Egypt and countries with similar --
>>CHAIR DESAI: Can I -- this is on the program. I don't think we need a statement from the young man, whoever it is who sent you this.
Can you just simply say what his suggestion is.
>>F. BAJWA: Their intention is to bring in a main theme for the youth.
>>CHAIR DESAI: So one sentence can be made fairly readily. But the rest is really a fairly -- is a statement that he will want to make in Sharm El Sheikh, not here.
>>F. BAJWA: Okay.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Can I -- you suggest that -- there is this question of the workshops folding in.
I want to put to you a suggestion. See, my impression of the past three IGFs is that the workshops are not of the same character. We call them "workshops," but some of them are really more like a space for a conversation and a dialogue, and do not, in that sense, have a product, a result in any sense.
Basically, what happens is a group of people meet. They have a conversation, and they go away. And the only report you'll get from that workshop is that such and such workshop was held, and that's it.
There are other workshops which are more substantive in the sense that they actually are working towards a result, say, for instance, workshops which are dealing with -- let me not mention any particular issue. Can we draw that distinction?
Second, to me, partly, the concerns that some people have about the number of workshops, Markus's proposal to do what Martin has described as "forced marriages," Martin's sort of more generous view of a more polygamous approach, which would allow these people to carry on, how can we do that? And one possibility I thought was that we give a certain position for reporting in to workshops which at least come together for the reporting in. That is, instead of if we have 60 people coming in one after the other, it will be very tedious. We will say to each person, "Okay, you have two minutes." Instead, what we say is, "Okay, we have four workshops on child protection. What we would like you to do is to come together and, together, as four workshops, come up with a statement on child protection which should be placed before the plenary." That in itself will increase the weight of what goes before the plenary. Because it comes not just from one group, but comes from three or four different groups.
So we see whether we can combine some of these thoughts and say, "Okay, we will have a process of reporting in, but it's not something which we do as automatic." So that everybody who runs a workshop says, "I demand my five minutes in front of the plenary." No. First, there must be a product. And one test of the product is the statement which comes from it, the written statement, which they're required to provide.
And that will give an indication, that the statement simply says that 30 people met and talked about this, fine, that's very interesting, but that written statement is sufficient for that purpose.
But if it's something more than that, then you say that's interesting.
And, second, we give a certain preference to a group of workshops which say, "Yes, we all talked about this, but we then came together, and we have a common statement which we would like to present to the plenary."
I just would like you people to comment on this. Because we have to find an answer to this, because I think not everybody has been a little dissatisfied with the connect. But we must distinguish between workshops which have something to say and workshops which just met. And that's my one thought.
Second, to give a privileged position to those people who are actually making an effort to come together with others. And that's because we have to encourage that.
On the theme, we can come back to that. I thought the suggestion which came about Internet governance creating opportunities for all is a possibility, because in some ways, it is more active than simply an assertion of a fact, saying that, no, you will have to do something to create opportunities. That's one possibility.
Third issue, on the handling of how do we generate some type of dialogue on the issue of rights and principles and where.
I think we can come back to that, particularly if you have an open slot available. If we were to shift the reporting in to the main sessions, then I think we can come back to that and see how best to structure that.
But let me, for the moment, leave that to the one side and let's try to get a little reflection on the first two issues.
I have a string of people now, Council of Europe, Marilyn Cade, Egypt, Olga Cavalli, France. Let me start with that, Council of Europe.
>>COUNCIL OF EUROPE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, on a personal note regarding what you have just said, I think that the IGF is much about diversity and about the diversity of workshops. So I'll be very -- it's much about the bread and butter, as George has said. And I would be very concerned and -- about thwarting the workshops by trying to overmerge and also trying to bring together consensus always. I don't necessarily think it's about consensus. I think one of the things we learned in the EuroDIG process last year was that you can have different opinions and you can share those different opinions. There's not necessarily one opinion shared by all always.
So yes to diversity in workshops, perhaps avoiding, first of all, strict, you know, duplication where there's an immediate duplication that can be dealt with, but keeping diversity.
Regarding reporting in, yes, I think there's a real benefit in reporting in. Perhaps there should be more reflection on structuring that reporting-in, making it very short and very, very clear, you know, what were the three issues or the five issues which were dealt with, what are the three or five takeaway messages for the plenary, keeping it very, very short. I know in our own work in the Council with dealing with ministers, they only have three-minute interventions. So why workshops reporting are having five minutes, I don't know.
Yes to a prominent place for Internet rights and principles. This is what we're doing at the Council of Europe on -- almost on a daily basis.
As regards the title, "An Opportunity for All," yes, it is an opportunity for all. Yes, it's the future. But I also think it's about freedom and value. Freedom we have and we have already existing through the Internet. And value which is existing now, not just in the future. So I would like to see some reflection about current, established benefits and the future opportunities.
So freedoms, values, and opportunities for all.
Now, on behalf of the Council of Europe, let me thank you, the secretariat, for the work on the program paper. And some words of thanks to our Egyptian colleagues and their friends for organizing this year's IGF. And to add that the IGF and the Council of Europe and the Egyptian authorities are working closely on common issues of concern and interest. I think this is one of the major features of our coming together in the IGF, to facilitate relations, dialogue, and cooperation between entities, countries, bodies, organizations, even persons who are like-minded yet who would probably have never come together otherwise. So this is where the diversity kicks in, I would say.
The Council of Europe is committed, as ever, to dialogue and to cooperation. We've already had some very useful discussions in the European Parliament and the European Commission. Similarly today, we have a dialogue continuing with colleagues dealing with hosting side events on cybercrime this lunchtime, and also with colleagues, together with partners UNECE and APC on an informal consultation on a code of good practice on participation, access to information, and transparency in Internet governance. These are two distinct events this lunchtime.
At the end of this month, the 47 Council of Europe member states will be meeting in Reykjavik as part of a ministerial conference on the media and new communication services in order to discuss, inter alia, freedom of expression, the right to privacy, the openness of the Internet vis-à-vis critical Internet resources, and Internet governance, the responsibilities of the private sector vis-à-vis human rights. This ministerial conference will for the first time in an intergovernmental setting take a multistakeholder dimension, for the first time, bring in representation from civil society, business, and youth.
And the inspiration for this originates from the World Summit and also from the IGF. And it's thanks to the IGF for this basis.
The regional initiatives, yes. Council of Europe dialogue and cooperation will continue supporting EuroDIG, the pan-European dialogue on Internet governance, which is well underway, thanks to this year's hosts, the EBU and AFCOM Switzerland, and an increasing array of other actors to that end.
Let me underline that the EuroDIG process is open and inclusive. Anyone interested in being part of the event can take part, can share ideas, and is welcome. It will take place on 14, 15 September in Geneva in EBU's premises back to back with the IGF consultations.
Mr. Chairman, in summary, in taking stock of the different standard-setting instruments, policy documents of the Council of Europe from cybercrime, to data protection, to freedom of expression, to dignity, to children's confidence on the Internet, and in preparing a new cycle of work which is increasingly focused on the openness of the Internet as a common critical resource with public value, which requires interstate cooperation and solidarity for its functioning effectively, I would underline the global value and the global vocation of the Council of Europe's work, which is being developed with freedoms and rights at its core, with increasing reference to guidelines and cooperation rather than rules and regulations, and with reference to informing and empowering users.
On that basis, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And we remain very open and flexible regarding the format which is chosen for this year's IGF.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Thank you. I have Marilyn Cade, followed by Egypt, then Olga Cavalli, France, Francis Muguet.
>>TECH AMERICA: I'm going to speak for Tech America, a trade association that represents ICT companies with offices in the United States, in Belgium, and also serving Europe interests and also in China.
My comments are -- although I have more extensive comments, I'm going to focus on two of the three areas that you just asked for detailed comments on.
First, I would say that Tech America would strongly support the overall themes of -- that reflect the importance of the "Internet for all," "The Internet, an opportunity for all." We could certainly also support the recent emergence of "Internet governance, creating an opportunity for all." But I think one key message there for us is that we do want to continue to support a thematic overall theme for the IGF but continue to retain a focus on the other themes that we have all continued to organize around such as cybersecurity, privacy, openness, diversity but also to continue a focus on the cross-cutting themes of capacity-building and development.
In addressing the question of the workshops, we noted with interest the introduction of a concept of roundtables and while we do fully yet understand how the roundtables might be proposed, we would note that if roundtables are introduced, we would like to see openness on the organizing of the roundtables and not have a restriction to having roundtables organized only by dynamic coalitions. For instance, workshops, as they emerge might decide to become a roundtable, and that would be one point that we would make.
We have spoken each time at these meetings about the importance of a number of workshops, and I would agree with the previous speaker that it is not always about consensus, that is it is often about the diversity of opinions and understandings that actually bring us closer together even while we may disagree. And that has been a maturing that has happened in the IGF activities. We think that keeping a high number of workshops is important because many people come to participate in the IGF because of their commitment to a particular topic or particular focus and they get financial support and they dedicate their time in order to make that contribution to be able to participate. Being in the audience is sometimes not enough for people. They will participate actively only through workshops.
Finally, we would just say that as -- if roundtables are organized, we would like to see the roundtables remain consistent with the overall purpose of the IGF and not become conclusionary in nature.
Now, let me say something about an observation that we have. We see a high number of proposals in certain areas. But we do not conclude that because there is a very high number of proposals, for example, focused on protecting children online that we have reached a conclusion or that we are in agreement.
This is a very challenging set of topics and issues, and we would support seeing a number of workshops that continue to examine the challenges of child safety and protecting children online and also look at some of the existing and emerging approaches that are being taken.
I will have further comments, Mr. Chairman, but I will restrict my comments now to the focus on these areas.
>>CHAIR DESAI: I had Egypt. Yeah.
>>EGYPT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to support Ayesha's proposal for "Internet governance, creating opportunity for all." And as well, Mr. Chairman, I would like to reflect on your own suggestion regarding the reporting-back and how can we integrate the reporting-back compiled in the main sessions. And I think we can elaborate more on that suggestion.
Regarding the inclusion of youth as mentioned by Ayesha as well as our colleague who has been stating some remarks about activities. And in that vein, I would like to highlight some activities that we are doing in Egypt to guarantee the inclusion of youth in our activities. We will be hosting youth camp for about 100 youth from all over the world actually to make sure that the youth will be well-oriented and present in our activities in Sharm El Sheikh. This youth camp will be about 100 youth, and it will take place for the week before the IGF in Sharm itself. This will be managed by Net-Aman and the Cyberpeace Initiative headed by the First Lady of Egypt.
As well Net-Aman and the Cyberpeace Initiative has proposed a workshop for kids and this workshop will be led by the kids from 11 years old to 14 years old and we are doing all kind of facilitation to guarantee their presence, starting from their accommodation visa and other kind of logistics so that we can maintain their presence in our activities.
There are some other logistical arrangements that I would like to share with the colleagues, but I will await for your instructions Mr. Chairman, to highlight those kinds of arrangements. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Olga Cavalli.
>>ARGENTINA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I would like to make two comments, one as a remote organizer in Argentina and the other as an Argentina representative.
In relation with Ayesha's comments about global crisis and budget constraints, I think the remote initiative is very important to allow participation from distant countries from the venue of the IGF, developing countries, youth, old people, everyone that wants to be part of this process.
We had an interesting experience last year during the IGF in Hyderabad. We held some remote participation hubs. We had one in Buenos Aires organized, by the Internet Society, Argentina chapter where I am a member, and we hope to do the same this year. We had some technical difficulties that we hope to revise and resolve with the local organizer here this year in Egypt. So I think having a workshop about that issue in Sharm El Sheikh will be useful, and I would like you to support this initiative again as you did last year.
And, also, we have presented some workshops and I would like to support the comment made by our colleague recently in considering diversity in deciding which workshops we will be having. I know that we have to merge, but we have proposed one in relation with the use of -- usage of Spanish and other about teaching Internet governance, that we think they are relevant for our region and for developing countries. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR DESAI: I had Bertrand from France and then Mr. Francis Muguet.
>>FRANCE: Thank you, Chair. Regarding your previous question and the risk to overmerge workshops, I think it is very important to understand that being in the same room and interacting with somebody else doesn't mean that you have to agree with this person. I think the danger we have is to continue on some topics with the silo approach where one workshop addresses one component or one angle and the other workshop addresses something else, maybe a completely opposite view and they never are forced to interact. So it is not a forced marriage, it's forced interaction maybe.
The second element is I would make a distinction between three types of outcomes in workshops. Some are in very early stage of an issue, and the objective is to have a common picture. The second level is agree potentially on a common goal.
And the third level when an issue is real ripe is agree on common action or common methodology. Those different stages shouldn't be mistaken one for the other because if you try to agree on an action and you don't agree on the picture, you are in trouble.
And I would like here to take an example regarding the so-called child protection issue. I want to insist on the fact that in Hyderabad the message that was sent -- and I encourage everybody to look at the transcript -- that was fighting child porn is the consensus issue. Child protection at the moment is not a contentious issue. And it is very important we make the distinction because fighting child porn is an issue where there is agreement that there is a problem. So stage one is cleared.
There has been now an agreement that there is a common goal, we all want to fight child porn. So the critical stage at which we are is now to choose and make the policy choices on how do we do this. What kind of cooperation and what kind of angle? I don't want to get into the details, but it is very important to understand that in Hyderabad the agreement was on child -- fighting child porn.
And I must say that in the 16 proposals, I found very broad discussion on an issue that is very important, which is child protection in general, but not enough focus on this very specific topic where there is agreement.
And the last point is regarding feeding into main sessions. One way to do this is probably when the main sessions are being set up to include in the selection of speakers, as we began doing last year some of the panelists or maybe some of the people who are supposed to be reporting on the merged workshops. And it is interesting in the list that Markus mentioned the fact that you have 16 workshops on child protection or this issue. Doesn't mean you need 16 -- maybe it is easier to reduce to four or five in an appropriate manner.
On the other hand, there are very single workshop proposals that address very concrete topics, emerging issues that deserve being preserved because they are one workshop on a very concrete topic. But we can come back to that later. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Francis Muguet.
>>FRANCIS MUGUET: I'm very pleased to tell the people that now I'm moving to the University of Geneva. I'm in the process of moving to Geneva, and I will, in fact, make some comments about your very acute and wise observation about the workshops.
In fact, there are two types of workshops. There are information workshops and output workshops. And the question is how these workshops can articulate with the proposal I made of having a recommendation at the IGF which some -- the willing dynamic coalition could make recommendation, will have -- be -- in fact, put all together in a document called "The Recommendation of the IGF."
It will be possible, in fact -- I will not see why it is not possible that some workshop will have, in fact, a very dedicated output, could also make some recommendation. Why not? So this is a question up to the air.
Secondly, I think we should avoid duplication concerning information workshops. That's for sure.
Concerning output workshops, I think it will be very difficult to merge this type of workshop because we need to respect the diversity of opinion.
Now, "merging," what does this mean? There has been a very interesting observation which I share I think from Marilyn that, in fact, from the perspective of academic and civil society, there is a need to be identified as an organizer of some workshop. Otherwise, you cannot get financial support and you cannot simply enter the meeting.
Now, I see there is a contradiction that maybe could be, in fact, resolved or may be a way toward this is to have not so-called merged workshops but I will call federated workshops where each contributor with its own speakers will keep its individuality, has a contributor to the workshops.
So the workshops will occur at the same times. There will be an interaction between the two in the same room, but in a way -- but from an organization, also, it will not be simply a merged workshop where, in fact -- I understand for some participants, mostly from governments, they have small delegations. They cannot attend all the workshops. But, also, they have to see also the other side of the coin, the people who are making the workshops. They need to be identified in able to be able to organize it. So I think there is a trade-off we need to define in terms of this organization.
Now, the other point is -- I would like to ask is when in this agenda will be discussed today the regional IGF initiative? It is a question of procedure. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Sorry. The regional IGF initiative, was your last question about the regional IGF initiative?
>>FRANCIS MUGUET: Yes, for example, there is the commonwealth IGF. There is a session during lunchtime. I think also there is -- the Council of Europe talked about the EuroDIG. There are questions about a EuroIGF, also about IGF Europe. So the question is when does people want to say something about this initiative, the time during this meeting? At what time?
>>CHAIR DESAI: Now.
>>FRANCIS MUGUET: Now?
>>CHAIR DESAI: Yeah, because there was a question raised by George as to what are regional IGFs and (saying name) picked it up afterwards. So you are most welcome any reflections you have on that.
>>FRANCIS MUGUET: Okay, yes. So I'm going to continue, okay.
So there has been questions whether in Europe there could be an EuroIGF, which is something related to the European Union and, on the other side, something with a broader membership from all the countries mostly from the Council of Europe, all of Europe in the geographical sense.
There has been some, in fact, brainstorming among some European stakeholders and we present -- which are not there but could be called as the European Vint Cerf because it is the European PUNY of the Internet.
We have come together with the idea of proposing IGF Europe as a subset of the IGF, which means that the mandate will be exactly the same as IGF and so everybody can participate from the IGF because simply the mandate and the rules are the same.
Now, about the way of recommendations are established, this is a way maybe through dynamic coalitions. This is an option. So this process could be discussed at the next EuroDIG. And I'm pleased to say that this proposal has now been, in fact, formally proposed in a way through a Web site which is intgovforum.eu. So there is a mailing list that has been established, exactly a forum like that, ALAC.
So I would like to underline that this proposal shall not be felt as some kind of a competition with an institution within the European Union. The membership is different, and a EuroIGF could be something like the institution of the European Union set up by the European Parliament. Here at the IGF the goal is somewhat different. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Fortunately, we don't have to organize an European IGF. It is difficult enough to get 180 countries to agree to it.
[laughter]
So let them sort out their issues.
George Papadatos, then IGC.
>>GEORGE PAPADATOS: Thank you on the issue of the workshops. I think in the past we have touched very lightly upon the accountability of these workshops. And Mr. Kummer, I think, did mention that there was supposed to present some kind of a report or abstract, and they haven't done so. So I think it is time to discuss some of the obligations that they have because they do use the IGF as a platform to come hold their own meetings. But as you said, you cannot come discuss something and then leave and we capture no benefits as IGF from that type of activity. So I think we should.
And, also, the distinction is kind of blurred between the known-output workshops and coalitions. I'm not clear myself, you know, what are some of the distinctions. And probably the issue of accountability may solve.
Also, I'm not very much in favor of forced marriages but voluntary marriages. But I think if some of the workshops don't want to merge and others, we should let them at least present rather than losing them -- their views. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: IGC.
>> GINGER PAQUE: Actually I'm speaking for myself as Ginger Pauque. I'm not backed by the IGC in this, but I would like to address very briefly your request for dealing with reporting and it moves right into George's concern right now. I would like to suggest that rather than taking time in the main session for reporting back, if each day at the end of the day each workshop send in a very short written -- someone else suggested that -- written report of one or two paragraphs that those be published immediately on the IGF Web site and that in the morning first thing we be given a written copy of them which could then include contact information for follow-up, but we would have a report immediately of what happened at each workshop.
We'd all have the information, and we wouldn't take any time a main session. I think it is a possibility that's used in other conferences. We could try to do that.
I also would like to take a moment for the remote participation working group, because that's now been addressed by several people. The remote participation working group and the IGF Secretariat have continued to be in contact to discuss remote participation. These options right now given the economic crisis, as ICC talked about, that other people have mentioned, it is a way to bring more people in that cannot be present.
On the one hand, the secretariat together with the host country, Egypt, is analyzing better technical options and the platform. On the other hand, the remote participation working group is working to put together some guidelines to improve the interaction with remote participation during main sessions and workshops directly with the panel moderators.
The remote participation working group is also working to improve the Web site in order to make it a focal point for communication about remote participation.
A continued emphasis on the theme of remote participation is indispensable to achieve a successful experience.
The remote participation working group together with the IGC and DiploFoundation have volunteered to organize a workshop about remote participation in the next IGF named "Remote Participation: Mapping the field, evaluation and multistakeholder involvement."
The workshop aims to discuss remote participation both from a policy perspective and as what can be done as well as from a best-practices approach of what has been done. So we would like to invite the IG community to take part in this debate and those interested are welcome to organize an IGF hub -- remote hub which would certainly help to reinforce the participation of local communities in the IG debate.
So anyone who is interested may contact the Web page at igfremote.org or write to [email protected]. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Okay. Can I make -- maybe let's take up the issue of workshops first. It seems to me that generally the sense seems to me that don't act in a manner which reduces diversity unnecessarily. I take that point.
But what I think we should be doing is a few things. One, we should certainly inform people that, look, you have proposed a workshop on such and such topic. There are 17 other proposals which are there. And the reason it is important is you may well find that there is really 16 different points of view on, let's say, child protection. But the point is if there are 16 workshops, the number of people who attend who are interested in child protection is fixed. And you will then get scattered number of people in each workshop. This did happen. This did happen.
There are some workshops which were very poorly attended, quite simply because there were so many workshops and there's a limitation. All 2,000 people that come are not interested in that issue. Maybe there are 200 people interested, and 200 going into 20 workshops is 10 each. So the people organizing the workshops should know that there are going to be 19 other workshops. And if that persuades them to come together with somebody to combine, et cetera, all the better.
I appreciate the point that has been raised by Marilyn and others that in many ways these workshops are the reason why people get financing to attend. They're also the reason why they want to attend. They don't want to come there and just listen to others. They want to come to an IGF in order to be able to do something more than listen to other people. And this workshop is one of those devices. So we shouldn't stop that.
Let me put it starkly. If you had an IGF without any workshops, then attendance will suffer because a lot of people will not get resources to come. A lot of people will not be interested in coming to IGF. So we should be -- we should understand that these workshops play a very important role in facilitating participation and so on. So let's at least inform people that this is the thing. Now, do you want to talk to some of the others? Do you want to do something about it?
Second, when we have to -- another day in September, we will have to choose because we cannot accommodate everybody, particularly now that we have decided not to have meetings after 6:00 to minimize parallel meetings, certain sessions where there will be no parallel meetings. The number of slots available is reduced and, therefore, we will have to say no to some people because we will not be able to accommodate everybody in the conference. It is unavoidable.
Now, in doing that, we may wish to take into account that this is a proposal which was originally six proposals and they have come together as one. And then when we decide, we may have to give them a certain priority in providing a slot because six people came together. One person says, No, I insist I have to have my workshop on my own. That's fine, you are most welcome, but we'll have to see if there is room for you or not.
Third, the accountability point. Actually, Markus has proposed that we should not agree to give space to somebody who organized a workshop in 2008 and has not filed a report. He has actually proposed that. Am I right?
>>SECRETARY KUMMER: 2009, yeah.
>>CHAIR DESAI: For 2009. We will not in 2009 give a slot to somebody who last year had a workshop and did not give a report. In that sense at least there is an attempt at enforcing a line of accountability.
My hope is that through these things, informing people, telling them, "Look, you may have a problem of attendance if you insist on holding it on your own," giving a certain preference in the slots that are allotted to the people who do combine and come together in a workshop, perhaps building on -- sorry -- because we will have to do that at some point because we will not be able to accommodate everybody. And certainly keeping out people who have held workshops and haven't filed reports because some discipline has to be there.
I think this way we -- I hope that we can get to grips with the issue of the number of workshops. That is one issue. Second, in terms of reporting-in, I'm not sure that we have found a reasonably workable answer as yet. Certainly insisting that people should file -- see, we can insist in saying, "Please file your statement -- report on the three themes and the five take-aways which you learned from your meeting."
But we have done this in the past, we have done this for three years. And people have not done it. And there's no reason for supposing that, suddenly, they will be a little more alert in Sharm El Sheikh.
One possibility is, when we really do implement the rule of not giving a slot to people who did not file a report, then they may start taking it seriously, saying that, "Look, this will affect our future participation if we don't do this."
And maybe that will help a little.
But I wouldn't count completely on that, because there is pressure on them. You finish a workshop at 6:00, and how do you get the thing ready in time for the next morning? How do you reproduce those documents? What languages do you do it in? What are the facilities available for doing all of these things on short notice?
So there will be some restrictions. And I don't think that will solve the problem of reporting in.
I think we will have to treat the reporting-in as something which has to be decided by the organizers in the sense it is not automatic. Because I think if we end up with beginning every session with, you know, 20 people standing up and making a two-minute statement, it will really become very boring and tedious.
So I think it should be left a little, because the situation may vary. You may not necessarily have the same problem in all cases. In certain cases, you may be able to have content to feed in from the workshop through the modality we have tried, which is having people on the panels. In certain cases, you may be able to be accommodated by whoever is the chair or the moderator taking on board what has come from workshop. Certain other cases, it may be worth our while to encourage somebody to speak from -- on behalf of, say, a group of workshops. And certain other cases where there is a lot of diversity, we may decide that, no, it's best to have four of them speaking, but tell me, "You have two minutes each." And frame the issue and say this is what came out of these four different workshops. So let's keep a degree of elasticity. But I would hesitate to make this a rule, saying that anybody who organizes a workshop is, quote, unquote, entitled to his two minutes in the plenary, because then I think you will end up with a very boring and tedious start to the plenary, people standing up, making the two-minute statement, which becomes a five-minute statement. Then we discover that instead of taking 15 minutes, we ended up taking 45 minutes for this reporting in.
So let us keep the control in the hands of the organizers, but say that there should be multiple modalities, in some cases use this, in some cases use that, but not to treat reporting-in as a right.
Certainly anybody who provides a written document can -- we can say, yes, as a right, we will circulate it, provided, of course, it is consistent with U.N. rules. We cannot give an absolute promise, because if there is something offensive there, then we will have to keep it out.
I'm talking from experience of other U.N. meetings. So you cannot give a blanket rule saying, "Anything that is produced will be circulated." As long as it is consistent with U.N. practice and rules, it's fine. And that's all that is required.
The -- For that promise, we can say, yes, we will circulate if you do produce it. But in terms of actual air time in the plenary, we'll see. We are not ruling it out, but it will dependent on the time available, space available, and how many want that air time and in what form do they want that air time.
This is my suggestion to you, that don't try and tie it down completely. That's as far as --
On the theme, if there's -- isn't a very strong objection, I would urge that we go with the theme of, you know, "Internet governance: Creating opportunities for all." It has to be reasonably short. And let's not make too much of this. It's not as if the conference is only going to talk about that. This is simply the headline, the slogan that we are going to put up. And I'm not sure it's worth our while to spend a huge amount of time on that.
On the question of the space for an open forum for rights and principles, I suggest we come back to this after. And I think it's an interesting us that and area. But there's also another proposal, which is a feeling that we have not given enough attention to the Internet governance for development. Capacity-building. Several people have mentioned this.
And we -- if we are going to have a slot available in that session which was to be for reporting in of workshops, we may wish to give a thought to how to handle this. And we'll come back to that in the afternoon.
Remote participation. Many people have raised the question. And, again, my suggestion is that we need to look at it in a flexible way, but perhaps this time we may have to structure it a little bit more with defined time slots, saying at quarter to 3:00, we are going to go here, type of thing. Because -- So it's well worth exploring how we can make it much more effective and structured than we have been able to make it so far.
We will be very fortunate, the time zone issues will be far less problematic in Sharm El Sheikh because of its location. You are, what, about a few hours behind Asia and a few hours ahead of Latin America. So, in that sense, it's not as huge a problem of time difference in Sharm El Sheikh as it would have been in other places. So I hope we can do much more by way of remote participation in Sharm El Sheikh than we could do elsewhere.
Now, these are my -- what I have gotten, listening to you.
We have about half an hour. Let's listen to a little bit more, because I want to give time before we break for lunch to Egypt on some of the other logistical and other issues they wanted to talk about.
Yes.
>>FRANCE: Thank you, Chair. Sorry for taking the floor again.
Just to follow up on what you suggested and what Ginger mentioned, maybe by making a distinction between two things.
Something that could be an IGF daily that is more or less in the format that Ginger was suggesting, like something every morning that would produce on one sheet of paper just three lines or four lines for each workshop that took place the previous day, with a contact person. I think the key element we want to address here is, oh, I missed this format. I missed this workshop yesterday. Who is the person I can contact to get more information?
And the second thing would be the obligation to report afterwards. And here, I think we can take inspiration, I want to give credit to the Council of Europe for an excellent reporting format that they used for the Octopus Conference a couple of months ago. And, basically, the idea is to have a format that says, one, which is the agreed consensus we started from. That's where the issue was before our meeting. Second, this is the progress we made at that meeting. Three, these are the issues we agreed need to be discussed further in the next steps. Four, these are the next steps, including next meetings, groups that are being formed. And, five, these are the actors that were present or are involved in the issue.
If we could get this format for reporting, let's say, a month after each workshop, this would be very useful for people outside.
And just as an information, I have submitted a workshop proposal on behalf of the Dynamic Coalition on Rights and Principles on Governance of Social Media, and the list of workshop proposals already allowed us to identify that Pavan Duggal proposed something separately on almost the same issue, and just went from the group that we have already undertaken merger efforts to handle this in a common -- in a single workshop.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Okay. Kenya.
>>KENYA: Thank you very much. My name is Alice Munyua, from Kenya.
Just an announcement to say that Kenya is once again convening a regional East African IGF for this year, like we did last year. That's going to take place from a grass roots level at the national level in the fall, five African countries: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi. There have already been a number of activities which began first with a review of last year's regional IGF, and currently national IGFs are taking place.
The regional IGF is going to take place from the 7th to the 9th of September, just prior to the consultations here or the last consultations here.
We also want to support the idea that was brought up around the roundtable to believe that is a much more appropriate setup for creating an interacting environment rather than reporting back of what the national and regional IGFs have been doing. And we also want to support the suggestion to include the discussions in critical Internet resources because they appear to be the most important issues currently under discussion, particularly the management of ccTLDs and allocation of I.P. addresses.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Thank you. I have GIIC. And then -- GIIC.
>>GIIC: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Dan O'Neill, and I'm the executive director of the Global Information Infrastructure Commission, and I'm pleased to submit more extensive remarks at a later time but now just wanted to focus on the programmatic issues that we have at hand here.
First of all, the GIIC would like to commend the IGF on its workshop format that it has utilized over the last three years. We find that the workshops are an excellent way to reach out and engage new constituencies in the IGF process and to ensure a diverse multistakeholder presence in the meeting.
We would like to encourage the IGF to continue its approach in looking for these new voices within the workshop proposals. These diverse voices are a critical element to the success of the IGF model.
I'd like to pick up on a note that George made. And that has to do with this idea of forced marriages versus voluntary marriages of workshops.
It seems to me like there is room for dialogue between those proponents of similar workshops and that there would be areas for workshops to merge without a forced merger there.
Another element I think that can be used, as Markus has pointed out, is the accountability, the need to submit a report. The idea that you need to submit a report based on last year if you wish to participate this year, I think, is excellent.
Lastly, I think we can also look at an element of, again, trying to have a diverse group of a limitation on the number of different workshops that can be put forward by an individual group or entity. I think this may be a way that we can hear more voices from different and unique geographic areas and points of view.
Second, I'd like to raise another question that the GIIC has. And this has to do with trying to gain a better understanding of the objectives of the proposed roundtable discussions that are proposed for day two and three.
We do not have a real clear understanding of what the objective is, and it seems vague to suggest -- to focus on, quote, "Areas where there is a reasonable chance for participants agreeing to take action together."
So if we could spend some time today fleshing out a more clear idea of what the roundtables are to accomplish, that would be extremely helpful.
Last point, which seems to have been overtaken by the chair's decision, is, we were looking for a very broad theme, and certainly the GIIC is in a position to support the notion of, "Internet governance: Creating opportunity for all."
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Okay. Can I suggest that -- Yes, Valerie. And after that, I will ask Egypt to take the floor for brief -- yes, Valerie.
>>V. BETANCOURT: Thank you, Chair. Following the intervention from Kenya and on behalf of the Latin American group that is organizing the Internet Governance Forum, I would like to announce that we will have the Internet Governance Forum for Latin America and the Caribbean in August from the 11th to the 13th in Rio de Janeiro.
Thank You, Chairman.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Thank you.
Egypt.
>>EGYPT: Thank you, Chair.
I would like to support the categorization of the workshops into informational workshops and output-oriented workshops. And I think dealing with them that way would help also the merge. Informational workshops would easily merge, and the more they merge, the more it's going to be informational.
On the other hand, the target audience would probably be different from other output-oriented workshops even on the same topic, because people who would like to attend an informational workshop probably still need awareness and more information on that topic. And even in reporting back, if needed, they can take just one slot to just brief the main session what topics have been brought to the attention of the audience.
So this would help the merge and would -- output-oriented workshops would probably be hard to merge. And people should -- And this I would call forced marriage. Because whenever we agree on an output, this is a long-term commitment. But a 90-minute joint informational workshop won't harm.
I also support the idea of Bertrand of having a format for reporting back. This would really encourage people to submit their comments.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Did you want something on the -- Ah. There you are.
>>EGYPT: I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman, but I have to go here because I have presentation in front of me and there is no power outlet.
So I will move with the presentation slide for your information, and I can e-mail it to the secretariat maybe if someone needs more information about it.
I would like just to share with you that we are still in the preparation phase for the awareness of the local community as well as the regional on both the Arab and African level. On the 18th of May, we will be having, in coordination with ISOC, an INET meeting in Cairo. And we will be focusing on an African preparation to make sure that there will be African presence and contribution to the IGF in Sharm El Sheikh.
In end of June, by the end of June, we will be hosting the first Arab school for Internet governance, in cooperation with Mr. Wolfgang. He is present here as well if you need further information for the school.
We will be having a session with academia in Egypt and high-level roundtable with the CEOs to maintain full awareness of all levels from the Egyptian community.
As for the internal management and the logistics of the event, we have created a national committee of coordination between different kind of ministers and the agencies that are relevant to our event to maintain and to make sure that the procedures will be in the right place. We have coordination with the Ministry, of course, of Foreign Affairs. They are our first partner. And our colleagues are present here as well with us. We have cooperation with the Ministry of Interior for facilitation of all security levels, measures, and visas, and so on, civil aviation, mass communications, the government of Sinai, as well as the Congress Center in Sharm El Sheikh, Egyptair that the Egyptian Television and Broadcasting Agency as well.
For the accommodation, I would appeal to the delegates of the Sharm El Sheikh event to proceed with their reservation, because the venue is almost running out of rooms. So I would appeal to the delegates to look at the Web site. It's www.IGF09.eg. And the full details of the accommodation is posted down there. We have a twin venue which is five minutes by car. And there is no traffic in Sharm El Sheikh, as I have mentioned in our previous meeting. So you can look at it as well. And we have various range of prices, starting from $60 per night in four stars hotel up to about $200 in five stars hotel.
So I would like to -- I would like you to start booking so as not to face any difficulties in that. And we have about 12 hotels posted on the Web site, I think.
For Egyptair as official carrier, they are offering 20% discount. And I have distributed or left here back in the room the flier that has all the contacts where you can book your tickets. And they will be sending an eticket, of course, to guarantee the discount, which is 20% for all destination. There will be -- official excursions will be posted in a month time by Egyptair on the IGF Web site for you if you'd like to extend your stay or come may be a little bit earlier for sight seeing in Egypt as well.
As for the visa, which is the most important part of my intervention over here today, I think we will be coordinating with the secretariat to -- regarding the official registration. And, actually, I would like to start this process a little bit earlier so as to maintain as well as to guarantee an easy procedures for all delegates and visitors to our event. When you register online or the normal IGF Web site, you will be prompted after proceeding with the normal registration page of the IGF Web site, you will be prompted to go on and log to the host country Web site to fill in another form where I will be handling your visa through this form. So I would like you to, whenever the registration is open, you would kindly look at it and maybe fill in these forms so that we can facilitate the visa, and then you will not be having any difficulty with our embassies abroad.
The IGF Village is an aspect that I would like to draw your kind attention to. I think the IGF Village in Hyderabad was very good, and we would like to build upon what was successful in Hyderabad. And we will be promoting the IGF Village where you can show your success stories and share your experiences. Maybe I can send to the secretariat in a couple of weeks' time the design for the village that we discuss internally together, and then you can have an idea about the theme. And if you can kindly, as well, proceed with the secretariat so that we can know how many we can accommodate in this village, it will be very much convenient for all of us.
The preconference has requested -- we have been receiving some requests from some affiliations and agencies for preconferences. And they were asking about having the conference in the Maritim Congress Center right before the event. Again, we will have to discuss this internally, and I will reflect back to those who have been requesting these kind of meetings. And I would like, as well, to draw their kind attention that the Jolie Ville Golf, which is the twin venue of the Sharm conference has a very nice conference facilities as well, where we can host these kind of events if the conference center is not up and ready on the 14th or the 13th of November.
If you can kindly approach us with these kind of requests on the host country Web site official e-mail, which is [email protected], and we will be handling this as soon as possible.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Thank you.
It's very clear that the organization is well in hand, and I'm sure we are not going to have any difficulties there, provided we get our act together and start making the reservations in time, applying for visas in time, and so on. I see United Kingdom wanted the floor. Yeah.
>>UNITED KINGDOM: Yes. Thank you, Chair. It's -- mention was made earlier of the Comm Wealth Internet Governance Forum. And this is just a reminding announcement I wanted to make that we're having an informal consultation about this project at 1:00 in room XXII. We're inviting all stakeholders from Commonwealth countries to attend, to share some thoughts about our objectives, possible activities, and anticipated outcomes for a commonwealth IGF initiative.
Alice will be talking about the experience with the East African IGF, and Chris Disspain will be talking about engaging parliamentarians. So we're going to have a useful discussion. And as I say, it's an informal consultation, so the emphasis is really on sharing ideas about how we take forward this initiative. So I hope all stakeholders from commonwealth member countries who are present here will be able to join us in room XXII at 1:00, straight after this session closes.
Thank you, Chair.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Okay.
Yes, Egypt.
>>EGYPT: Thank you, Chair.
A very brief comment which I carry back from Cairo, where currently the AfriNIC, AfNOG event is being hosted. I was asked by the technical community, the African technical community, to convey, I mean, their apologies for not being able to be here, and they support for all that was happening. And they will be in September with us.
Thank you.
>>SECRETARY KUMMER: Just a reminder, the Council of Europe has already alluded to two events. One will be in this room at quarter past 2:00 on the Cybercrime Convention. And the other one will be between 1:00 and 3:00, which is organized jointly with the UNECE and APC, which is an informal consultation on a code of good practice on participation, access to information, and transparency in Internet governance. And that will be held in room VII.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Thank you very much. Have a good lunch. And we reassemble at 3:00 in this room.
[ Lunch ]
IGF Open Consultation
13 May 2009
Geneva
Afternoon Session
[ Gavel. ]
>>CHAIR DESAI: Welcome back from your lunch. A couple of things before we move on to our next item, which is to look at the process of the IGF review because I think there is still a few things that we need to discuss on the arrangements for Sharm El Sheikh.
I'm going to first ask Markus to say a few words on the whole question of reporting-in by workshops because I think he has some information to give us which would be helpful.
>>SECRETARY KUMMER: Yes, thank you. Yes. As you well recall, we were not very successful in Rio with getting reports back from the various workshops despite repeated appeals by our Brazilian hosts. So we decided to be a little bit tougher in Hyderabad and we said only those workshop organizers who would submit a report would then be considered for presenting a report at the subsequent meeting in Sharm El Sheikh.
And all in all, we have been quite successful so far. People did not respect the deadline necessarily. We received -- I think the last workshop came in this morning. But by asking workshop organizers to provide a link to their workshop report proved a very efficient means of controlling it, and it really triggered good responses.
This does not -- I think now we have one listed who did not provide a workshop, with a red asterisk. Having said that, we were fairly lenient in accepting workshops. We did not exercise any quality control.
The point was made this morning that we should provide a template, which we had provided, but the reports did not always follow that template and maybe we have to be a little bit stricter on that one.
And we can, of course, in view of the Sharm El Sheikh workshops tighten the screw once more a little bit and say, Only those workshop organizers who submit the three-liner after the workshop will be considered at the subsequent meeting but we have to communicate it well in advance.
In informal discussions, one suggestion was made, for instance, we could ask for the name of a rapporteur who would then be responsible for the workshop organizers for submitting the workshop. So it would have somebody -- naming and shaming quite often works.
The dynamic coalitions will have to produce a report of their annual activities, and I think so far we have received eight out of 14. And I take it, there was a general consensus that those who had not provided the report should be taken off our listing of dynamic coalitions. They can always be reintroduced once they do provide a report.
Again, here we have been quite lenient. I mean, some provided a report of the meeting but at least they provided something so we know they did have some activity at the meeting. This, I think, is important that we have at least some kind of accountability.
But the basic point we have to communicate it well in advance so that the organizers know it and then live up to that commitment. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: We can move on to a point which we left a little hanging when we adjourned for lunch, and we can spend a little time on that. But I would like to move onto the discussion on the IGF review fairly soon.
The point I'm referring to is the various thoughts and reflections which have come from people on the need to find space for a discussion of two things: Internet rights and principles and the second is Internet governance for development.
My own sense is that at least on the first, there is a certain feeling that, are we ready for that discussion in the sense that, do we know enough?
And the one suggestion that has come is that perhaps part of the time that would now be available because we are probably going to include the reporting-in of the workshops with the main session itself, that part of the time could be used for a workshop or a roundtable on this issue.
I just want to say a few words on this more from a personal perspective rather than trying to reflect your views. In many ways, some discussion of rights and principles does take place when we talk of issues of openness, when we talk of privacy. You also have a statement of principles which is there in WSIS, as to what are the principles that should govern Internet governance are there in WSIS.
But perhaps what people have in mind when they talk of "rights and principles" is something more akin to more traditional human rights instruments which are about the rights of individuals.
And one of the questions that I would pose is, against whom? Because rights are vis-à-vis somebody, and I think these are questions which need to be explored.
A related area which may fall within this, though not necessarily, that is -- there is a need in the mechanism for redress for somebody who feels that the decision is incorrect to be able to try and get that decision changed. And now the arrangements -- in short, there is a very -- an area we haven't really explored adequately either in the working group on Internet governance or in the discussions or here. So in that sense, we don't know exactly what people would want to talk about, so perhaps this is suitable case for an exploratory discussion because it would be -- there are questions here which need to be addressed, not just of the principles that would guide Internet governance because those are stated in WSIS but also about what are the rights of individuals. When we speak of "principles," presumably what we are talking about is how the responsibility for governance should be exercised.
There are -- there is a lot of work these days on adversary to law and the conditions which should -- the criteria by which it can be judged. So maybe we can think in terms of an exploration here.
The second area which people referred to was the whole question of Internet governance and development as to whether the -- and particularly with our theme of "creating opportunity for all," this is again something which can explored.
There has been a persistent feeling in a lot of our discussions that somehow we have not been able to capture adequately the importance of capacity-building and development in our work. And, again, I feel that this is an area which needs to be explored in terms of what exactly do we want in the framework of governance which would address this because remember this, we are not here to look at the totality of the outcome of WSIS, including, say, what WSIS had to say on e-education or e-health or e-governance because there is a whole process for the follow-up of WSIS which deals with that.
Our remit is Internet governance, and one of the areas -- a second area which we require for thinking and exploration is what exactly can we talk about when we say Internet governance and development. And, again, one can use part of the time that's now available with the shifting of the workshop reporting for this purpose. And there is also a slot towards the end which is left unallotted for any purpose which could be used for this purpose.
These are just some reflections that I want to place before you. We could spend a little time on this. And after that, what I'm going to do is to request the multistakeholder advisory group to go into it a little more thoroughly over the next two days and come up with some proposals and ideas on how these could be handled. We don't need to come to closure on this just now because after all, the MAG will be meeting over the next two days and they can exercise their brains and see what they can come up in this area.
Just some reflections. Let's spend a little time on any thoughts people have on this, and then we can move on the issue of the IGF review process. Yes, Thomas.
>>SWITZERLAND: Thank you. Actually, I have been asking to make a short announcement that seems to have been forgotten, but thank you for giving me the floor.
With regard to EuroDIG, for those that are interested, we have launched a call for issues and themes that European stakeholders would like to be discussed at the next EuroDIG with the deadline of 31st of May. If you go to the Web site EuroDIG.org, you will find the e-mail and the contact where you can address your proposals.
And for those -- for the European stakeholders interested, we have a meeting tonight of the core group of organizers of EuroDIG. We meet at 8:00 -- no, it's 1815 at the EBU. For those who do not know where this is, we will probably go from here directly so just hang on to myself or Giacomo from the EBU or whoever you know that is from the core team of EuroDIG.
I just want to stress that everybody is invited to participate in this call for issues but also in the meeting that we have afterwards. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Willie Currie from APC.
>>ASSN FOR PROGRESSIVE COMM: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think your suggestions on the way forward around the Internet rights and principles issue are excellent. You have identified correctly the issue being one of the rights of individuals in relation to a global resource as well as a question mark about what kind of mechanism for redress might there be for violations.
And it is something we in the APC have been trying to think about, and I'm sure in the dynamic coalition of Internet rights and principles, there's a lot of thought on this as well.
One wonders at times whether this is something the issue of Internet governance might be of relevance, say, to the Human Rights Council if one is looking at an Internet governance mechanism with respect for Internet rights.
Obviously, this would require a lot more thought and exploration, as you suggest, and that was the sort of dual approach that you're suggesting would work well for a main plenary session.
On the issue of the Internet governance and development, one consistent workshop that has been run over the last three years has been one on Internet governance, a development agenda. And I think quite a bit of work has been done in trying to explore what a development agenda on Internet governance might look like and it may be at this point -- I see Bill Drake is here. He, perhaps, could expand more on whether there is at this point a concrete proposal coming out of that workshopping process at the IGF on a development agenda for Internet governance. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Bill Drake and then Jeffrey.
>>BILL DRAKE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was checking my mail and wasn't prepared to address this. But, yes, we've done several workshops around the notion of trying to mainstream development considerations into Internet governance, the assessment of Internet governance, processes on a sort of cross-institutional basis. People have expressed interest in carrying that further. It has simply been a question of what the modalities of doing that might consist of.
I think it would be good if we could get the energy together and build the coalition for it, to do a dynamic coalition.
But beyond that, it, of course, would be interesting to me at least as a subject for a possible main session at some point to try to think seriously about what are the development aspects and implications of the different institutional arrangements we have; how do the different institutional arrangements, whether intergovernmental or private sector or multistakeholder address developmental perspectives. Are there lessons that could be learned? Best practices that could be identified that might be potentially generalizable? Is there a way to sort of establish some sort of a conceptual framework or mechanism for ongoing assessment of Internet governance processes and outcomes from a development perspective and so on?
And I certainly think that it's an area that has not been explored sufficiently. I mean, we're all concerned with development. But the linkages between the specific Internet governance issues that we have addressed in the IGF and development trajectories are often left implicit rather than surfaced and treated as a sort of primary focal point.
So to me, that's something that if there was interest, I would certainly be more than happy to talk to anybody about trying to figure out how we could explore it further.
>>CHAIR DESAI: ICC?
>>ICC: Thank you, Chair. A few suggestions on the developing country issues. One would be that there is suggestion about roundtables, and I think some of us have questions about what that would be. But this would seem to be an area where to the extent a roundtable means a more participatory exchange of information, that having a discussion about best practices and what is working and what the obstacles are with developing countries, it would allow and facilitate perhaps greater participation by members from developing countries and also start to maybe gather in a more systematic way the information. As well as at the main session, I think the access session would be the right way to perhaps expand the discussion and build on the discussion last year really focused on reaching the next billion and then beyond that and what are the accessibility issues.
But to the extent that that could be linked into how can Internet governance and the structure maybe be improved and facilitate that, that would seem to be an excellent suggestion for the topic that we already have staked out in the access session.
And then I wanted to make an unrelated comment, which we haven't talked about, is the session on the last day and wanted to propose that that would be perhaps an opportunity to really look forward, which is another, I think, important aspect of what IGF does is to keep evolving and keep looking ahead at what's coming next and perhaps have a discussion about -- from a technology perspective, maybe get a range of views on where the Internet is headed and then have a policy Internet governance reaction to that, saying, let's look ahead at a longer-term view and then start to think about what are the implications and the issues that would flow from that as a way to really have a forward-looking element to the IGF perhaps on the last day. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Okay. I think probably we've explored -- gone as far as we can, and I would suggest that we remit this to MAG to explore this further and come up with some ideas and suggestions on how to handle this.
So let's then move on to the thing that will probably take us a little time, and that is the process of IGF review. Now, on this, you have a document which has been online where some attempt has been made to synthesize the various contributions that have come as a result of questions.
I will ask Markus to walk us through that and then we can open the discussion.
>>SECRETARY KUMMER: Yes, thank you. We received a total of 17 responses, 16 of them responded to the online questionnaire and one response was as a free text. Several of the respondents made it clear that they answered in their individual capacity.
On the whole, the responses indicated that the IGF had met its mandate to a varying degree. Many wrote that the IGF was fully meeting its mandate while others wrote that it met the mandate unevenly or with deficits in various areas. Even among those who felt that the IGF was meeting its mandate, there were many suggestions of ways in which the IGF could improve.
All respondents supported the extension of the mandate. We structured the paper along the questionnaire we had posted on our Web site, so you can find the answers between each question. In certain cases, we took some liberties and put elements of the answers to what we thought were better suited or made the synthesis paper flow better.
I will not go through the whole paper, but, nevertheless, I could highlight a few of the positive factors that were mentioned that the IGF by its very existence had demonstrated the feasibility and benefits of multistakeholder interaction and that it was, therefore, very much in line with the WSIS principle. This was maybe the most commonly held view of the positive factors.
The point was also made that it had proven to be one-of-a-kind and valuable venue for information sharing and international dialogue on topics critical to global, economic, social and political development.
It was also stated that it had been a main laboratory for modalities of interaction among all actors that was required by the WSIS Declaration of Principle; that it had provided an enabling environment for WSIS principles, in particular paragraph 48 of the Declaration of Principle.
And last, but not least, the point was also made that it had helped and promoted multistakeholder cooperation at the national and regional levels.
There were various suggestions for improvement, and very much echoing today's discussion, the development issue was in the forefront of those.
The point was made that the subject of development had been treated in a superficial and patronizing manner without engaging actors who are truly involved in development activities. And more emphasis should be played on the millennium development goals. They should be mainstreamed into the activities of the other internationally agreed development goals.
Also, human rights came up strongly, that more emphasis should be put on issues concerned with human rights.
And then the IGF should work to ensure the embodiment of WSIS principle in other existing Internet governance organizations or should offer advice to stakeholders on ways and means to accelerate the availability and affordability of the Internet in the developing world or should pay more attention to regulatory reform in the telecom market in order to facilitate access growth for developing countries.
Again, according to today's discussion, there was a strong emphasis on remote participation. On the one hand, praising the efforts taken so far but, on the other hand, calling for improved and reinforced efforts to enable remote participation.
Financial resources were also mentioned as an important issue.
And there was also some criticism with regard to the questionnaire. The point was made that after three years, it was too early to measure any impact on -- of the IGF or whether it had acted as a catalyst for change. However, there were others who had actually related elements where they had noted an impact or they had noted that the IGF had acted as a catalyst of change.
But on the whole, the paper -- the responses were very positive and the suggestions for improvement were very thoughtful and well taken. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: The floor is open for comments, suggestions? Yes. United States.
>>UNITED STATES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd just like to reiterate what the United States said in its written submission, that the establishment of the IGF was one of the key outputs of WSIS.
The United States takes this opportunity to reiterate its commitments to the results of the WSIS, and, in particular, to the convening of the IGF.
The IGF has proven to be a one-of-a-kind and valuable venue for international sharing and information dialogue on topics critical to economic, social, and political development. Substantive discussions amongst all stakeholders, as called for in the Tunis Agenda, have occurred in the IGF that have fostered the sustainability, robustness, security, stability, and development of the Internet.
The flexible structures used at the IGF -- open forums, workshops, and main sessions -- have evolved into dynamic mechanisms that effectively facilitate exchange of information and best practices among and between all stakeholders.
Consequentially, the United States supports the continuation of the IGF past its initial five-year mandate.
The United States believes that the multistakeholder processes that have underpinned the IGF continue to make it a globally unique environment for a constructive and open exchange of ideas without the limitations imposed by the pressures of negotiation. We believe that the current work methods of the IGF are fully consistent with principles as agreed in the WSIS documents and that the IGF is addressing appropriately its mandate as articulated in the Tunis Agenda.
The hard work and dedication of the IGF secretariat as well as the volunteer multistakeholder Advisory Group has been critical to making the IGF a success to date. The United States commends the secretariat, as well as the current and past MAG members, for their tireless efforts.
We look forward to the 2009 meeting of the IGF in Egypt, where we hope that the cross-cutting themes of development and capacity-building find renewed emphasis.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Thank you. And Czech Republic, then Bill Graham.
>>CZECH REPUBLIC: It is important to recognize that the Internet Governance Forum is a unique platform for nonbinding multistakeholder dialogue on Internet governance at global level. It started off as an unprecedented experiment, and it is a measure of its success that it continues to evolve.
After three meetings in different parts of the world, there are already certain characteristics that can be identified. Continuously high attendance at IGF meetings demonstrates this forum continues to be useful.
It is, indeed, the only forum that allows a gathering of representatives from all geographic regions across all stakeholder groups to discuss all aspects of Internet governance. While there is a room for improvement towards, for instance, more visibility of the outcomes of the IGF and more outreach regarding participation, it should be stressed that the IGF is open to all stakeholders for participation on equal footing, and we believe that this is a very important aspect that should be maintained.
The choice of themes has also proven to attract the attention of many participants, which demonstrates that the issues addressed were relevant to stakeholders.
At the same time, the IGF has provided a space to address also controversial issues and have discussions on future developments.
Another characteristic of the IGF that is welcome and that has crystalized during the first three meetings is its impact on developments outside the IGF meetings. The IGF has triggered follow-up discussions in the context of dynamic coalitions and has inspired debates at regional and national level.
It is important to make this positive impact of the IGF more visible while maintaining the nonbinding character of the forum. In fact, the lack of pressure to negotiate binding documents -- sorry -- outcomes contributes to frank and open exchanges.
We further consider the IGF as having a substantive role in broadening the debate on Internet governance. In addition to encompassing a broad range of issues, the IGF continues to extend the debate also to those whose voices usually are not heard in other Internet governance platforms. As there is no restriction on participation and involvement, it offers a platform to those who do not have the possibility otherwise to draw attention to their concerns or options for solutions.
The IGF model is deeply rooted in the network society paradigm, triggered on the Internet itself. And it is based on its societal values of freedom and openness.
We would therefore join in with those who see the IGF as complementing the existing structures dealing with the Internet governance issues. It fulfills in its uniqueness an important function for all Internet governance stakeholders.
It is for all those reasons that the European Union, with its 27 member states, considers that the IGF, set up for an initial period of five years, is an important element of the agreement found at the World Summit on the Information Society and has become a key framework for a global discussion of Internet-related issues.
The meeting of the IGF that have taken place up to now show, in our view, the value of having this type of forum. Therefore, we would welcome an extension of the IGF beyond the initial time frame.
Also, the European Union, with its 27 member states, would propose that the U.N. General Assembly, when deciding on the forum's continuation, decides on its continuation for another period of five years. Once the second period of five years is over, another review of the desirability of a further extension should take place in the process of overall review of WSIS outcomes.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Thank you.
Then I have Bill Graham.
>>BILL GRAHAM: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I wanted to convey to -- first, I guess, draw your attention to the fact that the Internet Society conducted an online survey of its members recently over a two-week period, and we've published today the summary of the results of that. I won't read you the detailed URL, but it's linked through from our main page at www.ISOC.org.
One of the main areas of that survey covered the taking stock and way forward questions. And I wanted to report some of the findings into this session today. I hope it will be useful.
In terms of the impact of the IGF, a large number of our respondents found that the forum has not yet had a direct impact on their governments or their institutions. So they feel there is room for improvement. At the same time, there is recognition that the IGF is beginning to have indirect impacts in the following specific ways: By creating space for a debate of sensitive issues, by enhancing multistakeholderism in Internet policy formulation both nationally and internationally, by providing some guidelines to policymakers, raising awareness of the issues, sharing information, and, particularly, enhancing participation of developing countries in these international discussions.
83% of the respondents expressed a desire for the IGF to continue past its initial five-year mandate.
There were a few suggestions made to improve the IGF for the future. One of these probably won't be a surprise. And that is to continue to work to achieve balance in the participation by the various stakeholder groups: governments, businesses, and civil society. There was a call for further increased grants and subsidies for civil society to participate. But it was also noted that representatives from the business community are at this point coming from a reasonably limited cross-section of business. And there was a feeling that we would benefit by broadening the range of business interests participating in the IGF.
Looking at the format of discussions and the IGF generally, our members felt that it would be good to be more local and pragmatic in looking at the workshops, which I think is something we should consider as we plan for the 2009 meeting. They also had -- came up with a good idea, I think, of identifying agreed findings to -- from the IGF workshops which could then be used to foster cooperation at the international level, and possibly establishing a kind of annual progress report on the issues that have been discussed for several years in the IGF.
I think it's generally agreed, however, that there's a need to ensure that the forum stays a neutral place for discussion. And that means, in several people's opinions, at least, that it should definitely take on the decision-making role that has sometimes been suggested.
Finally, there was a suggestion that it would be useful to find more and more effective ways of advertising the outcomes of the IGF, which implies attracting more journalists to the event itself.
I think I will stop with that. I do, however, in the context of this morning's discussion want to draw attention to the fact that there are several approaches to the governance aspects of development that are brought forward from the survey. And I'll certainly introduce those into the MAG in more detail tomorrow.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: I have ICANN and then Egypt.
>>ICANN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just wanted to highlight a few points that came in ICANN's response to the -- the questionnaire.
So the IGF has established itself as able to provide a truly open and inclusive platform for all stakeholders to participate on equal footing and to address Internet public-policy issues.
The IGF has been structured around themes like access, diversity, openness, security, in addition to critical Internet resources, as well as the cross-cutting theme of development. In all such themes, there has been a great emphasis on issues of concern to developing countries and particularly on how to make the Internet affordable, accessible, and through content developed using those countries' native languages.
On the impact that the IGF has had, from ICANN's perspective, the IGF has provided an opportunity to provide information as well as generate awareness of issues under ICANN's responsibility. From this has emerged new participants to our processes, representing different stakeholders, particularly governments and civil society, who have been involved in the IGF and started to get involved in ICANN.
Likewise, members of the ICANN community, especially the technical and at-large communities, have become engaged in the IGF process.
Partnerships and cooperation among respective organizations have also arisen, such as, for example, with UNESCO on awareness regarding the IDN ccTLD process or the fast track. The IGF has allowed for the creation of bridges across organizations and foras. Despite the similarity in the roles, they share the same vision of openness and inclusiveness.
Outside ICANN, the IGF has also acted as a catalyst for change. This has been characterized in the development of several national and regional IGFs that, despite being stemmed from the IGF, they have developed their own programs based on priorities and interests of the respective countries and regions.
For -- On the issue of the areas of improvements, ICANN thinks that for the long-term stability of the IGF, there has to be a reliable and consistent form of diverse financial support to ensure efficient and effective ability to operate and support the IGF process. Additionally, establishing mechanism for improved remote participation and continued participation of developing countries is one aspect that will also improve the IGF and benefit to the global information society.
In general, Mr. Chairman, ICANN believes that the continuity of the IGF past its initial five-year mandate servings an important means to facilitate discussions among a wide range of stakeholders on current and emerging Internet-related issues in a multistakeholder mandate.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Thank you.
>>EGYPT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to share with you the view of Egypt built around the online questionnaire.
Egypt believes that the IGF has proved to be a perfect forum for discussion and exchange of information and thus provides a great opportunity for capacity-building pertaining to Internet governance.
Its flexibility in terms of topics and formats of discussion has helped promoting it as a platform where participants can converse freely, highlight common points of agreement, and identify points which need further discussion. It has also helped the members of the different stakeholder groups to build common understanding of problems and try to reach a way forward.
The IGF has had a positive impact on national awareness-raising, not only on an IG-thematical level, but also, and even more importantly, in terms of promoting and linking policy dialogues on a national and regional level to the global dialogue.
The open consultations provide an excellent opportunity for exchange of ideas. Tools and mechanisms such as the real-time caption and the remote participation have a great effect on broadening participation of stakeholders.
The MAG, with its multistakeholder composition, has proved to be an innovative vehicle to integrate and converge views of the different stakeholder groups. The rotation scheme serves the purpose of injecting new ideas. An overall balance should continue to be maintained with special focus on ensuring that stakeholders from developing countries are well represented.
MAG members have shown great dedicate and commitment under the wise leadership of you, Mr. Desai.
The IGF secretariat, managed by Mr. Markus Kummer, has worked professionally and effectively in preparing for the past meetings of the IGF. We are confident it will continue to do so. It has done, actually, a great job in summarizing contributions, ensuring intersessional communications, and the timely dissemination of information.
We believe the IGF should continue beyond its five-year mandate, maintaining its multistakeholder approach to public-policy discussions and capacity-building and acting as a venue for policy coherence and inter-professional dialogue.
We also believe the IGF is appropriately addressing its mandate as set out by the Tunis Agenda and is functioning in a consistent accordance with the principles of the WSIS.
Further, we believe the evaluation of the IGF process should not be measured only against its mandate. It should also examine the impact this process has produced in the broad area of Internet public policy making. It should consider the greater level of inclusion this process has created through greater and diversified participation, both across the different regions as well as across the various stakeholder groups.
The IGF should remain as a space for exchanging ideas and deepening dialogue among the various groups and should continue to play an important role in defining and shaping decisions made by other relevant bodies.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Thank you. I have ETNO, ICC, and China.
ETNO.
>>ETNO: ETNO will consider the possible submission of a response on the desirability of the continuation of the forum according to paragraph 76 of the Tunis Agenda, but in the meantime, offers the following comments:
In 2005, WSIS outlined a consensus for a global approach to the information society. The IGF is one of the key outputs of WSIS, and today, we can safely say that it is the most innovative U.N. process, which started as an experiment but soon became an institution.
In our view, the most important objective of the IGF is to create a forum for dialogue and exchange of information on Internet governance, public-policy issues, and, furthermore, to establish a reliable global basis for a cooperative, pluralistic dialogue that embraces all stakeholders.
Much of its success stems from its open and inclusive character and its multistakeholder nature.
The success also realized on the nondecisive, nonbinding character of the IGF, which allows all parties to explore difficult issues without political tensions and to speak freely.
Such an approach is essential in dealing with the challenges the Internet faces and will assist in taking advantage of the opportunities it presents for further economic and social development.
ETNO offers full support for the continuation of the IGF and its current structure past its initial five-year mandate.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Thank you.
ICC.
>>ICC: Thank you, Chair.
On behalf of the ICC and the members of the BASIS initiative, Ayesha Hassan, providing a few comments. As many of you know, ICC/BASIS has responded to the questionnaire. And I'd like to emphasize a few of the points that are of great importance to our members.
We believe that the IGF provides a useful opportunity for all relevant stakeholders to discuss important Internet governance-related policy issues and exchange experiences on challenges faced, solutions that work, good practices, and issues on the horizon.
I'm reiterating what I've heard other contributors put forward this afternoon, and we join them.
It also provides a place to make new contacts and to make new contacts which can turn into partnerships, and also allow the exchange of information that raises awareness about initiatives and resources that are available to address these issues.
We believe there is no other forum that provides the opportunities that are afforded by the IGF to all stakeholders.
In terms of impacts, we do agree that there is room to capture impacts that the IGF has in a more concrete way going forward We also believe that the IGF has been a catalyst for building several new relationships and deepening others. This has real impact.
Business has seen a major difference in the relationships between business representatives and certain governments, for instance, as well as other organizations and actors, which have led to new joint initiatives, invitations to speak and participate in national and regional events on a variety of topics, the exchange of experiences and expertise which have helped to shape initiatives and policy approaches.
We, too, will join to try to capture those impacts going forward.
ICC/BASIS members fully support the continuation of the IGF in its current format and structure, with the essential approach to multistakeholderism and all participants on an equal footing, because it provides a unique space for exchange, dialogue, and relationship-building among stakeholders, many of which would not otherwise have an opportunity to come together. The nonnegotiating nature of the IGF is a unique quality that allows for open, frank exchange that has a positive impact on approaches to Internet governance issues in other forums and at the national and regional levels. There is no alternative approach to achieving this special opportunity.
We have offered some suggestions for continued improvements for the IGF. And I would like to highlight just a few of them. One of them is to ensure that the IGF secretariat has additional human and financial resources to carry out its very important activities.
We also note that there has been increasingly sensitivity by the IGF regarding limited time and human resources of all stakeholders in setting deadlines, dates, locations, et cetera. We would like to see this continue as a continued sensitivity.
We join others in emphasizing the importance of working on remote participation and online tools to allow a broad range of relevant stakeholders to contribute to and participate in the IGF. And, lastly, that we should work together to develop effective ways to capture all of the very important substantive impacts that result from the IGF and its preparatory processes.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: I have China. And then Indonesia.
>>CHINA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This afternoon, we are talking about the value of the IGF. And that's a very important question. The delegation of China has followed very carefully the previous statements made.
And now the delegation would like to make the following points. Firstly, we very much appreciate the secretariat for their excellent work. We agree in principle with what has been said by previous speakers on the specific aims of the IGF. We feel that the IGF has contributed a great deal in light of its historic mandate. But we have also noted the -- that the essence of IGF's work is establishing dialogue, exchanging points of view. But this is not enough to solve the problems. The real problem is that in the field of the Internet, there is a monopoly that exists. And we need to solve that problem. It's not by talking about principles merely that we can solve this problem.
We can also see this kind of discussion taking place. But it's not enough for developing countries who don't have enough resources and don't have the capacities to participate in this kind of dialogue without further commitments being made, which is why the points of view of developing countries, especially when it comes to Internet governance, their points of view are not sufficiently reflected in our discussions, which is why we don't agree that the IGF should continue its mandate after the five years are up.
So we repeat that the delegation of China does not agree with extending the mission of the IGF beyond the five years. We feel that after the five years are up, we would need to look at the results that have been achieved. And we need, then, to launch into an intergovernmental discussion.
I think that this should be a positive result of IGF's work.
The work of its next phase should be based on the results achieved in the previous years. We need to launch an intergovernmental discussion in order to solve the real problems that exist in this field of Internet governance.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Thank you.
Indonesia.
>>INDONESIA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the floor. I am from Indonesia and a MAG IGF member.
In response to the discussions proposed by several delegates before, in order that we be able to see our progress of what we have done and what the impact of the IGF and able to fill out the taking-stock and then the final report, as stated in the agenda in the last day of the IGF meeting, I'd like to propose several things.
One, we can define the success indicators of the Internet Governance Forum so that we can measure based on the WSIS mandate on the IGF as stated in paragraph 76, WSIS Tunis Agenda.
The second piece on the success indicators we define by we can evaluate or review our Internet Governance Forum impact, how much success our forum that we can use this input to the taking stock and looking forward agenda as stated in the meeting.
And the third, then, what we have done to -- then what should we have to do next? What are we going to end up -- are we going to end up with the fifth IGF forum in 2010 or any other proposal to extend to another Internet Governance Forum?
Then we call it the fourth IGF declaration or some success declaration for the future of Internet governance.
The fourth, I support the proposals from other delegates concerning the written short report of each forum, either the main sessions or other forums, the workshops or dynamic coalitions.
The fifth, the same as the first two IGF document, I propose the third IGF document, Hyderabad document, will be produced before and can be secreted in some (inaudible) meeting.
I thank you very much.
>>CHAIR DESAI: APC, Karen Banks.
>>ASSN FOR PROGRESSIVE COMM: Thank you, Nitin. It's Anriette Esterhuysen, speaking on behalf of APC.
We've made a written submission, and we'll just highlight a few points of emphasis.
For us, the primary mandate of the IGF has been to be a deliberative process for the discussion of public-policy matters around the Internet. And we feel that it has played that role exceptionally well. It also has been a relationship-building process as other speakers have highlighted. Often the combination of the relationship building and the deliberative process has, in fact, produced shifts in what had in the past has been very fixed positions from various stakeholders. And there are some areas we feel that could be strengthened and it has -- again, it has been mentioned already, but the participation of civil society. And, in some case, also of developing country governments and private-sector stakeholders from developing countries has been hampered by insufficient resources. This is a problem that needs to be addressed.
We feel unambiguously that the IGF should continue past the five-year mandate because it is the only space currently for public-policy dialogue on Internet governance that involves the participation of all stakeholders of the Internet.
Internet governance itself is distributed across multiple governance institutions and the IGF provides a space for them to engage or for broader range of stakeholders on policy issues that they otherwise would haven't had access to. This in itself is a soft form of holding such institutions to account.
The IGF has demonstrated during its first three years of existence that it can successfully perform the role of creating an open space for policy dialogue among stakeholders, despite the difference views they've had.
The IGF itself is part of an important 21st century development in international public-policy arenas that are experimenting with multistakeholder participation in complex governance matters. So it is far too soon to assess the impact, but it's also far too soon to end the experiment.
And to end the IGF would, in fact, be a grave mistake.
The one area of the original mandate that we feel it could have performed more strongly in is in Task D, which is to advise all stakeholders in proposing ways and means to accelerate the availability and affordability of Internet access. Even though access has been discussed at length in the IGF, the IGF has not given any concrete advice about how the problem can be addressed and we know that that's contentious but we feel it's important.
We also feel that when it comes to promoting and assessing on an ongoing basis the embodiment of WSIS principles and Internet governance processes, the IGF, while its practiced and applied the WSIS principles in its own spaces, it has not promoted or assessed the adherence to WSIS principles and Internet governance processes themselves more broadly.
Finally, just to address the comment from China, just to -- in our experience as APC, we have found the IGF particularly valuable in developing a deeper understanding of the perspectives of the government of China and of other governments in this forum. So for us it would be really -- a huge loss to have a space where this kind of understanding could continue to be developed.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Essentially, let me first clarify that the responsibility for these valued suggestions for the U.N. Secretary-General will then be looked at in the Commission on Science and Technology for Development, from there to ECOSOC and then presumably to the General Assembly.
So what is required of the IGF is then input into this process not -- and presumably input can come from other places also.
One question that had been raised in the -- was about how this should be done in Sharm El Sheikh. And there were many suggestions -- there was a range of suggestions that have come. There is an advantage of having an external review, whether it should be an internal review, the format in which this should be done.
In some way, we need to also comment a little on what sort of process would be helpful in this regard. We are not necessarily trying to come to conclusions here at this meeting. That will be the responsibility of a much later meeting.
In any case, the real responsibility for this rests with the people who will submit the evaluation to the CSTD, ECOSOC, et cetera. So at this point let's try to focus on process, how do we do this. Are there things that we ought to put out?
One suggestion has come from Indonesia on a set of things against which one should evaluate performance. It would be helpful to say if we want to do this, then look at how it has performed against this, this, this, which is a suggestion which has come from Indonesia.
Are there other thoughts, suggestions people have on this issue of what is it that we need to place before the participants in Sharm El Sheikh to allow them to give informed comments on this question of the IGF? Having the exact phrase used is, to examine the desirability of the contribution of the forum in consultations with participants within five years of its -- within five years of its creation and to make recommendations to the U.N. membership in this regard. This is an instruction to the Secretary-General.
So the question really is that -- what is it that would be helpful in the Secretary-General's consultations for the forum participants in Sharm El Sheikh? The responsibility ultimately is his to make a recommendation and then, finally, the decision will have to be taken to the intergovernmental level.
Any thoughts, suggestions on questions of process? Yes, George.
>>GEORGE PAPADATOS: Thank you. Well, it seems to me that we have not fully examined different scenarios for the future. It is either we don't go ahead with the IGF or we go ahead with the IGF as it is.
I think that it has been pointed out by questionnaires that I have seen and so forth, there is room for improvement. And there is room for improvement both at the working -- so at the IGF and at the MAG itself.
I think this has not been explored very much, and probably it would be helpful to come up with suggestions along these lines at least to -- in Sharm El Sheikh to indicate to the General Assembly that there is a whole range of options about the IGF; that after its five years are up, it has come up with useful suggestions as to looking forward in the future.
I think in the past, there have been several thoughts put forward about being a little more stable, more predictable and on a more stable financing basis. There is a whole range of aspects. I don't know whether these could be put in a questionnaire or could be examined in separate boxes. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Why is everybody so quiet? IGC.
>>IGC: The Internet Governance Caucus submits, as mentioned in the Tunis Agenda, the process of review should be centered on consultations with forum or IGF participants. We are the ones who know whether it's working for us or not. These consultations should be both formal and informal.
It will also be necessary to go beyond IGF participants to reach out to other interested stakeholders who, for different reasons, may not be able to attend the IGF meetings.
The process of consultations should especially keep in mind constituencies that have lesser participation in the IG issues at present such as constituencies in developing countries, including those of civil society. Other interested groups with lower participation and ID issues like women, ethnic minorities and disability groups should also be specifically approached.
The IGC believes that a structured analysis of the performance of the IGF accompanied by a suitable methodology for consultation, analysis and stakeholder input is important to the credibility and the usefulness of the IGF review. We suggest that either the MAG or a specially appointed representative multistakeholder group be tasked with overseeing the process and making recommendations based on this analysis.
In order to demonstrate that the analysis is both objective and transparent, it should be conducted by a body or bodies that are independent from the IGF and its active stakeholders including the United Nations. The process should be open and transparent. It is not advisable to rely solely on a pro bono evaluation by any agency that offers it for such a politically sensitive and important assessment.
The selected experts should have adequate expertise in matter of global public-policy and policy institutions. In view of the geopolitical significance of IG, it may be useful to have a reputed public-policy institution in the global south do the evaluation in partnership with one such institution from the north.
There should be adequate balancing of perspectives, including global north-south perspectives, and partnerships are a good way to ensure it. Thank you very much.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Here is a specific suggestion. There ought to be a commissioned evaluation presumably, possibly jointly by an institution from a north and south, not by anybody who's been a past or current participant in the IGF. That's my understanding of what you're proposing.
George has also proposed the boxes under which the evaluation should be done and some suggestions on criteria.
Any other thoughts -- because I think it is important that anything that is -- that this particular requirement of consultation of the forum participants be done in a manner which is convincing.
In the end, the responsibility is that of the Secretary-General. But, nevertheless, we should advise as to say this is how this should be done in order for it to be done. Anybody else?
Mr. Muguet.
>>FRANCIS MUGUET: Yes, I noticed that it is somewhat an irony that we are now on the point of speaking about recommendations on the review process where the IGF is to make recommendation on issues emerging from the IGF and one other issue is, of course, the review process. So we are just in the middle of a chicken-and-egg situation in terms of (inaudible) issues. And I come back to my proposal that the dynamic coalition shall make recommendation at the IGF and not at the next IGF to come after Sharm El Sheikh but in Sharm El Sheikh.
And the idea has been proposed this morning that not only dynamic coalition while making roundtables to make recommendations but also groups that could be related to the review process who could make also recommendation as the IGF concerning the review process. Why not? I think we need to be consistent with the way we are dealing with recommendations.
And I believe this recommendation could be -- in fact, be considered by this body -- external body you are speaking about. We don't know so much about it, but I understand that all of the review process is somewhat internal, which I think is a good principle.
But in this way, we'll have a way fed into this external review process through a recommendation by the IGF. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Parminder.
>>IT FOR CHANGE: To take forward what Ginger and earlier George were speaking to provide a framework on which the forum participants can give their views and also help the U.N. Secretary-General to make up his mind, I think the kind of analysis which we need to do from the experience which we uniquely have is to open up the different possibilities and show what is related to what and between that decision may be possible.
For instance, I would say that there are three kind of functions/structures which IGF could be doing. One is to simply facilitate disclosing meetings, which it has been doing very well. Everybody agreed it has been doing very well, and that can carry on. There are certain structures associated with that kind of a function.
On the other extreme is to be able to make a direct impact on policy-making institutions and policy-making, which is the kind of disappointment perhaps China has with the process; that that kind of direct policy-making impact has not happened, which also I agree that most people here agree that's going too far forward for IGF's role.
But in between the two, there is an advisory role which I think has not been fulfilled, something which APC also pointed out. And that kind of role requires certain structural requirements of that role, which perhaps are not there. And if you were able to go towards that role, it needs certain structures. The roundtable is one of those things which we are trying, but I'm not really sure whether we can do it.
And if we can associate this kind of different roles and these kind of experiments, we have done and what are the constraints of each and that opens up -- that kind of analysis helps people make up their mind.
And I think that the advisory role, what kind of advisory role and what kind of structures can make us move toward some kind of advisory role is an issue which is contentious and something we need to evolve in. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Okay. Marilyn Cade.
>>TECH AMERICA: Thank you. I will resume speaking on behalf of Tech America and just say that it's our view -- and we have expressed this -- that there is great value in the function that -- and activities that the Internet Governance Forum provides.
I personally well remember only a few years ago in the early days of the first WSIS when we did not have a multistakeholder interaction. I recall not actually being in the room when discussions were undertaken about matters that were of big concern to civil society, to the technical community and to the business community as well as to governments.
Over the life of working together through the WSIS process, we somehow got past our not being in the same room and agreed on a multistakeholder approach with parties speaking equally and listening to each other, listening to disagreements as well as to experiences and finding some commonalities. That is -- that is the unique value that we all talk about, about the Internet Governance Forum.
I would agree with earlier speakers who find it too early to think that we have, in fact, concluded our work. And I would know that Tech America believes that the IGF should be extended. We will continue to make that case and to participate with others to explain why we believe that.
Today, I'd just like to make a couple of other comments. We continue to need to improve how we talk to each other, and that is something we need to explore further as an improvement within the functioning of the IGF.
So further enhancements to that -- the way we interact, the way we share information, I think, are evolving. The roundtables may be one form of that enhancement.
We also need to think about how we can continue to document and support the experiences and exchanges.
As we examine the further consultation about the -- what the IGF has accomplished and how it can be improved, I would suggest that it's really not feasible to think about establishing an outside group but that we should look back to the comprehensive questionnaire we have available to perhaps relaunch awareness about the questionnaire, to gain further inputs from parties who haven't yet responded.
And on that note, I will say that Tech America will submit detailed comments into the questionnaire, and I would urge a consideration about relaunching an awareness and encouraging broad participation, which is something we will do with our members. And we would encourage it on the part of the secretariat as well.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Miguel.
>>EL SALVADOR: Thank you, Chairman. I have heard a lot of suggestions on how to conduct the evaluation and I think that many of them has different merits. I will start by asking through you if it is possible to have that independent evaluation that people have talked of, of having an independent institution from north-south and having a counterpart from the IGF.
This is, basically, what you do when you are outside in the financial world and you have money to do that. But if there is money to do that, I will encourage that. But on top of that, I will suggest that each of us that are represented here -- are many constituencies represented here and these constituencies can make their own evaluation.
I'm already borrowing on a speaker that preceded me that said that the importance is how important is the IGF for the different constituencies that are here. And I believe this is an input that has to be taken into account in any evaluation, and that might be based on the questionnaire that has been circulated.
So I see different parts of the evaluation and all coming together at the end with this independent evaluation, if it is at all possible to conduct that, to give it to us as an input for the governments to make decisions next year. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Let me clarify my understanding. What we are discussing here is how to give -- how to organize one phase in the instruction of the WSIS where the Secretary-General is required to prepare the evaluation in consultation with the forum participants. The IGF is not doing the evaluation.
There is no such thing as an IGF view. We have no procedure for saying, "This the IGF view." We don't have resolutions or decisions in IGF. We have no such procedure for saying that this is IGF view. There is no way in which you can say, "IGF is of the view that...." That is not a meaningful phrase. There is no practical way in which we can do that.
It is possible for a smaller group to maybe do that, but that's not possible for us to say that of the IGF.
What is stated in the decision is that the Secretary-General will consult with the forum participants, and what we need to give advice -- to give some suggestions on is to how would we consider what sort of consultation, what forum participants would consider reasonable and adequate.
We have already, more or less, decided that the key part here is in Sharm El Sheikh, and any suggestions that we can offer in how this is done in Sharm El Sheikh are valuable.
There has been -- somebody speaks of "independent entity," presumably it is for working with the Secretary-General, not with the IGF, to consult with the forum participants as required by the WSIS.
So please understand that the intention is not to produce a document which could be described as the IGF view because we have no procedure for deciding on an IGF view. There is no way in which you can arrive at an IGF decision.
What you can do is to have a process where you can consult with the participants. And I think many interesting suggestions have been made in how that consultation should take place. In the end, the responsibility will be that of the Secretary-General, not of the IGF because it is Secretary-General that has been asked to make the evaluation, not the IGF. The IGF has not been asked to make a contribution.
It is the Secretary-General who has been asked to make an evaluation and make his recommendations. And I think that distinction must be preserved. So let's not get too caught in up in how are we going to do it because we are simply the people to be consulted, not the people who are to do the evaluation.
George and then Fouad.
>>GEORGE PAPADATOS: Well, thank you. In the past, before I put the suggestion that a representative of the Secretary-General attend the MAG meetings. I don't know whether that will materialize this time. But then we can think also of some modalities where the Secretary-General can consult either MAG members or individually. I mean, this is done in the U.N. all the time. But we can talk about it. Thank you.
>>FOUAD BAJWA: The idea this morning to take such issues on the IG for development theme that we were discussing, maybe that could be a very helpful facilitator in this process and the reporting from that or the outcome of that can actually help the U.N. Secretary-General. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Parminder and then GIIC.
>>IT FOR CHANGE: Again, building on what George was saying, I'm still not perhaps sure what is the IGF. Is open consultation IGF? And MAG IGF? I think all of them probably together constitute the IGF.
And, second, what is the process of IGF even if Secretary-General is doing a consultation with IGF? How does this consultation flow into with the Secretary-General's -- to the Secretary-General? Is the traditional approach which probably takes the Chairman's summary. So that also shows that we do have certain processes which can go towards saying that this is a general broadband IGF view. We can't say it is "the" view. Otherwise, I don't see -- how would the consultation take place if we don't have any view at all, no process of saying "this is the IGF view" or "this is the broadband IGF view?" And how does this happen?
And it brings me back to the question of different roles and different structures. And when we say there is advisory role and the Chair said that there is no way to form IGFs's advice at all, that's a problem because then one part of the mandate is not getting fulfilled if that is true.
And I think those are the areas in which structure evaluations should be working. Just a couple of thoughts which came to my mind.
>>CHAIR DESAI: GIIC.
>>GIIC: I would like to pick up on George's comments as well in terms of an invitation to the Secretary-General to have someone participate in the meeting. But I think I would like to take it one step further than George and that is not only for them to be present for MAG discussions but I also think it would be equally as beneficial for that representative to hear these open consultations, just to, you know, broaden that representation, that viewpoint merely an extra day for open consultations as well; that in conjunction with a more robust response to the questionnaire would provide some footing for a decision. Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: No further -- yes?
>>FRANCIS MUGUET: I come back to the suggestion I've made. In fact, if there is no formal way to bring to how the process is made, we have a problem.
And I think the problem is the fact that the IGF so far has not been able to find a way to produce recommendation.
So now we are in front of a problem. We cannot make -- the IGF cannot make a recommendation to the U.N. Secretary-General. How the way that the IGF thinks consultation process should be made?
So I think there is something which must address this question, how to make recommendation in one way or another.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Well, the IGF doesn't meet until Sharm El Sheikh. So what is meeting now is only the Multistakeholder Advisory Group. And this is a consultation. And certainly the MAG would have to advise the Secretary-General. It's up to, then, the Secretary-General to decide how -- whether to take that advice or not.
But the MAG has done that in the past, as it has done in the case of fixing the agenda, fixing the themes, and so on. And there's no reason why the MAG can't give advice to the Secretary-General on this is how this should be done. And what we are doing now is a process of helping to guide the MAG.
But what I'm trying to stress is not that thing, but the end product. The end product which will go to the CSTD will be a product of the Secretary-General, not of the IGF or of anybody else.
And it will go as a report of the U.N. Secretary-General to the -- it will go as a report of the U.N. Secretary-General to the CSTD, not as a report of the IGF or of MAG or of anybody else. So that, I think, is what I am trying to stress.
And at this stage, what we need to do is to say, "This is what we should" -- "This is what needs to be done in order to have a credible process of consultation in Sharm El Sheikh."
On the question of the advisory function, there are degrees to which you can exercise an advisory function without necessarily having -- passing resolutions and decisions.
The debate itself may influence people in a certain way. And that sort of influence is difficult to measure. But those are -- you know, that's a broader question on the functioning of the IGF because of its dialogue, the focus of the dialogue, which is a different issue which will probably have to be addressed.
At this stage, I'm only asking a limited question: Are there ideas that we can present that the MAG would look at when it finally says, "Okay, do this, this, this when you consult with the forum participants in Sharm El Sheikh."
George.
>>GEORGE PAPADATOS: Thank you, Chair.
The way I see it is that the only chance of this particular body, the IGF as it's constituted right now, to influence the process is through consultations of Secretary-General. All subsequent stages, we know what the limitations of observers and NGOs are.
So in the Science and Technology Committee, in ECOSOC, in the General Assembly, this, the will of this body, will not be fully reflected, neither their voices can be heard as well as they can be heard here. And that's exactly the problem.
Of course, Mr. Muguet pointed out the institutional parameters that we are bound by. So we have to make sure that at least we give an accurate reflection of what this body wants or several alternatives to the Secretary-General and these are carried forward and follow the process later on.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Markus.
>>SECRETARY KUMMER: Yes. Thank you, Chairman.
This discussion has a long history. And the secretariat, to start with, proposed an independent outside evaluation. But that did not find favor with participants.
And we had several discussions on that. And I think last February, there was what I thought was a convergence of views that we should, basically, hold the process as we always do it, in an open, inclusive format, and have consultations, the rolling document reflecting the input received and reflecting the discussions on these consultations, and that, ultimately, that would then be the document, that would be the basis for the deliberations at the meeting itself.
At this stage, it would be impossible to organize any kind of outside evaluation. It's far too late for that, considering that the discussion will take place in six months from now and the result of any kind of process needs to be prepared and needs to go to the translators so that we can present the document, whatever it will be, in all six U.N. languages to forum participants that we live up to the WSIS, the Tunis Agenda, which calls for formal consultations with forum participants.
And my reading, this can only be done if we respect certain U.N. standards, that is, the standards we have here today, with interpretation in all six languages and the basic documentation that would be ready in all six U.N. languages as a formal requirement.
And then, when looking at how to get there, that means the document will have to be ready by August. It has to go to translation. That takes some time. U.N., they're very busy at that period of the year. They usually take, I think, about six weeks for translating a document in standard language. And, again, it has to go to the conference -- it should go to the participants to be released six weeks ahead of the meeting if we respect U.N. standards. There we can sometimes be a little bit flexible. But if you look at that, that is basically 12 weeks, all in all, ahead of the meeting. So the document should almost be ready now. And that means an outside -- any outside institution is out of question.
But the concrete questions that the chairman asked is basically how to structure the formal consultations. And I hope that in the end of this process, the document, the final synthesis paper, that would sum up all the inputs we will receive, that would also reflect the discussions we have held here, would provide a solid basis for commenting and the discussion could be structured along the questions we have in the questionnaires, which would provide sufficient structure to an open consultation.
And then the question that was asked, yes, I confirmed the U.N. Secretary-General would, on the basis of the consultations, which he would not hold himself, but somebody he would entrust with holding the consultations in Sharm El Sheikh, would prepare a report. That would go to the CSTD. And that report usually has to be ready in early January. So there is really not that much time.
But I think we had a very good beginning of a process and a very good discussion, and several speakers made the suggestion or called on others to submit further comments so that we can reflect this in a new version of the document and then in the version that will go towards the meeting in Sharm El Sheikh.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Yes.
>>GINGER PAQUE: Actually, right now, I am speaking as a member of civil society and a member of the caucus, because we do not have consensus.
The Caucus has not been asked about this, so I'm not speaking as co-coordinator.
But given the very coherent statements that we have just heard and the fact that although the IGC has asked for an independent north/south evaluation, and I personally can see that that's really not -- not probable, I would like to suggest personally, again, that one way to gain the credibility necessary that that outside evaluation would give us is to follow the recommendations of the IGC that say that since we already have had ample opportunity to have input as members, as people who have attended the IGC, we can get complete credibility for the continuation of the IGC -- of -- excuse me, of the IGF, which the IGC fully supports. But we will be able to have solid, concrete evidence for that if the internal or the analysis or the ongoing analysis that the secretariat has always done takes into account the recommendation of the IGC that the process of consultations should especially keep in mind constituencies that have lesser participation in I.T. issues at present, such as constituencies in developing countries, including those of civil society, other interested groups with lower participation in I.T. issues, like women, ethnic minorities, and disability groups should also be specifically approached rather than waiting for them to come forward. If the secretariat continues its outreach and its social network programs but specifically addresses people who have not been represented, then we will have credibility. We will know that we have reached everyone.
Thank you.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Okay. At least people who know something about the process. There's no point in asking somebody who knows nothing about IGF. After all, you are evaluating -- Let me say this, that roughly speaking, my guess is that a few thousand people in this Internet community have directly participated in the IGF, and possibly a significantly larger number at some distance by being involved in various other processes, et cetera.
And I think it's important that we try and get as much of an input as we can from these people.
So the process which has been launched should continue. And I think you can say -- Let me say this, now speaking personally. I do represent the Secretary-General here also as his special advisor on this.
I have no view. As far as I'm concerned, our only job is to make a faithful reflection of the range of views. And it's for this reason that I keep harping on saying that there's no such thing as an IGF view.
If you see the note which has been prepared for this consultation, it's an attempt to reflect the range of views. And they're not all the same. They don't all say, "Yes, continue the IGF." Some of them have the same view as China has, which is, "End it." You know? That's fine. But we can report that. And it's up to the Secretary-General to make up his mind.
So our job at this end is really to be faithful. That's fine. And I think that I have great confidence in the capacity of the secretariat to do that.
The important thing is that there must be enough of a flow, of response from the people who are participants in the IGF. And let's be realistic that not everybody will respond in writing. So we need a process at Sharm El Sheikh which is open, transparent, fully consistent with U.N. standards in terms of documentation, in terms of interpretation and everything. And I would certainly request the MAG to give serious thought to how that consultation should be structured and organized. We cannot follow our traditional format of saying, "Let's have a panel," and things like that.
So I will ask the MAG to give some serious thought to how that particular session of consultations should be organized. And so that, it really does allow all voices to be heard in that process.
The job at this end is simply to be faithful to the range of views, without necessarily, you know, trying to do a full transcription of what everybody has said, which is very difficult for the people in New York to digest, but to be faithful to the sense of views here and the range of views which have been expressed.
So may I suggest that we can perhaps leave it at this point. And I'm now going to ask Markus, what else do we have to do? The next consultation meeting? That is what? I presume in September?
>>SECRETARY KUMMER: Yes. The next meeting we have already on our Web site. It is 15 -- 16 of September, yes. It's immediately after the --
>>CHAIR DESAI: After EuroDIG.
>>SECRETARY KUMMER: -- after EuroDIG. And it will be held at the European Broadcasting Union, which is five, ten minutes up the hill from here.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Oh, you're not meeting here?
>>SECRETARY KUMMER: We're meeting at the European Broadcasting Union.
>>CHAIR DESAI: Oh, we're meeting at the European Broadcasting Union. I've never been there.
And is there anything else we need to discuss? No?
Thank you very much. You've all been very helpful.
And the MAG obviously has a lot of work to do over the next two days. So look forward to seeing the MAG members tomorrow, and thanks to everybody. And meet new September.
[ Applause ]
