2015 11 13 The Netmundial Statement and the Evolution of the Internet Governance Ecosystem Main Meeting Hall FINISHED

 

>> PERCIVAL HENRIQUES:  Let's get started.  Let's have your phone on silent mode.  Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you all to this last and main session, and to the IGF 2015.  We would like to really thank you all, after a very long productive week, to still be here to really give us attention to this specific theme that for us, as Brazilians, is quite significant, is something that has been a milestone to us, and to the society of information as a whole, that is NETMundial, and also through the signing of our President of the Marco Civil.  And once again I'd like to thank you for your participation, and also giving us the benefit of your presence, and to really be here.  And I know we have been since Day Zero discussing all the topics.  I'd like to pass the floor to Mr. Demi Getschko, who will get started with the words for this session.  Good afternoon once again.

  (no audio).

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA:  Good afternoon, everybody.  As the chair has said, thank you very much for your participation in this session.  Thank you to the speakers.  And I guess being at the beach is better here than being here discussing Internet Governance matters.  So it increases the value of our presence here.

Let's speak a little bit about the NETMundial and what is the objective of this session.

We will be not only discussing about how it was conducted the NETMundial process, but what was the, what has been the impact of the NETMundial outcomes, and where we are today one year and a half after that historic meeting.

Everything started with the Montevideo statement.  That was a statement issued by the Internet organizations in a meeting in Montevideo.  And there were two main aspects in that statement, that was a call for accelerated decision of the stewardship and a call for organizing new environments, or provoking and conducting general discussions on Internet Governance matters.

So it's after the meeting, there was a meeting between the CEO of ICANN and Dilma Rousseff, the President of Brazil.  During some coincidence also with the speech that President Dilma Rousseff has made in the general, in UN General Assembly, so this idea came up of organizing a meeting in Brazil for having the general discussions.

The process from the beginning was followed with a bottom‑up manner, and some committees were formed.  One of them was the executive committee.  That was a multistakeholder committee, chaired by Demi Getschko and myself.  And it was very interesting, because there was no precedence of a meeting like the one that we were trying to organize as we started to work from a blank sheet, and there was no procedures and process.  We have to define everything on the way.  There was no agenda.  We took some, a couple of important decisions.  One of them was that we built the agenda together with the community.  We didn't start from a document prepared by us.  That could have been one option.  But we preferred to start from the contributions from the community.

It's important to mention that here, you have in this slide a very quick view about the contents, contributions received from countries.  You can see the number of countries that, from which we received comments.  In total we received 188 contributions to the contents of the document, and 370 comments to the first draft.  You should add to that all the discussions that we had during the meeting itself.  We didn't arrive to the meeting without ‑‑ discussions in the meeting were meaningful, and they were considered in the preparation of the final outcomes.

You can see in this slide how many contributions were related with the principles, and how many with the roadmap, and some overall contributions, and from which stakeholder groups they came.

Finally I would like to share with you ‑‑ I have it here.  This is the participation in the meeting.  We have more than 900 participants in the meeting coming from different stakeholder groups.  I would like also to pass the floor to Demi for making some also comments with regard to the work on the contents of the document.

>> DEMI GETSCHKO: Okay.  Just to add a little bit more, this meeting produced two documents.  One is some way a proposal of principles for Internet Governance, and it was divided in two sessions, the governance process, principles of the governance principles.  You have here just to remind that you have the full documents on the Web.  You can consult that.

But anyway, just to remind the principal points, we have a very strong position in human rights, shared values.  We have also a position protecting the intermediaries, the chain of value of the Internet in some way.

We of course stimulate culture and linguistic diversity, and keeping the Internet as a unfragmented space, with free end‑to‑end communications regardless of content and so on.

I will not spend more on that.  But of course, the Internet Governance process has to be multistakeholder, transparent, accountable, distributed and so on.

That is one of the documents.  Both documents was applauded by some minutes in open, in the ending of the Forum.  We don't get the full consensus, of course.  We have some positions that, dissents from the content of the document.

But as a really multistakeholder process, I think we did right in having this two final documents.  The other one is the roadmap, yes, the roadmap.  And as the principles, so we can see that this document in the Montevideo meeting about the position of iStar, the community, technical community about some points out of the curve that has to be in some way make it in right international community hands.  This is the principal points of the roadmap.  I think we have an excellent occasion here to discuss between us with this very interesting panel, and populated with very main and important persons in this process, to hear from them, and see if there are, something going on because of this meeting, and how is the scenario we can see now, one‑half year after the NETMundial initiative.

I pass again to Raul to our first panel.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you.  First of all, I forgot to mention at the beginning that we thank very much to the members of the multistakeholder advisory group, Flavio Rech Wagner and Ana Cristina Amoroso Neves, for preparing the session.  It was a lot of work in advance of the meeting.

The discussion will be based on the three questions, policy questions, so there will be three segments.  In each of those segments, we will have one main speaker that will have up to ten minutes, and a comment that we will be able to use up to five minutes for making comments on their own statements and on each topic.

The first one is strangely enough IGF, and you will see the policy question in the ‑‑ sorry, I forget that ‑‑ I will not read all the policy question.  But it is about, based on the outcomes of the NETMundial meeting, what has been the improvements in the IGF, and how they reach, how they meet the recommendations from the NETMundial statement.

We will have our main speaker, that is Benedicto Fonseca.  He doesn't need too much introduction.  But Benedicto Fonseca is the Co‑Chairman of the IGF multistakeholder advisory group, the MAG.  He is the director of the Department of Scientific and Technological Affairs of the Ministry of External Relations of Brazil.  Since 2010 he has participated in several international and related Internet Governance issues, such as state and governance Forum, WSIS process, CSTD, ICANN, and in particular he had a relevant participation in the NETMundial meeting of which he was a member of the Executive Multistakeholder Committee responsible for organizing the event, including the agenda discussion and execution as well as for coordinating the process that led to the creation of the NETMundial statements.

Please, Ambassador Benedicto Fonseca.

>> BENEDICTO FONSECA: Thank you very much.  I thank you for your words, Raul.  I have the pleasure and privilege of working at the NETMundial at the Executive Committee, side by side with Raul and Demi and so many other peers, so it's really an honor to talk about this experience, and to look towards the future and see how this will strengthen IGF.

Before going into the main topic I was invited to talk about, I'd like to make some comments about the importance we give to IGF and to NETMundial.  IGF for us, for the Brazilian Government, and I'm speaking on behalf of the Brazilian Government, and I think I have the same feeling that other sectors have, other industries, is an unreplaceable Forum.  It is a unique Forum to discuss Internet topics.

And we are very enthusiastic about IGF, because IGF is globally what we do in Brazil.  Our model shows what IGF is.  Internet management committee which is celebrating its 20th anniversary is based on the same IGF principles, being a space for articulating and expressing these ideas.  This is a committee where we have some aspects decided upon, aspects relating to the Internet at the CGR ‑‑ CGI.

NETMundial was for us an experiment.  I think NETMundial is defining itself like this.  It's not linked to any process.  NETMundial had or did not follow any predefined rules.  We had to create NETMundial within the spirit of providing a space for discussion of principles and to think about what would be required to enhance the Internet ecosystem.  So in order to wrap up this first part, I'd say that NETMundial gave us very important lessons.

First of all, the idea to be respectful of the fact that each area needs to be in line with the other areas, be respectful of the other areas how they make their decisions.  This process took a while to occur.  And this was due to the fact that we needed to have some adequate time for the private sector to appoint its representatives, so there was a great effort along these lines, because we were talking about global Civil Society, where they were appointing four or five people for this private sector seats.

This was really necessary so that the results or the outcomes would be considered legitimate.  Clear lesson we learned was that all the stakeholders should be respectful of each other, and even though the outcome document as Demi said was endorsed by the vast majority of stakeholders and participants, the process also taught us how difficult it is to go from a discussion level to a decision‑making level.  Even though the final outcome document does indicate that it's not binding, in spite of that it was very difficult for many participants to endorse such a document and its outcomes.

This shows this difficulty we have, difficulty to find a format, a shape so that we can make decisions at the stakeholder levels, and that they are enacted upon or accomplished.

Now, talking about how the Internet community has been advancing to enhance IGF, and to make IGF a platform to discuss emerging issues and issues which are still not adequately discussed, so we are talking about the way of dealing with these topics, and providing information on these topics.

This is an ongoing work.  And it's clear to us that, in this IGF, this is happening.  Brazil as the Host Country is very happy to see that the works are towards enhancing IGF, and from here, we will have not compromise documents, not recommendations which are adopted by consensus, but very relevant information, very relevant information for the ongoing Internet processes.

The document on policies, initiatives for the next, for Connecting the Next Billion people, which is being launched here, is a pioneer document.  And this is the result of a wide consultation process.  And one main session here in Joao Pessoa, and the Map preparatory committee, supported by the whole community, is hereby offering this document which will be a very useful tool for all those who are dedicated to the connectivity policy.  This is a proof of how we are strengthening and enhancing IGF to arrive at concrete outcomes.  In addition to this document other documents are being prepared by the best practice forums and by the Dynamic Coalitions, about ...

  (no audio).

Process, so I'd say there is a whole body of documents, and inputs which are going to provide quality information for the ongoing processes.

IGF should also be enhanced in order to become a platform, so that these topics can be forwarded and discussed.

There is a lot to do along these lines.  And NETMundial showed us how difficult it is to go from a discussion Forum to a Forum where we make decisions where we forward information.  So I think IGF can be enhanced.  The global community can get organized, so that in this space, a Democratic space, space that is very transparent and space that is not ruled by very strict guidelines, as is the case in other United Nation agencies and processes, so that we have the opportunity to experiment with innovative forums.  Internet Governance is the stakeholder that will require no leadership paradigms.  We don't have a one‑size‑fits‑all model that is good for all situations for all circumstances.

One of the outcomes from the international community, and I'm here referring for an exercise of science, technology and development, which is about mapping the issues and mechanisms to deal with these issues, shows that there are many different issues regarding Internet Governance, from human rights to security and safety.  And you only need to look at the IGF agenda to see the breadth of topics.  So we think that IGF could not only think about these topics to discuss but also to have, create a framework to deal with these aspects.

I think this still needs to be enhanced as far as the IGF is concerned.  I'd also say that the vision that was created by NETMundial, especially when we talk about the roadmap, and this vision points to some issues to be forwarded at the ICANN level, but also some issues regarding safety and security, cyber crimes, many topics, it shows that we need to have better knowledge of some topics, like jurisdiction, the role of the stakeholders in the multistakeholder format.  As these processes which are not directly related to IGF but which are advancing, I think the vision that we had with NETMundial, this vision is being accomplished, and we are enhancing the discussions regarding safety and security, regarding crimes.

So the roadmap, the principles that we had at NETMundial are still valid.  And it's a challenge for the global community to find ways to deal with it.  So I reiterate this understanding, and I say that IGF has a very important role, perhaps a unique role, not only to discuss these topics which are not mature enough, which are not really discussed by the communities, but also it has a responsibility to point to ways how these topics can be dealt with.

This will require the stakeholders to work in a mutual respect, mutual acknowledgment environment.  This is my fourth IGF, and I can say, I can attest that this is something that has been becoming stronger and stronger as IGF goes.

So, we are opening to different opinions, because we want to find our way ahead.  And I think this is the way to the future.  Thank you very much.

  (applause).

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you very much, Ambassador Benedicto Fonseca.  So on this same issue we will invite Jacquelynn Ruff to make comments on this.  Jacquelynn is a Vice President, international public policy and regulatory ‑‑ sorry ‑‑ affairs for communications, she leads the group that is responsible for global public policy development, advocacy and guidance.  She directs activity in U.S. and international forums, such as the International Telecommunication Union, the OECD, AfiCTA and the Internet Governance Forum.  She is a member of the advisory committees to the department of state and to the U.S.

So, Jacquelynn, please, welcome.

>> JACQUELYNN RUFF: Great.  Thank you very much for this opportunity to be here.  One of the characteristics of the multistakeholder approach is to have business represented at the table, so I'm pleased to have, carry out that role today, and also particularly pleased to join in this opportunity with Ambassador Benedicto Fonseca because you have been such a leader for many years around all these issues.

The only thing that came to mind as you were talking, where I thought, well, I can say I might have done more, is that I've been to all of the Internet Governance Forums.  But otherwise your leadership is truly admirable.

And I was a participant at NETMundial last year.  So all of those experiences are very direct for me.  And as I said, the reason I've been to the IGFs is because our company, Verizon Communications is very engaged.  We are an Internet service provider in many different ways.  And so from the beginning of the WSIS process and through the IGFs, we have thought this is a very important place to be, and the format of multistakeholder approach is extremely important.

So, I will, many of the points that you covered were not surprisingly the kind of strengths and trends that I had in mind, but I hope I can just add a bit on the topic.

In the principles themselves, they do ‑‑ sorry, in the roadmap, in the institutional improvements for the IGF, that we discussed 18 months ago, there were a couple of specific things or ways of thinking about things that were written in the document, and specific improvements for the IGF included to have more outcomes and analyses of policy.  So as the Ambassador mentioned, the best practices forums to me have been an excellent tangible result in that regard.

They included strengthening multistakeholder participatory mechanisms, spam or unsolicited E‑mail which has been an issue we have been discussing for many years, and this was the first time to actually have practices out there.

  (no audio).

IPv6 and then search of computer security, and finally there has been one on the online abuses against women.  I think that one is particularly important.  It is not an easy topic and great work was done around that.  Another specific guidance that was given is to do more work intersessionally, and again, the excellent project on Connecting the Next Billion was specifically developed in between the IGFs.  It was selected.  It was developed, extremely useful papers.  The main session was recognized some said as one of the best in years.  It's an overall initiative that exemplifies the core values and mission of the Internet Governance community.  I can say from a business perspective, that is something that we really think should be a focus.  We are very much looking forward to working more collaboratively, and doing even more on that.

It is a great match of course with the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals, where we need to have this close integration with the expanding Internet and its multistakeholder governance framework in order to optimize success in that area as well.

Regarding the others, another thought that I had is that the MAG planners worked very hard to encourage sessions on highly relevant topics with meaningful results.  So, there we had as examples the WSIS+10 session, the main session on Sustainable Development, and on Cybersecurity.  I think we had two days on Cybersecurity or maybe it spilled over and so on.  These are key issues for today and the future.

I would also note the value of the workshops, which again, I think we are just deeper, more engaged than any year that I've seen.  I always try to make a point of participating in a number of those.  I was in two of them.  In both cases one was increasing accessibility for persons with disabilities, and the other was about crossborder data flows, trades, inclusiveness, economic growth and those things.

In both cases the emphasis was to have case studies and to come up with ideas for solutions, not a policy paper, but everybody was encouraged to do that.

So, I would throw those out as a little bit more of a detail on the points that were covered previously.  So thank you again.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you very much.  Thank you for being indulgent with the moderator.  I think that we will have more opportunities to speak later during the public comments from the audience.

I would pass the floor to Demi Getschko for introducing the policy question 2.

>> DEMI GETSCHKO: Now we will have the question that is related to the principles.  I read the question.  It is the policy question number 2.  Are organizations, processes and fora that form the IG ecosystem working according to the principles of Internet Governance as proposed in the NETMundial statement.  How do their operating principles align to those principles?  Are there efforts to improve alignment where needed?  And the first speaker, ten minutes, is Miss Anne Carblanc from France, OECD, Government organization, head of the digital economy policy division of OECD and the directorate for science, technology and innovation, STI.  Her division develops a better evidence base and more effective policy framework to promote the growth of digital economy and its contribution across society.  Prior to joining the OECD, she held the position of Secretary‑General, director of services in the French commission national de liberty.

She also served ten years in the France judicial system.  The floor is yours.

>> ANNE CARBLANC: Many thanks for the invitation and for the introduction.  It is a pleasure to be in this main session.  I don't know whether someone has the ‑‑ thank you so much.

You mentioned the origin of the NETMundial, but I wanted to go back to IGF in Baku, 2012.  There was a main session, and I remember excitement in Baku about perhaps beginning to think about principles for Internet Governance and policy, and building on principles developed by different stakeholders, whether governments or business or Civil Society or international organizations, among which the OECD, from different perspectives.

I would like to quote, we have a proliferation of principles, but if we had a set of principles, if there were very high level nonbinding and include all stakeholders, they could give us a guideline.  They could strengthen the commitment of the various stakeholders to follow certain very general rules, like Internet should promote human rights, Internet should be free and open, Internet policy should be transparent, and based on the multistakeholder model, the architecture should be end‑to‑end, Internet should be safe and secure.

In other words, in 2012, in Baku, there was a call for general principles with which everybody could agree.  2015, the NETMundial conference attempted to do just that and produced a multistakeholder statement which was finalized during the conference.

The event was recognized as a success by the OECD and the statement was welcomed.  Today in this session, we want to generate a discussion on the implementation of the NETMundial statement, and we want to take stock of progress made in different organizations and NGTs to align with the principles.

I will try to do this for the OECD, as clearly as possible.  As you may know, the OECD mission is to develop evidence‑based policies in a broad range of topics, to help governments fight poverty and pursue prosperity, through economic growth and financial stability.  This is ...

  (no audio).

Social prosperity, in the respect of human rights and fulfillment of values.  In 2011, the OECD council adopted a important recommendation on principles for Internet policymaking.  This recommendation supports multistakeholder approach to Internet policymaking, and strengthen Internet cooperation.  It calls for policies and practices to obtain use when managing security ...

  (no audio).

Internet policymaking principles, which will be made available on the Web site.  And we can see that many of the development principles reflect the OECD ... but the OECD...

  (no audio).

If we go to the human rights agenda values, in the NETMundial Internet Governance principles, human rights are intrinsic to the convention, which says economic strengths and prosperity are essential to the attainment of the purposes of the United Nations, the preservation of individual liberty and the general well‑being.  Human rights and shared values are also mentioned in several OECD legal instruments including the policymaking principles.  They are also included in the ...

  (no audio).

Through a reminder that countries are committed to values ...

These are referred in several OECD instruments but we do not conduct ‑‑ privacy as well, more than 30 years, been a focus area of the OECD, the 1980 guidelines which was a first set of international principles for privacy protection has been revised in 2013.  The privacy guidelines include with respect to surveillance a specific provision, and this provision says exceptions to the principles of the guidelines, including those related to national sovereignty, national security and public holder should be first as few as possible, second, made known to the public.

Accessibility, this is an important issue on which we can certainly improve, but currently considering adding a reference to accessibility in the draft ministerial declaration.  Freedom of information and access is referred to in several instruments, and specific work on the communication infrastructure and services touches directly on this issue as did work in cooperation with UNESCO and local content.

Development is one of the objectives of the OECD, and is included in the founding convention, the goal being to contribute to the development of countries and specific members.  Specific work has been done.  For instance, we had in cooperation with the World Bank a conference on ICT 4 development.  We have streams of work on digital innovation and development.  There will be a reference to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in the draft ministerial declaration.

In summary for this, a strong point I would say is privacy.  A weak point at this stage is accessibility.  But we can certainly progress on this.

In terms of principles like protection of intermediaries, we showed a large report in 2011 which could certainly be updated today.  We have a principle on limiting the liability of Internet intermediaries in the 2011 Internet policymaking principles.  Culture and linguistic diversity is not an area of focus for the moment, but our work again with UNESCO on local content proved this important aspect.  Our current work on the open Internet, economic benefits of an open Internet also looks at this issue.

Unified and unfragmented space, this is where the current work on the benefits of Internet's openness which builds on the Internet policymaking principles is important, because it aims to provide evidence on the Internet's catalyst role for economic and social growth.  In particular, the relationship between Internet openness and international trade, innovation and entrepreneurship, social well‑being and economic performance.  We trust that this work which is complex, which will take years but is very important, will demonstrate the relevance of the NETMundial and the OECD Internet policymaking principles.

Security, stability and resilience, we just released a new recommendation of the council on the management of digital security risk for economic and social prosperity.  It was presented in one of the workshops this week.

Open and distributed architecture, the Internet policymaking principle refer to the need to promote the open distributed interconnected nature of the Internet.  And there is a lot of work around this principle.

Enabling environment for sustainable innovation and creativity is the same.  We have a lot of work in this area and principle as well.  In summary, our strong points are the work, and our strong point is our work on the principles for a unified and unfragmented space and security.  I would say that our weaker points are on cultural and linguistic diversity.  Finally, to go quickly through the Internet Governance process principles, I checked all of them, because we are all implementing them putting them in practice.

In conclusion, one could say that the focus of the OECD is on economic growth, not so much human rights or, it's true, but social prosperity and well‑being are important objectives in the convention for the Secretary‑General of the OECD and OECD council.  Again we trust that our work, qualitative and quantitative work will demonstrate the relevance of the principles of NETMundial at OECD.  We can strive and we will strive to improve on accessibility and cultural and linguistic diversity.  We hope that our ministerial meeting which will gather OECD ministers and partner ministers will provide the opportunity to indicate us the road ahead in this area.

Thank you very much.

>> DEMI GETSCHKO: Thank you for this comprehensive explanation.  We call for comments.  Miss Carolina Rossini, member of the Public Knowledge, Civil Society organization based in U.S., Carolina Rossini serves as Vice President of international public strategy.  She is a Brazilian lawyer.  Alongside her work in public knowledge, she is also a global partner, digital international associate, and a ex lab fellow.  She sits in the advisory board of Open Knowledge Foundation for UK and Brazil, Institute of digital, Internet lab, IDRC, research and open education research for development, and the research network.

Carolina Rossini, the floor is yours.

>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: Thank you, Demi.  Thank you, Benedicto Fonseca, for your important intervention.  First I would like to say how honored I am to join this discussion table today.

I think Brazil exercises important leadership to balance some of the Internet Governance narrative of the last past years.  I think that was really important to actually bring a development perspective to all of our discussions, and actually to call attention for those development‑based principles, and how they should actually influence and impact on these discussions, not just here in Internet Governance Forum, because at the end of the day we cannot take decisions here or make policy here, but also how we can use those NETMundial principles to develop some accountability from a Civil Society perspective, but also actually partner with countries and companies on exercising peer pressure internationally on countries that are actually more repressive than others.

So from a Civil Society perspective, I was also at the NETMundial initiative, and I was very glad to see how creative and organized the meeting was in terms of really receiving thoughts from all stakeholders.  That was a wonderful experiment and it was a very exciting experiment.

It is really interesting to look at that and then compare it to lot of other fora where actually we are regulating Internet, even if some folks do try to not label that fora, that Forum as Internet Governance Forum.  I'm talking about foras like multi‑lateral trade agreements.  I'm talking like the OECD, and I'm also mentioning ICANN, and other things.

A lot of folks do see those elements as part of Internet Governance.  ICANN is the most obvious one.  But a lot of folks don't see, for example, trade agreements as part of Internet Governance Forum.  Me and research colleagues, we did a mapping of ten years of trade agreements that the U.S. has with some other countries, so bilaterals that have then led to the trans Pacific partnership agreements.

We used the layers framework to identify every class that would impact and every layer of the Internet.  And everything that we are discussing here is there, from DNS to spectrum to youth to consumer rights, Internet, to cross data flow and to privacy.

So I would always, and I think I've been, folks probably are tired of me saying that, because I said that in a lot of panels I participated this week.  I think finally this community is paying attention more to that.

On another related topic, I went again through the NETMundial principles, and I was actually trying to compare where those topics were appearing.  I took the liberty to address some of the OECD comments right now.  As you all know, in June, the week of 23rd of June next year, we are going to be, the world is going to witness the OECD ministerial.  I will not refer to the WSIS and UN process because my colleague will do that.  That is in December.  We have to keep a look on that time line.

But the OECD regarding privacy, some of the privacy work there, first I want to thank you, OECD, because actually OECD is one of the foras that early on have opened a discussion for multistakeholderism.  I'm part of CSISAC for many years now, and I think there are a lot of CSISAC founders in the audience.  They are all around here.  While it's true that they have allowed that, I feel that the draft declaration coming out for the next ministerial is worse than some of the discussions we had in 2002 and before than that.

So I would hope that in the declaration, that will come out of OECD, we actually take into consideration the NETMundial principles, even with all the stakeholders not being extremely happy, Civil Society for example was not happy with us via liability, a lot of folks were happy with privacy.  So let's take that advantage to actually move forward, and let's try to do that.

Another interesting thing, I see my time just ended, again, are trade agreements.  One of the things I do want to mention regarding trade agreements is that a lot of issues regarding access to acknowledge and freedom of expression, and trade, and in terms of crossborder data for trade, that's also being dealt with in OECD and that also appears in the NETMundial principles, they are not at the same ground of what I called consensus among stakeholders.

I would invite everybody to try to look at this comparisons, and think if we did a great step towards the future and towards a great consensus in NETMundial, why are we doing, why are we taking steps back in other fora.

I think that is my role here, to really call attention for this much broader set of places, where Internet regulation is being discussed and made.  Thank you, everybody.

>> DEMI GETSCHKO: Thank you, I'll pass rapidly to Raul to the next.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you, Demi.  Let's move to the policy question 3.  This is about how are the items in the NETMundial roadmap being covered by the current Internet Governance systems.  We will have as a speaker Dr. Jeanette Hoffman from Germany, political scientist with a focus on Internet Governance.  She heads policy at Berlin Social Science Center, co‑director of the Hamburg Institute for Internet and society and professor for Internet policy at a university, her research interest including multistakeholder process and the role of social norms in Internet regulation.  I will ask the speakers and commenters to be strict with the time because we are running a little behind the schedule.  We want to open later to have some time for public participation.

>> JEANETTE HOFFMAN: Thank you, Raul.  I'm clearly aware that there is time pressure.  Still, I would like to use the opportunity and say that NETMundial clearly was my personal highlight in 15 years of Internet Governance participation.

I met a lot of great Brazilian experts both in public sector, Civil Society and the technical community.  I learned a lot from them and towards the end, it really moved me to tears; hasn't happened often in this year.  So thank you for the chance I've been given to participate to that process.

Now, when we look at the roadmap of NETMundial and what happened over the last year, I would say it's clearly a mixed bag.  There is progress in some areas, for example, in the area of strengthening the IGF, perhaps also extending its term beyond the usual five years that we now had for two, twice.

There is also, there are a lot of areas where there is still a lot to do, and there is clearly room for improvement.  I want to focus on two aspects that I find very crucial.  One of them concerns what is mentioned at least twice in the roadmap, and that is meaningful participation.

Meaningful participation, I would say, depends at least on two conditions.  One concerns resources.  What we see in Internet Governance in general is a clear imbalance in terms of resources people have for meaningful participation, that concerns on the one hand the difference between the global south and the global north, but it also concerns differences across stakeholder groups.

These differences, imbalances in terms of resources is not only a matter of money.  It's also a matter of expertise, of organizational skills, on staff, on all sorts of things.

So if we really believe in meaningful participation, that is clearly an area where that needs improvement.  But I think there is also another dimension to meaningful participation.  And that concerns the topics under discussion.

We need to ask ourselves whether all the relevant issues that impact Internet Governance are really subject to multistakeholder processes.  Carolina Rossini already pointed out this aspect.

I would say the answer is clearly no.  And the two examples that immediately come to mind are trade agreements and Cybersecurity.  Both of these issues are discussed elsewhere in closed fora.  If we believe in the future of meaningful participation and in the multistakeholder approach, then we need to also discuss areas that are so far treated behind closed doors.

I would also say that opening closed policymaking fora to meaningful participation may increase the chance that another recommendation of the roadmap might benefit from it.  And that is the collection and processing of personal data by state and nonstate actors, in accordance with international human rights.

If we open mass surveillance practices to the scrutiny of multistakeholder approaches, we will see other benchmarks for assessing these areas.

That was the first aspect, meaningful participation.

The second one concerns the recommendation that all Internet Governance organizations should develop and implement principles of transparency, accountability, and inclusiveness.

This area is still work in progress.  It's now common sense that the institution architecture of Internet Governance is very distributed and heterogeneous, and not suited to intergovernmental or centralized solutions.

On the other hand, Internet Governance processes seem to still be in a state of infancy, struggling with the intention to be different from governments and Intergovernmental Organizations.  But nonetheless, having to be answerable and to sort of provide due process to all people participating.

An example of this seems to be the IANA transition.  The effort needed to get this done shows really such high transaction cost that we need ask ourselves whether we want to carry on that way in the future.  It is my belief that Internet Governance needs to undergo a process of constitutionalization.  This process would consist of at least three elements, implementing rule of law, making sure that there is a respect of human rights, and that all policy measures are grounded in human rights, and that we apply Democratic principles.

I think these three elements need to be really shared by all Internet Governance organizations, even if they implement them in different ways.

Even if the practices in Internet Governance are very different, I do believe that principles of multistakeholder approaches might have to move a bit closer to what we developed in the words of intergovernmental processes.

Thank you very much.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you very much, Jeanette Hoffman, very organized speech, and you used less time than you have.  Maybe it's because she is German.  (chuckles).

Okay.  Our comment on this topic will be Ambassador Chris Painter from the U.S. State Department.  Mr. Painter is the coordinator for cyber issues of the U.S. State Department.  In that position he coordinates and leads the United States diplomatic efforts to advance an open, interoperable, secure and reliable Internet and information structure.  Prior to joining the State Department, he served in the White House as senior director for Cybersecurity policy in the National Security Council.  He coordinated the development of the President 2011 commission on strategy for cyberspace, and chaired high level inter‑agency groups devoted to international cyber issues.

Please.

>> CHRIS PAINTER: Thank you very much.  I want to echo what many have said that having been at the NETMundial meeting, that it was one of the most exciting and empowering meetings that I've been to in 23 years, so that is saying something.  Certainly everyone came away from there really very energized.

I suppose I have a more positive outlook than maybe the last speaker, in terms of what I see as some of the movements since then.  The NETMundial principles, as many recall, and the roadmap captured not only what was aspirational to be done, but also some of the things that were being done in a multistakeholder manner.  Of course, depending on the topic and the organization, that might have a different feel.

One place it's worth pointing out that could better reflect the items in the NETMundial roadmap is the WSIS+10 review, that is currently under way in New York.

I fear that too much of the conversation there is looking backwards to 2005 and focusing too much on the role of Governments, instead of focusing on a new consensus that was reached that emerged in Sao Paulo last year, which clearly discusses the role of all stakeholders, and the vision and the roadmap in the current WSIS+10 outcome I think needs to take a closer approach to each other.  That is one place where the NETMundial principles and roadmap can have greater impact and hopefully will.

On the other areas though, I think across the board, we have seen a lot of discussion, a lot of work.  All this is indeed a work in progress, as other speakers have said.  But I'm also very optimistic.  I would say even an area like Cybersecurity, this is not just a discussion among governments.  We have discussed in some of the sessions here at the IGF where there are many stakeholders and even governments recognize that they can't do everything in the space.  They need the business community, the Civil Society community.  What I would say is that as governments are architecting new Cybersecurity strategies, which is important, we certainly say, the U.S. says and many other countries say, you need to do this, need to be consultative, do this in a multistakeholder way.

That only makes your strategy stronger, and it also makes it more legitimate, and buy‑in from all those different communities, that is very important.  But for instance, I've seen in the global cyberspace conference that took place in the Netherlands, it was a multistakeholder event and constructed for precisely that purpose, and each one of those conferences have been even more participatory.  That is important.  That launched some important things that are ‑‑ we have seen the meridian process, Cybersecurity conference that has a lot of different participants in that, and the first Forum for incident response and security teams is not just governments, it's people throughout the community.

GCC launched the global Forum for cyber expertise which we talked about, and one of the things in the roadmap was capacity‑building and the importance of it.  Here, although there is more to be done, I'm happy that there has been a great push and momentum around this issue, both in terms of connectivity, but also in terms of policy.  And the GFCE was again multistakeholder.  It wasn't just governments doing it; was governments partnering with the private sector and civil society to do several projects.  We were proud to be a member of that.  ICANN, the transition, we announced we were willing to make this transition with the IANA contract.  We only would accept a multistakeholder solution.  And although multistakeholder enterprises are always messy, I think there has been tremendous progress made there, and there continues to be.  And it's really been a very interesting conversation with many stakeholders.  I agree in all these Forum that we need to find ways and we are looking for ways to make them more inclusive and participatory for everyone.  That indeed is a challenge, but that is one challenge that NETMundial did very well, with remote hubs and other issues.

We need to be creative in thinking about that going forward.  I think there are ways certainly to do that.  I look across the board at all of the different NETMundial roadmap principles, and I don't have time to go through each one of them.  But I'd say that they are reflected in the real growth that the panel talked about in the beginning in terms of the strengthening and vibrancy of the IGF.  And all the discussions we have had in the last couple days and the more effective means of discussion have taken place going forward even between IGFs.

I'm hopeful that the IGF's mandate will be renewed for a long time, not just for a short period of time, so there is predictability, and we can have these discussions in this Forum.  But this is not an exclusive Forum, it's a great Forum for them.

There is more work to be done to be sure.  But we have done quite a bit since Sao Paulo.  We should be proud of what we have done and build on it and work into the future.  Thank you.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you very much.  I will pass the floor to Demi for coordinating the fourth segment of this debate.

>> DEMI GETSCHKO: In this segment we will hear additional comments in these questions.  We have five minutes for each commenter.  I will call first Dr. Nii Quaynor from University of Cape Coast, Ghana to say some words.  He pioneered Internet in Africa, for two decades, establishing Africa first Internet connections, and helping set up key organizations including the African Network Cooperation Group, and also was founding Chairman of AFRINIC.  He has taught since 1979.  He was the first African to be elected to the board of ICANN, director of ICANN for the Africa region from 2000 to 2003.  He is also a member of the United Nations Secretariat General Advisory Group on ICT, Chair of Organization on African Unity, Internet Task Force and President of Internet Society in Ghana.

He was awarded the Jonathan B. Postal Service award for his pioneer work and also was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2013.  The floor is yours.

>> NII QUAYNOR: Thank you very much.  I think it is indeed true that the experience at NETMundial was really invigorating.  And the outcome was also very realistic in the sense that it did capture much of the practices from some of the communities that are associated with it.  My comments will be mostly on balance, the need for balance and also accepting increment outgrowth.

The good thing about NETMundial was that not only did it capture existing processes making it realistic, but it also attempted to capture the needs of development, and that of course rings a good bell to me.

In regards multistakeholder mechanisms at a national level is occurring partly because of the IGF national, IGF program, and I think that is very commendable.  The focus on the needs of the developing countries and the building of capacity is currently being mainstreamed, and you can see it appearing, all the different issue topics that have been addressed at IGF while we are here.  I thought I might make the following caution.  It is indeed true that culture and linguistic diversity is extremely important in improving access, and in fact I myself am actively involved in trying to capture the local IDG in my country so they are preserved and so on.  However, if one needs to be successful, one needs to think global as well.  When we are coming up with our solutions, we should be thinking about how it would benefit the whole world, and if we don't, then the solutions will not thrive, and it may turn out to be a problem in itself.

One other issue that I thought I might raise has to do with a workshop which I enjoyed attending, and this was workshop 52, and it attempted to capture a sense of the global public interest in critical Internet resources.

It is interesting to note that perhaps several months before the Sao Paulo event, ICANN, that had been mentioned in the statement that says that it should be working towards leading to a truly international and global organization, serving the public interest, was also defining what public interest was to be.  So it turns out that ICANN in fact can be the only organization that made an attempt to define what public interest might be.  I suggest that every other organization in the ecosystem internalize the same thing, and hopefully, we might discover that either we have one good global definition or scope or statement as to what public interest might be, but it will be interesting to do a bottom/up thing and see if we can get what public interest is for everyone.

I also would like to note that it is difficult to plan, if a multistakeholder activity is bounded.  If it is unbounded, then you can make real investments in the resources that are required, and so discussions of five years for IGF, ten years for IGF and so on, for me, it's not very constructive.  It should be just no limits.

Thank you very much. 

>> DEMI GETSCHKO:  Thank you.  The next speaker will be Dr. Anja Kovacs.  She directs the Internet democracy project in Dellhi, India, engages in research on projects and challenges that the Internet poses for democracy and social justice in India and beyond.  She works especially on questions of freedom of expression, Cybersecurity and architecture of Internet Governance.  She is a member of the Investment Committee of the Digital Defenders Partnership of the Steering Committee of best bits, global society members, and she is very active in the WSIS revision.  She also worked on Internet issues including for the United Nations development program Asia Pacific and for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, Frank Larue, and has been a fellow at the center for Internet Society in Bangalore, India ‑‑

>> ANJA KOVACS: Thank you so much.  I too found NETMundial a great inspiration, and I'm grateful to be able to be part of the session, trying to assess progress we have made since then.

The first thing that really struck me when I read through the outcome document again in preparation for this session, was how relevant it remains and how much value there still is in that document today about one and a half years later.

In terms of process, I agree with others that perhaps we are seeing the most progress in the IGF, and if they have chosen this IGF I'm sure it's partly thanks to the outstanding Brazilian Government organization, but also thanks to the many changes that the MAG has been making over the past year, especially making the IGF much more outcome oriented.  I do think that contributes quite a bit to its value, and for small Civil Society organizations from the global south like ours, significantly increases our reasons to actually come to the IGF.

I also want to flag here something that hasn't been mentioned yet, namely efforts to bring human rights concerns into organizations like the IETF, initiatives that have been undertaken by colleagues of ours, and from what I understand has actually been received with quite a, has gotten a very positive response.

Since the NETMundial, one trend I think we have been seeing is that slowly there has been a greater recognition of the fact that there is also a space for multilateralism within the Internet Governance.  I want to flag that here because when I was trying to map out progress in different institutions, where I think we have the greatest cause for concern in general is sadly the processes where our Government state delete because especially in these processes the outcomes are so often against the principles as well.

I think that is true at a national level, in countries in all parts of the world, where we see that legislators are considering to consider and adopt legislation that goes to the principles outlined in the section on human rights.  And I think we have discussed quite a few of those proposals in this IGF as well.

We also see that at the global level, Carolina already flagged concerns in the OECD ministerial draft statement.  I disagree with Mr. Painter on the extent to which Civil Society is included in Cybersecurity debates.  With the global conference on Cybersecurity, we were grateful to the Dutch Government for actually making an effort to include us.  But I think we were also very conscious that in most of those fora the processes that really, the decisions that count are taken in rooms where we are not invited.  I don't think that has really changed.

Finally, I want to make some comments about the World Summit on the Internet, on the Information Society, which I think many people forget is not just about Internet Governance.  It is an Internet Governance process.  In the draft outcome text we see some really positive language around a cause for stronger developing country participation, and also a call to provide stable and secure funding for that, and this comes back to a point Jeanette was making earlier.

But I agree with Mr. Painter, in there hasn't been enough recognition what we have done since 2005, and the document does the opposite from what NETMundial principles did.  Rather than looking forward, it wants to take us back.

It is a Government‑led process.  There are individuals who are working very hard to make sure that other stakeholder groups have considerable input, but it's not been easy and the final parts of the process it seems will remain closed.

All references to human rights language are balanced by references to the UN Charter on sovereignty and noninterference, and the affairs of the state.  On enhanced cooperation there is a proposal for a intergovernmental working group that is not very encouraging, if we see how the WSIS review process itself includes other stakeholder groups on certain parts, etcetera, etcetera.

So it feels, seems as if the references to the contributions of other stakeholders in documents like that are mostly lip service, and not a genuine recognition of what different stakeholder groups bring to the table.

Not having more governments on board to endorse the NETMundial principles is then a disappointment, but I think what it also does is contribute to a growing distrust between governments and other stakeholders in processes where perhaps we might even recognize that governments take a legitimate lead.  Thank you.

  (applause).

>> DEMI GETSCHKO: Thank you.  Now, we will hear Markus Kummer, member of Board of Directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigning Names and Numbers, ICANN, and the secretary of the Internet Governance Forum Support Association.  He is an advisor to the Chairman of the IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group, and has been involved in functions since 2002, working first in the Swiss Government and then in United Nations IGF Secretariat, and subsequently in the Internet Society.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: Thank you for the introduction.  It is my pleasure to be part of this panel.

Like others I found it very exciting to be part of NETMundial, although I was not in tears like Jeanette at the end of it (chuckles).

I would like to start by, Demi and Raul, thank you for leading the preparatory process for NETMundial.  The draft document that was the basis for NETMundial really exceeded all expectations.  I never expected such a solid document coming out of the preparatory process, and the true innovation you both applied was applying rough consensus methodology to policy development.

This is unlike a U.N. process where you usually have what we call a Christmas tree approach.  You add decoration after decoration until the tree is overloaded, and then you start the process of tidying up and taking off decoration, and usually that process is extremely difficult, as every delegation is very much attached to their little Christmas ball they put on the tree; whereas here, what you did, leaving looking for commonalities and leaving out outlying proposals.

Now it's understood that some governments found this difficult to accept, and I know that some governments did not sign up to it because of that.  But it was a real true innovation, and thanks to this, it allowed us to get the substantive outcome, positive outcome that we in the end had.

The second point I'd like to make, what I call the cross fertilization between the IGF and the NETMundial.  My thesis is that NETMundial would not have been possible without the IGF.  The IGF had created a climate of confidence among stakeholders that allowed us to at the NETMundial meeting, that allowed us to put governments in the queue behind the microphone and governments actually accepted it.

At one point, in chairing a session, there were so many people behind the microphone that Ambassador Benedicto Fonseca came to me and said, you have to do something to let them all speak.  And what we did then, we reduced the time slot from two minutes to 30 seconds.  You had senior Government representatives who accepted that and who played the game.  I don't think this would have been possible without six, seven years of IGF practice in living multistakeholder cooperation.

But now, the NETMundial has also announced, cross‑fertilized the IGF, building on Ambassador's Benedicto Fonseca and Jacquelynn Ruff's comments, I agree.  It created IGF participants to move forward towards more tangible outcomes in an IGF context, and the best practices forums is one element of that.  And the thematic priority we had, intersessional priority of Connecting the Next Billion is another one.  We find it more difficult in moving to intersessional processes with a Dynamic Coalitions, but it's part of the same process.

We are not at the end yet.  But we have ten more years to refine this.  I think we can build on this methodology, also to take the IGF step forward.  With that, I thank you for your attention.

>> DEMI GETSCHKO: Thank you very much.  Now I think it's time for open mic.  But before opening the mic, we will use this minute for comments on Cybersecurity.  Carol.

>> CAROLINA ROSSINI:  I'm glad you said Carol.   (chuckles.)  Any time you call me Carolina, I know you are mad with me for some reason.

I want to comment on the Cybersecurity issue which is another thing that came out many times here.  Cybersecurity is something that is happening, Cybersecurity regulation is something that is happening at accelerated rate in Latin America.  The organization for American states, through one of their departments, is actually touring the region and training policymakers and enforcement on how to develop Cybersecurity technology and groups, and groups of experts and also their country Cybersecurity strategies and agendas.

Why do I say that?  It's because sometimes countries believe that that is not the space for Civil Society.  One thing that I want to express is that Civil Society is very sensitive and open to the legitimate interests of Cybersecurity.  All of us have kids or most of us have kids.  A lot of us, we use online banking.  A lot of us have our identity on line.  A lot of friends that are journalists and activists do suffer cyber attacks, DNS attacks all the time.  We also want Cybersecurity, but for that, we also want to be included on those things.

One of the good steps that did happen at OSF, OES, is that actually the Special Rapporteur for freedom of expression was finally included in discussions and trainings.  But we need more attention and more careful crafting of those agendas, so in Latin America there is a bunch of countries actually drafting their agendas and strategies.

Those countries are Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil.  Brazil is very advanced.  Thankfully the Civil Society has already contacted the military for those conversations.  But I think we still have a long time to go.

That is it.  One minute.  Thank you so much, Demi, for that.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you very much, all the speakers.  We will invite now comments from the audience.  There are four mics.  Please be strict.  You have two minutes, but we appreciate very much if you are as concise as possible and use less than that time.

>> SUBI CHATURVEDI:  Thank you.  Subi Chaturvedi, for the record.  I do want to start by congratulating the NETMundial process.  You have truly inspired many new changes, innovation and practices.  You have taught governments and other stakeholders as to how we can limit interventions to 30 seconds.  You have taught us how we can queue up around the mic, and you have also taught us how often issues can find a solution, and the ideas of rough consensus. 

I have been personally involved with the NETMundial process, so I feel very passionately for it.  There are many lessons that the IGF has learned, but like some of the others, because on the panel, I come back with the sense of a mixed response as to where we could have taken those learnings.  I know there are challenges and difficulties.  But when we look at where the NETMundial initiative traveled to, whether it's the WEF NETMundial initiative, we want the processes to remain open.  We want them not to be intimidating, overwhelming spaces.

Now there is a Web site for collaboration, but whatever we have gained in terms of ground, we don't want that to be lost as a lesson.  Just reinforcing the very principles that NETMundial started out with, the three issues which remain unresolved, the questions on mass surveillance, question on necessary and proportionate, difficult and contentious issues like net neutrality, it has been a safe space, and we want to see that same spirit reinforced and nurtured.  A lot of us will take more and greater participation as far as that is concerned.

A special shout out to Carolina for saying that there is always space for Civil Society in Cybersecurity.  Thank you for reinforcing that.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you very much.  We take one speaker from here and we go to the remote participation.

>> AUDIENCE: Gunela Astbrink, Australian chapter of ISOC.  I share with many people here the excitement of being part of NETMundial.  I was delighted to have contributed to the human rights principles, specifically accessibility for people with disabilities.

I'm presuming that when accessibility was discussed by Anne Carblanc, she was relating to disability, and mentioned that the OECD has committed to doing work on accessibility principles in preparation of a draft ministerial statement, and we welcome this initiative.

As this is new work, we urge in the spirit of NETMundial to consult with the disability community in its preparation.  Thank you.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you very much.  Please our remote comments.

>> REMOTE MODERATOR:  Thanks, Chair.  We have a question from Mr. Muthusamy, Internet Society, India.  He says NETMundial complements the work at IGF and follows the less formal format for discussion.  It is a visionary initiative.  His question is, why is there delay in NETMundial's event roadmap?  Thanks.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you very much.  I will take, because we have time constraints, all the comments and questions from the audience, and we will give one minute to each of the speakers for making their remarks and answering, so pay attention, please, to all the questions.

>> AUDIENCE: Jose Eduardo Rojas.

  (receiving no English interpretation).

Which is a Civil Society, and in my country, we articulate between Civil Society and Internet Society, allows to generate models and answers to human rights and Information Society.

So, it's not enough to talk about Internet rights, because with the perspective of technological intervention, the centrality in human rights leads us to defend the rights, not the heritage but the human rights.  The Bolivian initiative today allows us to articulate all the actors at the traditional level to promote some associations to defend human rights in the Internet.

This also envisages a new role for Civil Society.  Civil Society defending human rights can have inputs to talk about economic differences of private operators, ISPs and governments, and in order to build a society, and be respectful of human rights.  How do you see the perspective of creating national associations to defend human rights in the association, in the network, like ISOC, in order to ensure that global principles are doing at the national level?

>> AUDIENCE: Marilia Maciel, I'm a researcher and coordinator of the Centre for Technology and Society of a foundation law school in Brazil.  I was part of the organization of NETMundial.  I had the pleasure to work in the Executive Committee and be Chair, and it was an amazing experience.

The strength of a document that is nonbinding, it is a soft document like the outcome document of NETMundial is the number of times that this document is quoted and mentioned and referenced.  To me it's disappointing to see how scantily this document was made reference to in the process of reviewing towards the summit on the Information Society on the last part of the year in December, and how governments could not quote this document or make reference to this document in documents that have been approved throughout the process.  So maybe we could, if you could react to that, I'd like to hear your reactions.

This document could have been made a reference to as well by NonGovernmental Organisations, and maybe this is something that we could do more coordinatedly in the future.  In order to carry out the comparative spirit of NETMundial and based on the fact that NETMundial was a one-time event, NETMundial initiative has been created by some actors.  It has now a Multistakeholder Coordinating Council, and the role of the platform is to take this document, completely anchored on the NETMundial outcome document, and to work with other organizations and stakeholders to try to find ways to implement the goals that were set in that outcome document.  We had a very interesting session on Day Zero.  I encourage you to look at the recording and transcripts.  I think it was really constructive.

In terms of the methodology, the methodology of the NETMundial was one of the greatest outcomes of the meeting.  This methodology has a lot of lessons to be brought into the IGF.  A lot has been done this year in terms of progress, in terms of making the IGF more outcome oriented.  I would like to suggest that the amazing work that has been done this year is made better than next year.  Exercises suggest the one conducted by that Dynamic Coalitions should not be conducted in the fringes of the IGF, but should be something really brought to the core of the process with much more publicization and advertisements.  Among the challenges, many of them has been mentioned before, but I still think that one issue that triggered NETMundial, although it was not the main issue in the agenda, was mass surveillance.

What we have seen since NETMundial is a very worrisome trend in terms of countries trying to put forward laws that would neutralize or legitimize mass surveillance, and this is really something that we should look into, not only develop technology like encryption, this is amazingly important, but laws are very important too.

Thanks.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you very much.  Do we have a remote comment?  Not yet.  Okay.

>> AUDIENCE: Good afternoon.  My name is Carlos Guerrero, and I came here as part of the initiative, Youth for 2015.  First of all, I'd like to thank for the opportunity.  It's really first time that someone from Peru comes to participate in the debates which have happened throughout the week.

I participated in many workshops.  There were very interesting topics and controversial ones like net neutrality and Zero‑Rating.  But the general view, and what I've known from this and other events, we repeat the same ideas.  We talk a lot but we get nowhere.  We repeat the same discussions over and over, the same speech.

But when governments start to deploy the policies of the Internet and human rights which are discussed in these platforms, where they discuss new technologies, we don't see what is discussed here deployed, implemented.  We have many people from Latin America, many youngsters.  This is a huge opportunity.

It was a great opportunity to participate in these events.

We are a new voice, a voice from the youth.  It is very important to have the youth voice in these events, for people to know our concerns and our perspectives.  It's something unique.  It had never happened before.  I hope it will go on for the next events.  And among all these stakeholders, stakeholders should also support initiatives, so that the voices that people who are not included in these debates, their voices can be heard.  I thank you very much.  I hope that youngsters will participate in the next editions.

  (applause).

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: For your first time, you are very good at the timing issue.  Thank you.  Next speaker.

>> AUDIENCE: Jutta Croll.

  (no audio).

I've been pleased to see that the rights of children and the safety of children have played an important role in all the debates on the Internet Governance Forum this year.  But also, I have to mention that the community of child protection people have been very disappointed that children and youth have not been mentioned in the NETMundial statement, and I wanted to make that point.

If you carry on with that work, I find it very important, and I speak for the community of child protection people, that the rights of children for their dignity, for privacy and physical integrity have to play a role in that statement.  Thank you.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you very much.  Do we have any other speakers?  If not, we will move to the last round of comments.  Do we have a remote participant?  No?  Okay.  Thank you.

We can start maybe for you, Anne Carblanc.  The challenge is one minute.

>> ANNE CARBLANC: First, it was a very rich discussion.  There is a consensus on the importance of the NETMundial principles.  I heard what was said, that perhaps we should consider adding reference in the ministerial declaration, and also the need to work on accessibility, for access for people with disabilities.  I will bring this back to the university, and to our members.  I think that there will be probably, they will be receptive to these suggestions.  Thank you.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you.  Chris.

>> CHRIS PAINTER: That is twice, 30 seconds, that is a lot of time.  I'd say a few things.  First of all, one comment has said, in some ways, to be thinking we have the same conversations again and again, but I've seen those conversations over the course of the last ten years, and the conversations have become much stronger.  And what's happened is, all the stakeholders including governments are listening.

It does help to have the conversations, and continue to have the conversations.  On Cybersecurity, I'd say, look, there are times when governments are making policy.  But the more open they can be about those policies, the better.  That is something that we model, and the capacity‑building we do, when I have bilaterals with many countries, including Latin America, that is always one of the things I talk about.  We built a lot of our policies in the messy multistakeholder way, and that is important, because they make them more legitimate at the end.  That is important.

Finally, on issues like on the last comment about youth, I attended some of the youth session.  I will tell you that is one of the greatest parts of the IGF is getting that perspective.  I spoke last year at the closing after a 14‑year‑old from Macedonia, I thought was the best speaker in the entire Closing Ceremony probably.  I think it's important to get that perspective, because they are the ones who are going to own and operate and use the Internet in the future.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you very much.

>> NII QUAYNOR: I'm very pleased to hear development described as a human right and a shared value.  On surveillance, sympathize on the subject and I wish you had more surveillance.  Thank you.

>> JACQUELYNN RUFF: I would like to echo the comments about the richness of the conversation today.  I think that one of the things we need to emphasize, even more, taking away from this type of activity, is the value of the multistakeholder approach to things in general.  We have not talked a lot about local, national developments, etcetera.

But there are so many things going on around the world that are either enhancing the global seamless Internet or posing some risks to it.  I would just say let's have as one take‑away to try to take the structure of using a multistakeholder approach for good policy outcomes, and apply that as we go back to our areas around the world in just that way.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Ambassador.

>> BENEDICTO FONSECA: Thank you.  My last comment, I'd like maybe to reaffirm something we have been saying that we believe in dialogue and discussion.  And one thing as a diplomat that I have been witness is that different process ignore each other.  What is taking place here is largely ignored by most of the representatives in New York and Geneva, and vice versa.

I think that a key for improving Internet Governance is to build bridges among people that are working in different context, in different configurations to better understand each other, to seek ways to working mutually reinforcing ways.  I'm not naive.  I know it's not just by putting people together that you come toward peace and everything.

But I think we can improve if people can better understand what others are doing in different contexts.  I think there is a role for IGF in doing this.  As I have said in my previous intervention, IGF works under rules of engagement that are flexible.  We can make experiments.  Because of this IGF we made a very important experiment that I think will be further reflected upon later on, that we brought here the two co‑facilitators of the WSIS+10 process that is taking place in New York, and they committed to receive a report, a summary of the discussions here and take it to New York.  I think that is the kind of thing that IGF could do and improve and look into ways in which it can put people together, because otherwise I think we will be discussing here a few things, people will be discussing there a few things, and they will be largely ignoring one another.

I think if I can, I know I expand my time, but if I can briefly try to reflect on why NETMundial statement was rejected by so many governments.  I think this reflects that difference of cultures, because governments, for an outcome to be legitimate, most governments would think that we need multi‑lateral, and by multi‑lateral I'd like to indicate not unilateral, not something that is a side by one Government, two governments or a group, but the whole community coming together.

And governments, may we like or not, are in principle and by design, those who represent their peoples, who have a mandate.  I think for most governments, for many governments, there was a difficulty in NETMundial to be negotiating a context in which you were not clear about what kind of mandate people have on the other side.  Some people represent a country.  Some people represent themselves.  You have a country that that is a billion people, and they have a representative that has a mandate to represent.  Maybe we should think about that, kind of how to address that kind of legitimacy from the perspective of the various stakeholders.

For the multistakeholder approach, the work, again, it must respect the cultures that each stakeholder group has and also substantially different.  If we do not understand what the other side thinks and how legitimatizes the outcomes, we will be talking to each other, having consensus among ourselves, but being largely ignored by the other group and vice versa.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Carolina?

>> CAROLINA ROSSINI: No.  I didn't ask.

>> JEANETTE HOFFMAN: I'd like to echo Chris Painter's comments.  If one listens, one will notice that we don't have repetition of debates in a strict sense.  They are moving, even if on a snail's pace.  What I find striking over the last years is the increasing amount of expertise that we see brought to the table at IGF meetings.  Both people come who would not have come earlier, but IGF also inspires people to really get smart and into the issues, to make a difference.  As an academic, I do believe that strong evidence, good arguments and high quality debate do make a difference in societal self‑determination.

>> ANJA KOVACS: For me one of the big themes throughout IGF has been the issue of distrust between governments and people and in a way I feel accruing this trust when it comes to the Internet Governance processes.  We should think more about how we can bridge that gap, also from our side.

I think Ambassador Benedicto Fonseca made quite a few suggestions on that as well, including about respecting the culture of all the stakeholder groups and mentioning the visit of the co‑facilitators and also things were mentioned, NonGovernmental stakeholders too should refer more often to the NETMundial outcome document.

But it's valuable to start documenting this kind of suggestions, and start thinking about what that means in practice.  Like if we want to respect other cultures, if we want to respect what governments do, what does that mean for how we should move forward?  I'd be really interested in thinking about this more.  Thanks.

>> MARKUS KUMMER: I share the frustration of the lack of mentioning of the NETMundial outcome experience, that a few weeks after the Geneva meeting of the Commission of Science and Technology for Development and some governments steadfastly refused to have any reference on the NETMundial.  But I also share Ambassador Benedicto Fonseca's assessment of the reasons why.  I think the procedure was simply too advanced for many governments to accept.

Also I'd like to build on Jeanette's and Chris's comments.  Yes, in the past ten years we have been discussing the same issues over and over again, but I will maintain it was each year at the higher level of understanding.  I think in education, you call that spiral learning.  You revisit the same issues, but you move up a spiral and you are higher up in the level of understanding.

Really, the quality of the discussions this year was extremely high.  I think it was, in terms of substance, really a very very good meeting.  Compared to the very first meetings, we have come a long way.

>> RAUL ECHEBERRIA: Thank you very much.  While this is not an official report, because there will be the report done by others later, I would like to share with you some of the things that I have heard in this discussion.  In general, I have heard positive evaluations of the NETMundial process and NETMundial meeting, even if we have to recognize some disappointments that have been expressed in the room.

Some of the words that were associated with the NETMundial was highlight, inspirational, invigorating.  That is, that speaks by themselves.

There was comments also in the use of rough consensus processes for policy discussion.  The cross fertilization between IGF and NETMundial, the progress that has been done in other areas, like IANA position, on IGF improvements, best practices forums were mentioned, and also the intersessional work on Connecting the Next Billion, very positive remarks about the discussion, the legal and the session held this week in the IGF, progress that has also been made in other forums.  There were mentions to the need to continue improving participation of all stakeholders, in all Internet Governance and other related processes.  That has been mentioned in some cases where the participation of stakeholders is not good enough, that principles are really visible in different forums and organizations, and we have to remember that presentation from OECD in that regard.

The NETMundial documents are being referenced in the many places, there is an indication of the success of the NETMundial.  There is a need to bring the NETMundial principles to other Internet related forums.  My final remark is, I think that there was, Ambassador Painter mentioned something like there is a lot to do, but a lot has been already done since the NETMundial meeting.  This is a good way to close my remarks.

And I would, please, ask Demi to take the control.

The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2015. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record. 

***

>> DEMI GETSCHKO: Thank you very much.  It was very enlightening discussion.  I'm happy to be here and honored to be here.  I want to thank very much our MAG facilitators, Flavio Rech Wagner from Brazil and Ana Cristina Amoroso Neves, the Rapporteurs are doing the work of carrying out this information in this room, Diego Canabarro, Rafael Prince.  And before passing for the closing words of Percival Henriques, I found a note, article from a Professor related to the NETMundial.  I will read two paragraphs of that.  Never before there was a document with Internet Governance principles which has such a broad political support from key players, from all stakeholders groups, and there is no mechanism to bring our own tour to a Internet court, but NETMundial document allows naming and shaming if a corporation or of a Government those behave badly in cyberspace.

Thank you very much.  I pass to Percival Henriques for the end words.

  (applause).

>> PERCIVAL HENRIQUES: Before closing, I'd like to thank everybody.  But before that I'd like to reinforce what was said, what has been said more than once here, which is the importance of the documents generated by NETMundial, the roadmap and the principles which have been having an impact on all the discussions to a greater or lesser degree, but all the discussions having to do with Internet Governance.  So thank you all for all of those who have been conducting this process, all of those who have been making an effort to follow up with this document in the last two years.  I'd like to thank all those who attended here or remotely.  Once more let me say that on Friday we still have people discussing, debating, been doing this since Monday.  So some people started on Saturday.  So thank you very much.  We are very glad for this session, and we are very glad to have you all here in Joao Pessoa.

And just like NETMundial which happened a couple of years ago, the ideas and the debates and text are still alive.  I hope that this session and the other sessions which made up IGF 2015 will continue beyond the closing of this Forum.  Thank you very much.

Thank you for the remote attendance, for the people here in the panel, for everybody who helped create this session of the IGF.

  (applause).

  (end of session at 4:04 pm)