FINISHED TRANSCRIPT
NINTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED
MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
2014 SEPTEMBER 5
11:00
IANA FUNCTIONS/
TAKING STOCK/EMERGING ISSUES
MAIN ROOM
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The following is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey meetings. 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.
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>> Osman Nuri Ucan: Good morning, I'm opening the session. As you're well aware, today's session is essentially important on the main IGF. In short, to say this is the many important meeting of the IGF conference. We are trying to collect and find out all the conferences workshops and just for future IGF forums. The main sessions better to remind you, policies enabling excess growth, development on the Internet.
The second important session is towards the common understanding of network neutrality. Third one, revolution of ecosystem and IGF. This is also very important because IGF is just a forum, and what will it take? What's the role of the IGF for all the Internet progress? You know, Internet is growing very fastly, but can IGF just quality and high speed of Internet?
And the fourth one, just the best practices wrap‑up, the best practices also for this conference.
The last one just IANA functions and the ICANN's accountability process.
The goal of the discussion is identify issues that ongoing intersessional work and to discuss ways to proceed the work by completion of the main sessions, debates, and discussions measuring how issues have advanced; outline possible steps toward intersessional IGF work, input among nations and regions well‑known in Internet Governance entities, launching new practice and including the diamond coalitions. And all role of IGF in the evolving Internet Governance ecosystem. The number of experts and high‑level officials with us here to share their thoughts with us. They are really important persons. They are VIP persons, and we welcome everybody to this session.
I would give the chance to speak to here you are, Mr. Karklins.
>> Janis Karklins: Thank you for your introductory remarks. We will organise this session in the following manner: At the beginning we will listen to reports from main sessions and then each report will be around five minutes, and after that we will open the mic to give opportunity to report on those workshops or potentially tangible outcome.
Before I will give the floor to the first report, I would like to pay particular tribute to the teams that worked in organising main sessions and workshops. That is coordinators. That is rapporteurs, speakers, and moderators. Therefore, I would like to use this opportunity to extend my gratitude and gratitude of participants of the forum to these volunteers who substantively prepared our forum. So I would invite to greet them with a round of applause.
(Applause)
>> Janis Karklins: Thank you. Now I will return to a report from the session on access and from the access and economic development, please.
>> Richard Allan: My name is Richard Allan. We had a 21‑member panel, incredibly diverse, over 70% were from Developing Countries, and it was almost fully agenda balance male/female. And then the issue of connecting the next four billion people is one that we feel the whole community can gather around and can become a main focus of work for the IGF over the next year. And I want to pull out three of the themes that were recurring themes through the debate on the access side of things beforehand go over to my co‑rep to talk about more of the development side.
The first thing was around calculating those who are connected and those who are not connected. Many of the debates around statistics or connectivity take place within a national context where everybody has an agreed framework. Here we were bringing different experiences together uniquely through the IGF and found we were not only comparing apples with pares, but apples with pares, with oranges, with apricots. Those that were connected and not connected and arguments were made both for one methodology to rule them all and for locally context technology through transparency. Through the debate we arrived at a place where there was a piece of work for the IGF, given the nature of this forum to work on transparency regarding what consequently constitutes such text as they go about the connection.
Second issue is around, again, the big question there, I think, extent, the clear issues around content and competencies, the demand sites. And giving them locally produced content that creates the demand to take up the infrastructure. Many of these have to be focused on the infrastructure side. IGF is to look at the strategies, look at the extent to which versus infrastructure base, and then the effectiveness of different strategies. Then finally, themselves, the core agreement and arrive at how effective, and I think one thing that came through particularly which keeps that mechanism, the way in which Nigerian broadband strategies through a multi‑stakeholder review group that needs regulating.
Again, some work for IGF to look at natural broadband plan, which should be involved in assessing the effectiveness, and how do we ensure the broadband delivers.
>> Angelic Castilho: I'm the co‑rapporteur. I'm with development and growth. What we found is in the discussions usually when we talk about Internet policies for development and growth, they focus mostly on the infrastructure of development. That in itself is usually in competition again with other priorities, such as healths, climate change, and this can be due to the fact that there is not enough awareness that Internet could be part of the solution of these competing challenges.
In order to be successful, it's important to have a holistic approach. That was one important conclusion. A policy balance is needed in reducing the digital divide. And within reducing this digital divide, it's important that we realize that we have need to have open access. We need to have open educational resources with special attention to be paid to media and information literacy.
It's also important to realize that technology alone does not empower. The crucial needs are those of right contact, content, context, and competencies. It has also been shown that with improved infrastructure development, more local content becomes available. Of course there are certain enablers that benefit the creation of local content. There were a few mentioned, such as an environment that supports creative and social expression and ability for political speech, rule of law, trust, protection for children, naming and addressing resources, digital scales and/or knowledge, which leads, of course, to capacity building. As was mentioned already by my partner rapporteur, is the requirement is competency.
There are huge skill gaps between different parts of the world. This could be a reason why access to Internet is often missed as a possible solution to competing development priorities, as I said earlier. It is, of course, of great importance to focus on this gap of competence. And I think the IGF is really the forum for that.
Our educational systems will have to be renewed, rebuilt, and to make people feel comfortable with the use of the tools for the intended purposes.
In the light of this, there should have been special focus on the training of our teachers, and it could mean that the subject of coding has to be added to the curriculum of even private schools, as was mentioned. Other education‑related institutions such as public libraries, have proven to be successful tools for the purpose of raising awareness and competence levels.
Many feel that broadband access should be recognized as universal right and key to digital social inclusion. This especially also goes for those with disabilities and the aspect of multilingualism. To get this widely acknowledged, of course, and understood, more awareness needs to be raised and it has to be then done in a sense of security, trust, and I think generally the IGF can take this on. Another important aspects in the growth and development due to Internet is the participation and preparation of our youth. Net neutrality and respect for fundamental human rights remain crucial within this whole process.
When this comes to the evolution of broadband, it has to be realized there is no one‑size‑fits‑all. It's also important to note that access to Internet for growth and development should not focus mainly on infrastructure, as I said before. Open access creating the demand dealing with issues of privacy remain important.
Thereby, we should not confuse access with personal access, but it should be about enabling people and motivating the production of local content. Government system should be digitized and available resources. Capacity building is key to sustainable development and meaningful participation. There are also other factors to consider such as the quality, as in the speed of Internet. Finally, the lessons learned, I have listed a few. One policy design done while inviting multi‑stakeholderism collaboration has proven successful.
More sectors are needed in ICT government and business. There must be multilateral cooperation and we have to build on what works. Once policy is in place and private enterprise takes over, it's important that they engage local communities to provide options for sustainable development.
Small enterprise has to be actively involved in the digital universe. One option is for example, to partnerships. There is, of course, much more to be said, but I hope that with the short summary I have provided an acceptable overview of this session.
JANIS KARKLINS: Thank you very much for this report. The discussion was very rich. The room was full to the point there were even people standing. And that was real encouraging sign importance of the participants of this forum devote to developmental issues.
So let us now move to the next report, and that is report on the main session on net neutrality. Markus Kummer, vice president of ISOC.
>> Markus Kummer: The starting point of this session was NETmundial. NETmundial discussed net neutrality, but one of the most controversial issues, and it did not find its way into the principle, but it found its way into the section on the way forward, there, again, the mandate the IGF to take up this discussion.
The IGF had a level of workshops and on litigation dealt with this issue before, but never dealt with this session. This is an issue many people feel very passionately involved. We were late. And after NETmundial, we have an open‑ended planning process and many people contributed to this process.
First we have to choose title, and it was clear we were not come to closure on this issue. There are so many divergent views, and also the title in terms of towards a common understanding. And we took approach to deconstruct the issue into various components and to look at it from the different perspectives and the technical perspective, an economic perspective, from an end user social and human rights perspective, and to have perspectives on the development perspectives. This approach ‑‑ it was the Sector 8 and technical, economic, or social aspects, all these issues are linked and intertwined. And if there's one lesson we learned, it clearly is a multifaceted issue.
There were also possibly very useful to have insist on having a developmental perspective and having speakers from Developing Countries bringing in their take from these issues. It showed that there clearly one‑size‑fits‑all policy solution would not be appropriate to proceed globally.
Some highly divergent user helped the Developing Country perspectives on some of these issues. Zero rating is one. Also, the issue on the impact of net neutrality on innovation was an issue where there was clearly not common understanding, but despite all the complexities, there were nevertheless a sense that there was a shared understanding on the importance of the use of experience on the Internet, also the Internet working on the legal content and also on the need for transparency.
And the last segment of the discussion then turns to the role of the IGF. It was clearly felt that the IGF was a good place to have these discussions in that it precisely allowed all the different perspectives to come in, and it was important to have these different perspectives for some social perspective, the technologists insist on the technical aspects, and for the business technical aspects are in the foreground to have these discussions all these speakers come together, allows for a rich discussion.
And the role of the IGF discussion clearly did not come to closure. There was a feeling that it should continue, and it will continue as we have the Dynamic Coalition dealing with these issues. But then we have the horizontal issue within the IGF as we never actually have established a process of procedures to bring in Dynamic Coalition to the main community buy‑ in from the proposal.
The lady sitting next to me, many of you know her, Andrea Saks. She's a fighter for making the IGF and other places more accessible and they have developed guidelines and I strongly urge the chair to give her the space to present these guidelines to the broader community. With that I close my remarks.
>> Janis Karklins: Thank you. If only one question of clarification. You mentioned that no ‑‑ one solution does not fit all on net neutrality. There was a sense whether this issue should be brought further to and recommended for further consultations during national and regional for the next IGF in 2015? What's your sense? Thank you.
>> Markus Kummer: I don't think we had consensus on whether or not to have an intersessional process or not, but it will happen in any case through the Dynamic Coalition on net neutrality. I think the question we have to address is how to bring in the Dynamic Coalition into the process. I had made on a call the comparison with the engineering task force. There is a clear process if you want to establish a working group, but I see the chairman of the IGF was here, so I stand to be corrected if I get it wrong. But there is a process in place, whoever wants to start the working group has to seek approval of the Internet Architecture Board, but working group has to be approved by the Internet Architecture Board, then the work goes on. When it's finished, it again goes for approval to the broader community.
We have no such process in place. This is maybe also something we should consider as intersessional work. It is also valid for the other coalitions. There were some very good proposals that brought them to a main session back in 2009, but there are other Dynamic Coalitions that have other rights and principles that produce a booklet on the rights and principle. But it was never actually brought back to the main session. So this is an issue that's definitely for consideration.
>> Janis Karklins: Thank you very much. Now I am turning to next session, evolution of Internet governance ecosystem and the IGF. I understand there will be two half reports, which will make one full report. Please, Marilyn.
>> Marilyn Cade: Thank you. My name is Marilyn Cade. I am part of the larger team that organised the ‑‑ this session. And I'm going to speak about the first segment about what the overview will cover, a little bit of the information that feeds into the second segment.
We conducted this session as a town hall and our effort was to open the first session with more of a setting of the scene. The Internet concept has emerged in the past couple of years, but it's an insider's concept in many ways. Those of us who work inside the ecosystem tends to know who is in it, and the concept is the very rich and diverse. The first panel included senior leaders from a wide number from the participants in the system, such as UNESCO, CSTD, ITU. The second we also included international organisations like ISOC and ICANN, and a number of others, and we included the representatives from the Civil Society business and technical community. In total we had invited 25 speakers, which in the first segment was really about trying to understand from the organisation's point of view what they are doing in the ecosystem, where they fit, what they think the challenges are and how they see the evolution of the ecosystem, either because they're driving the evolution in order to deal with risk and threats that they see to the Internet, or because they are responding to external events.
We had on this session also Ambassador Filho who was invited to speak about NETmundial as an event, Internet Governance event that was feeding into the IGF. I'm not going to talk about findings, because my colleague will cover those, because they come more richly from the second segment. But I'm just going to mention a couple of key things that came across in the first session. One is that the concept of an ecosystem is valid, that the ecosystem probably exists also at a national level and a regional level, not just at a global level, which makes it a multidimensional ecosystem. I'm not suggesting we explored what that meant, but it's an interesting concept to continue to think about.
We also tried to ‑‑ it was interesting. We asked for the speakers to identify issues and challenges that they saw facing the Internet Governance ecosystem and we didn't actually hear a lot about those challenges. We did, however, hear from the first panelist a very strong interest in what I'm going to call the more rapid enhancement of the IGF. And so strong support for the IGF, strong recommendation and recognition of the work to date, but also a very strong sort of call to action for further enhancement and strengthening is needed. We're at a pivotal point. We need to do a lot more. Mention was made to do outputs and concrete achievements and to focus on preparation for the continuation, the approach to ensure the continuation of the IGF.
For the first time CSTD held an open forum and they were part of the session. So it was also an opportunity to really see the expanded basis of the senior players from the Internet ecosystem. And then I will say the final point that kind of came across in this segment, which I think was reflected later, was the almost unanimous support from the speakers to move, maintain the dialogue, maintain the information sharing, but to also move awareness, knowledge, information sharing into action.
Thank you.
>> Subi Chaturvedi: Thank you, Marilyn. My name is Subi Chaturvedi. Our session was supported and actively led and guided by a 16‑member MAG volunteer group. We had also set up mailing lists that took input from the community that they would like to see discussed in this session. So a couple of things emerged. Of course there was strong support for the IGF to be continued and strengthened. There was also call to keep the Internet open and sustainable.
Many distinguished speakers reflected on the fact that not only do we have an Internet IGF platform, which is open and sustainable, but also an IG process, mechanism that allows stakeholders to participate on an equal footing.
I thank Lee Hibbard from the Council of Europe for this very substantial report, for his three hours of meticulous, detailed notes that is helping me bring these reflections across to you. Some of the key observations from the second panel were also reflections on the IG ecosystem. We have to remember and respect and not lose the coupling's involvement. There was also the initiatives such as the NETmundial. There was also emphasis in strengthening the IGF and even national initiatives. This was also recognizing as atypical and critical. Those that are not connected have to be connected, not just in access, but also in the policy‑making dialogue. The mission that emerged from the second panel was the emphasis on creating quality‑enabling platforms that enable dialogues and transmission of knowledge and capacity building from the IGF.
There is a need and dedication for sufficient mechanism to support and run the IGF not only for 2015, but to '16 and beyond. The time period varied, but there was a continuous support, five years, ten years, to extend the mandate, and also to create support mechanisms for the secretariat of the IGF.
Practical suggestions emerged from the floor. Can we reconcile equal footing in IG with respect to all stakeholders? Can we find spaces for their encouragement? There was also belief in the value of the current and future of the IGF. The IGF was also speak to the point of creating platforms that would be more inclusive for Developing Countries.
Emphasis was made on creating mechanisms that would be more inclusive and would also look at the length, breadth and depth of participation in IGF, both during the forum and before the forum. Looking at improvements in the MAG evaluating rating process so that workshop mechanisms could be such that they're enabling and facilitating more participation, especially from Developing Countries. It was also emphasized that to improve and strengthen the IGF, it should work at transfer of knowledge, diffusion of innovation and also the platform that becomes a go‑to place that clarifies misunderstanding and disinformation that existed with other IGF processes.
And there was also clear messages delivered as to how the IGF has had value and should also look at addressing clear problems and solutions. One of them is the best practice fora, and we'll have other colleagues reflecting on that. One last point and I'll wrap up with that. This came from the youth stakeholder that was about three percent at the IGF. That's a strong call to have them present because they need to be recognized as lead users and not end users. Thank you very much.
>> Janis Karklins: Thank you very much for this report. Very clear. It is obvious that the support of IGF was present, and I know that wouldn't be the case, because here we have in the family that is really putting all the heart in this exercise, but clearly we see and heard that further improvements are needed. And we will be working very diligently to implement all those good ideas we heard during this session.
So let us move now to the next session or next item, and that is the best practice forum wrap up and here I would like to invite Bill Graham, member of ICANN board and most probably wearing other hats as well at the same time.
Bill, please.
>> Bill Graham: Thank you very much, Janis, for the opportunity. I'm reporting on the best practice wrap‑up session. The best practice forums, for those of you who are not acquainted with them, are an IGF initiative to answer the call for tangible outcomes from the IGF process.
There were five topics considered in a series of best practice mailing lists. And those are for those unfamiliar with them, developing meaningful multi‑stakeholder participation mechanisms is one. The second was on creating and enabling environment for local content. The third was on establishing and supporting computer emergency response teams for Internet security. The fourth was on spam. The fifth was online child protection.
As you see, a good range of topics that were discussed widely at this IGF. Each of these topics had its own best practices forum earlier in the week, so the wrap‑up session was bringing together what was learned during those sessions. Each of the best practices efforts was led by two or three experts from a very diverse group of different stakeholders and some very fine work by these experts.
There was also assistance from professional consultants who provided draft best practices outcome documents. And I'd like to point out that the executive summaries of those documents are available in paper over at that side of the room. So I would urge you to pick them up and take a look at them, particularly because these are living documents. They're open for comment until the 15th of this year. And in at least two cases it will be going on for some period into the next year. I think that testifies to the value of the experience that was felt.
What did we learn from this? First off, there was a lot of discussion during the wrap‑up of why we were using the term "best practices." And I think we came to an agreement that at best we could say best practices to date or lessons learned to date. So I think that reflects some of the thinking that the IGF needs to be very forward‑looking and very flexible in the development of any recommendation for best practices, because those will continue to evolve with the Internet.
The exercise, what's modeled on the IETF and the NETmundial processes of working to create a document through rough consensus. The NETmundial took about six months and had a full secretariat. So to make this kind of best practices exercise more effective, there's a need for both more time and more resources to support the efforts.
We also heard from various of the lead experts that they needed to identify a range of stakeholders with expertise in those areas and bring in those experts with on‑the‑ground experts. That includes Child Online Protection. There are a number of initiatives in the ITU and nationally and regionally that need to be recruited to take part in developing these short best practices documents.
The process definitely needs to be an iterative collaborative process, working for consensus, not negotiating final outcome text. It was found by all the groups trying to get into a detailed solution of text would have slowed down the effort and would not have helped with the product.
Certainly there needs to be more effort made in all of these groups to understand what's going on in Developing Countries, what kind of advice would be useful to people from those countries, and also to bring in youth, as Subi has said. They are going to be the ones who are making most use of the work that comes out of forward‑looking exercises like this.
We also need to be very flexible and to accept and accommodate the differences in working methods. I don't want to go into too much detail in this brief wrap‑up, but I certainly found it very interesting to hear how the different groups had organised themselves to produce output. And so that's a key point here.
Finally, I think I'd urge you all to actually read the closing statement by Nii Quaynor. He made some points on the IGF. To be forward‑looking and accommodate new users as the other two‑thirds of the world gradually joined the Internet so that their concerns are taken into account.
He also talked at length about the need to ensure that the IGF continues, because it's become such a key component of the global dialogue on Internet Governance. I'll close there with the document you should pick up in the back.
Thank you very much.
>> Janis Karklins: Thank you very much, Bill, for this report.
At this moment I really would like to put on record my personal gratitude and thanks of the MAG, to Constance, for bringing this initiative to fruition, because this was not obvious seven weeks ago when she proposed to embark on this path. We were enthusiastic, but that was not really obvious that that would be possible in such a short period of time. To see the outcome and thinking about or matching with the request for further improvement of tangible outcomes from IGF, I think this is one of the examples where IGF can really produce a result that can be used for action on national level, on regional level. And certainly my intention is to propose to continue this practice also for next year, but this time starting very early in the process. So thank you very much.
Let us move now to the next and last main session, the highlight of this IGF, IANA functions transition. And I will call on Carolina Aguerre, the general manager of LTLD.
>> Carolina Aguerre: Thank you. I'm Carolina Aguerre. This main session was ‑‑ it is typical to have a main session regarding the IANA functions, but this year the MAG felt it was a relevant issue and we had to address it at a main session.
We worked in a very open manner. We set up ‑‑ we rushed a little bit because the time this year was tight, but we opened up for community the collaboration of questions that the moderators were posing from the beginning came from the community process. We had links where everyone could put forward their interest and ideas.
So this main session addressed two key concerns, and it was divided ‑‑ it was a very short main session, 90 minutes. It was divided in two segments. The first segment was addressing the transition of the NTIA stewardship of the IANA functions, and the second segment was addressing ICANN accountability and general accountability issues in about the transition.
So as main outtakes of this main session, one of the most important issues is the importance ‑‑ the relevance of having a broad, wide, committed participation from not just the affected parties or the technical community, but from a broader range of stakeholders. And this participation is very much constrained by mainly two factors. On the one hand, the timing challenge, the fact that the working group, the IANA coordination group, is aiming at meeting the June deadline in order to address at the NTIA's initial deadline for September 2015 is one of those constraints, but actually during the main session it was actually the fact was addressed that although this is the aim, it might not be possible because, and this is the other very relevant fact that came in, we need the ‑‑ the process needs to get a broader input from other stakeholders.
And there is the other challenge: Time. And the other one is participation. Participation ‑‑ meaningful participation and stakeholders that are aware of what this general process means. And this topic led naturally. I mean, after the initial segment of the main session talking about ‑‑ there were many representatives from the IANA coordination group there. They talked about the work and the process and how the work is being accomplished and the current meetings and documents that are available online and for public input. This led naturally to the discussion regarding the second segment, which was concerning accountability issues. This reflects something that was in the tone of other feeder workshops for this main session regarding not just ICANN accountability, but general accountability processes in the community and in other players from the technical community.
So then there was a very interesting discussion and approach on the consent of how narrow or how wide this accountability issues are at stake with this process, and the idea of opening up the scope of the process to engage multi‑stakeholder and more issues will bring in more legitimacy and trust into the whole discussion regarding the stewardship transition of the IANA functions.
There was a call for broader engagement in Internet Governance issues as it has done in other experiences in order to bring in this legitimacy and trust from the overall community such as the role ICANN played with NETmundial.
So regarding the future of this process and how this timing will tie in with the next IGF next year, it might be this was not publicly addressed in the session, but because this is an ongoing process, it might be relevant to think of how this topic and this theme will be addressed next year where this transition and this process in general will have already evolved more significantly.
That's all. Thank you.
>> Janis Karklins: Thank you, Carolina, for this report. You did not have much time to prepare it, since session was just ended recently. Nevertheless, thank you very much.
Now, I have at least three requests for further interventions. That would be on different initiatives and potential outcomes of the IGF. I would gladly accommodate those requests for about two to two and a half minutes. After that we could open the microphone for any questions and comments by the participants.
So let me start by calling first on Miss Andrea Saks, representative of the Dynamic Coalition of Accessibility for the ‑‑ for her remarks. Please.
>> Andrea Saks: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We've been working in the Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability for quite a few years on how to help the IGF and other organisations make things accessible. I'm going to have it put up on the board, because if it's visual, it's easy for everybody to see.
Some of you in this building have experienced what it's like for a person to be disabled if they have a problem in navigating the building. So I think we will have more sympathy in the future. This is a guideline. It is not meant to be law. It is meant to help. We would like the IGF to actually adopt this, if possible, as a guideline to help the IGF and other organisations to make meetings more accessible so that persons with disabilities can in fact participate.
There is a blind man on the phone right now who we had to call directly because it's not possible to use the remote participation tool that we use to connect remote participations with a screen reader, because there are two audio channels that are involved. You have to switch one off to do it. I don't know if they're going to be able to get it up, but the point is it will be posted on the Web.
It deals with registration, training of staff, training the staff in the host countries. And the host country, the people who have been working with the technology are fabulous. They can't do enough for you. But if we don't have the infrastructure set in on how to train people on how to do things, then we can't really do a good job.
And there are just so many things that I have learned from persons with disabilities. My experience is mainly with deafness. In front of me I have a screen. I would love to have the captioning here. It's education and training. Everybody in their heart wants to do a good job. We need to help them do that. And I really am so excited about the fact that this has actually been finished.
Can we just have the front page, please? Can we scroll down so you can see the front page? Mainly the table of contents. Just scroll it down. Thank you, because that's not going to do it. We need to go to the top.
But it just shows you it's also an accessible document. It can be used with a screen reader. There you are. It's quite extensive. We will add to it. It will be a living document. And we would like the IGF to accept this as an outcome document.
Thank you for my two and a half minutes.
>> Janis Karklins: Thank you very much, Andrea, for this presentation. And I hope that you convinced everybody in the room of the necessity to promote access and accessibility.
So let me turn now to the next intervention, and that would be from Mr. Hamilton.
>> Stuart Hamilton: I'm going to make a request. We're going to read a short statement on behalf of the conveners of the Dynamic Coalitions on Internet Rights and Principles, NETmundial, Gender and Internet Governance, platform responsibility, youth, and public access in libraries.
We would like the "Taking Stock" session to note that one core element in strengthening the IGF is to address the roles and responsibilities of the Dynamic Coalitions or DCs. The DCs are the constituent hubs at the global IGF meetings and at the intersessional events where all stakeholders can convene to share knowledge, coordinate collaborations around Internet Governance processes within the IGF and beyond.
As multi‑stakeholder groupings, the DCs have played a formative role in producing concrete outcomes that are based in the IGF. So, for example, the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition and its IRPC charter of Human Rights and Principles For the Internet, the Gender DC and its feminist Internet government principles and its work monitoring gender balance and access in the IGF, the DC or net neutrality framework on net neutrality, and the work with DC on public access to libraries. This is integral to the IGF aims and objectives. However, to date their roles and responsibilities within the IGF have remained unclear.
The outcome produced and facilitated have not been recognized in terms of representation in the IGF decision‑making or discussions about how the IGF can move forward into the next mandate. We request the Dynamic Coalition roles and responsibilities are reviewed as part of this thought‑thinking and the outcomes are gathered together as evidence of concrete outcomes on the IGF record, and that the ongoing contribution inclusive right based Internet Governance decision‑making processes are more clear and consistently recognized.
Recommendations include role for DC voices in main sessions and programme development for the IGF meeting. Second, more defined roles and responsibilities for DCs in producing outcomes. Third, clearer processes for the mark for DCs in their expertise in their focus areas and in cooperation into the WSIS+10 review. Fourth, support human resources for IGF meetings. We look forward to continuing our walk within the IGF.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
>> Janis Karklins: Thank you very much for your statement.
And I would now like to invite Valaria. Please, you have the floor.
>> VALARIA BETANCOURT: My name is Valaria Betancourt from the Association For Progressive Communications, and I am reporting on behalf of the participants of the roundtable for organisers of workshops on enhancing digital trust and the Internet and human rights. Participants on the roundtable recommend that the session on human rights at the IGF is institutionalized. Roundtable participants recognize a momentum in the discussion regarding the right to privacy and surveillance, and encourage this to be continued at the community level.
Invitations should be issued by the IGF secretariat to the Human Rights Council and the office of the high commissioner on human rights to participate in the IGF. We also suggest that the IGF send regular messages to other bodies that relate to human rights to the Internet and the digital trust. So the IGF strengthens its interaction, not just with the Human Rights Council, but also with other UN bodies and the regional institutions.
Roundtable participants recognized the maturity on discussions of human rights on the IGF. In particular, the work of the Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition, and the increasing number of workshops at the IGF. We also recognize that that maturity of the discussions at the IGF contributed to make human rights a central principle of the NETmundial outcome document.
The IGF should recognize that the NETmundial principles make significant progress towards recognizing the centrality of recognizing the Internet Governance and including regional and national IGFs, should explore how these principles can be implemented.
Finally, we also recommend the creation of a new best practice forum at the IGF on the issue of protection of privacy in the digital age. And we propose that between this IGF and the IGF 2015 in Brazil, the process embark to capture the definitional clarity as well as good practices on the protection of privacy in the digital age.
This intersessional process needs to include developing country participation and make use of regional and national IGFs to ensure that such inclusion happens.
Thank you.
>> Janis Karklins: Thank you very much for this report. I can assure you that the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights always is invited to participate, because the Secretary‑General sends out invitation to all UN agencies programmes, as well as UN secretariat. This practice will continue in the future.
Now it will be time for interventions from the floor. And I have received request from Janet Hofmann to speak first. There will be another intervention on consultations of national and regional initiatives. And those who would like to take the floor, please approach the microphones near the table or come sit at the table in the room. So, Janet, you have your two and a half minutes.
>> Janet Hofmann: Thank you, chair. I'm reporting on the IGF this year to write collectively a letter to the UN Secretary‑General to ask him to extend the mandate of the IGF, not just for five years, as last time, but for a longer period.
There is at the moment broad support for such an idea for such a letter among the private sector, the Civil Society, and also among governments. In fact, we had this kind of discussion already in the context of the NETmundial statement in spring in 2014. Already there, one could feel that many stakeholders and governments want to strengthen the IGF and, therefore, also extending the mandate beyond the usual five‑year term.
But as usual, the devil is in the detail. We have spent lots of time on drafting a statement, and there is now also a statement online. But right now the language hasn't reached the maturity with every stakeholder to sign on. One can sign on right now, but it seems the draft letter to the UN Secretary‑General will have to go through another cycle to get it right and get broad support from many governments.
I will, perhaps, briefly mention what we need to sort of fine tune. This is first to the extent of the extension of the mandate. Some people ask for an open‑ended mandate. Others would like to have it a bit shorter. And the second issue we need to get right is how we couple the extension of the mandate and the future evaluation of the IGF. What needs to be evaluated, how it should be evaluated, and how that is related to the UN.
So these are open issues. And I hope that we will be able, either through intersessional collaboration or other means, to get the statement right so that before the renewal of the IGF is up, we get something that can actually get broad support from all stakeholders and governments.
Thank you very much.
>> Janis Karklins: Thank you.
>> Janet Hofmann: Perhaps I should mention the website. It's igfcontinuation.org.
>> Janis Karklins: The General Assembly, the General Assembly that can extend. Procedure of the United Nations anticipate that there should be United Nation Department of Social Affairs has launched the process of evaluation, and there is a presenter that is doing the job and will present report to the Under‑Secretary‑General of United Nations I think by the end of the year. Many of us have been interviewed and provided input to this evaluation, and that is integral part of the process.
We heard that during the opening statements that there was a call for decision on extension to be made during this General Assembly session by the end of this year. We also heard that that should be done in the framework of WSIS review in December 2015. So remains to be seen how the intergovernmental game will be played in New York. Hopefully, that might be done by the end of this year, which would be much more beneficial for IGF from sustainability and planning perspective. Yes, please?
>> Janet Hofmann: I'd like to ask one question. If there is the possibility that it will be decided already by the end of this year, would that mean for this kind of effort that we should get this done before December?
>> Janis Karklins: The logical answer is yes. Again, it remains to be seen.
Let me now turn to the next speaker, Miss Marilyn Cade, on the national and regional initiatives.
>> Marilyn Cade: I'll make a report on behalf of a much larger team of participants in national and regional IGF initiatives. The initial emergence of such initiatives really began after the launch of the first IGF and was largely initially preparation at a national level for bringing participation into the IGF itself. But today that is no longer the case. The process of preparation for the IGF and engaging in the IGF remains a core part of what these initiatives do. But they have really become the organic intersessional and more distributed work environment.
There are 11 entities who self‑define themselves as regional IGF initiatives, and 20 that define themselves as national IGFs. We also have four quite unique special forums, and just last year a new IGF initiative, a cultural initiative, Persian IGF. They concluded their meeting in Iran right before we came together. Some of the initiatives will take place following the IGF. So the IGF national and regional initiatives are spread throughout the year.
We met in a dialogue session for three hours. And we were welcomed by Janis Karklins, the chair of the MAG, with welcoming comments from Chengetai Masango, the secretariat. Ricardo and I acted as coorganizers. We divided the segment into two segments. In the first segment we attempted to understand what the similarities are of issues that are reflected into the IGF and what the different issues are that may be being addressed by the national and regional. So we were looking for what is unique? Are all of the IGF initiatives just reflecting the themes of the IGF? Or are they doing independent things or things that are very driven by their own local community's, so to speak, perspective?
And the interesting thing is we find some reflection. But we also find some very interesting variances. A number of the national and regional IGFs focused on using the Internet to drive social and economic change. And I think that's a really interesting concept that we don't directly necessarily address here. We often have development‑oriented sessions, but it was interesting to see that in some cases the national initiatives in particular were interested in the role of economic growth and development.
One other uniqueness that we've seen is at the national and regional level there is a very strong commitment to youth engagement. And we're seeing the youth engagement beginning to grow at the IGF itself. But I would say that the diversity of youth engagement is very strong in the national and regionals. We looked this year at something new. That is how our external events in the IG space affect the region. We found WSIS, IANA transition, and IANA accountability is in terms of the national and regionals actually taking up these topics in workshops or events. And that is a little bit different than what we have seen before.
Let me just quickly talk about our key messages. There is great diversity between the way that the national and regionals conduct their engagement. One size does not fit all. They want to continue working together. There's huge funding challenges, and they're also going to reflect into the IGF and how the IGF reflect into them.
My final point would be we have heard a huge reference ‑‑ number of references to what the work ‑‑ the intersessional work can be done at the national and using the national and regionals. And I would say talking to the other parties reflected there is there would need to be more thought by the leaders of that community to think about how that intersessional work could be reflected.
>> Janis Karklins: Thank you, Marilyn. I think that that would be equally ‑‑ if we embark on intersessional work, that is a resource that I think is a very powerful tool at our disposal and we find a way to better tap that existing resource.
Final speaker so far is Mr. Izumi Aizu.
>> Izumi Aizu: Thank you, chair. I'm one of the MAG multi‑stakeholder advisors of 50. I have not really done any workshops this time nor participated in the main session, but I did some homework during here with some other members or colleagues. I have done some interviews of the participants of IGF. What do you think of the IGF, how they can make differences, we can make differences. And it's a very rewarding experience. Far more valuable, I felt, than I had originally expected. So thank you for all these for accepting interviews and for potential interviews or inputs.
There are very diverse degree of comments about the IGF. Very radical right to left, and I don't have much time to explain these, but mostly there is some common complaints that not much time for introduction, question and answer, or making tangible outcomes despite our efforts to reach to. So there's a big room for improvement. Maybe some structural changes we may need to consider for the next round.
I interviewed first‑time participant from Africa, a journalist, and it was interesting that he said, well, he couldn't really participate the way he liked because he was not a speaker. He wanted to share his best practices of the free speech in taking lessons from the last election, no restriction whatsoever, and huge use of the social media was taking place in Afghanistan. And if he could share that. He said that even there's a free speech guaranteed in Afghanistan doesn't mean it's okay, because if the neighboring countries don't have that, it would influence that.
Just to continue at last, the SIM thing was mentioned. Actually, I extended by interview to the Internet ungovernance forum. It's the first time we faced this kind of boycotting ‑‑ some are mentioning they recall boycotting, but there are some strong, the choice of the host country, that is an issue, but they are not quite happy with the way it was done, but give you also the message that we also need to pay attention to the local country and the people.
Of course, we foreigners expect to be very careful and mindful that the intervening with the local politics may not be the ideal situation. But as Afghan generally said, there are certain common interests that interdependency over the jurisdiction and over the bulk state were driven by the use of the Internet. So I think we should be taking these into account.
And there are some details about the selection of workshops, which I don't want to mention, but if we had paid more attention to some details, some of the misunderstandings, or some gaps could have been sort of reached out better way. And that I would like to bring it to the meeting that we will have a meeting, MAG, after the closing ceremony today, to take all the inputs from yours and learn lessons and bring it forward.
Thank you.
>> Janis Karklins: Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention and for your volunteer journalistic work during the meeting.
I do not see any further requests for the floor, and we're sufficiently close to the end of the session. And no one is rushing to the microphone, it seems to me. In that case, let me say very few words in concluding.
I will not try to summarize what has been said, because I would just repeat what all presenters said. Instead, I would maybe outline intentions how we would proceed preparations for the closing session and tangible outcomes. You certainly heard about the call of the MAG to provide on a volunteer basis information on what actions and decisions have been made as a result of engagement in the IGF, and we received about 15 contributions, and synthesis of those contributions are in the document which is available on the website. And I would consider that as one of the outcomes that goes in the direction and informs the debate with the IGF produces any activity or is a result‑oriented or not.
Secondly, we have five documents documenting best practices on five important issues that has been compiled as a result of community engagement. And work will continue on those documents, as we heard, until 15th of September. And the outcome will be available for all those who are interested in looking and using them.
It will be, of course, traditional chair's report, which this time will contain elements or recommendations or invitation of regional to regional and national IGFs to examine some questions which may then be reported in 2015. Of course we are not able to produce a draft chair's report for the closing session, but instead we will try to propose a two‑pager, which will contain the main highlights of this year's session, which will constitute the opening statement of the chair's report. And that will be available at the beginning of the closing session.
We will proceed in the afternoon with an open mic session. All those ideas, suggestions, that will be expressed during open mic session will feed and be captured in the chair's report. And I would also like to encourage and remind the organizers of all workshops that secretariat is expecting reports according to guidelines that would constitute ‑‑ that would be part of the report from IGF as a result.
That said, now I am turning back to the chairman of our session, Professor Osman Ucan from Istanbul University.
>> Osman Nuri Ucan: I would like to thank all the speakers, all the session speakers, and I also thank United Nations for organising such a conference forum in Turkey. I thank the information the educational committee that supports this forum and, of course, the ministry of communication of Turkey. I think it would be beneficial for us for IGF in general and it will enlighten the future 2015 IGF conference. Thanks again for your attendance.
(Applause)
(Adjourned)
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The following is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey meetings. 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.
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